Liliana Turned 1, Halloween, and Thanksgiving.

I know this post is a little late coming - nearly 3 months in fact - but things got a little busy, the camera broke, and the blog went to the sideline.

Liliana turned 1 October 1st. I can't believe how much the time flew by. She already has an affinity for clothes and so that is mostly what she got as her birthday presents. The pictures are below. Thank you to everyone who got her something. She started walking during October, steps here and there. By the time Nana and Grandad came to visit in November she was nearly a pro. She is now a toddler who loves to get into things.

Halloween was a bit of an adventure. I decided to make most of the costumes. Luke was baby jaguar from the TV show Go Diego Go! and Paul was his friend Diego. Lily and I were leopards that Diego was rescuing. All in all it turned out pretty well. We only got 1 picture since the camera got broken (thanks Luke). We celebrated Halloween 4 times this year. We had a ward party with the trunk or treat, our friends had a wonderful party, I won tickets to the local expo center's trick or treat fest, and Paul and Luke went trick or treating on Halloween night (lily was sick, so we stayed home). Surprisingly after all that we didn't have that much candy (but that might have been because i kept giving it away to other kids :) )

My parents and littlest sister, Olivia, were able to come visit the beginning of November, which was a lot of fun. My kids really enjoyed seeing them as well. Olivia was even peer pressured by lily into trying to walk (she was being a slow poke, 18 months and not trying :) ). Livvy figured it out just after she went home.

Thanksgiving was GREAT!! We always stay in Cleveland and usually have a get together with friends. This year, a wonderful neighbor and I thought doing it with as much of the ward as wanted too would be fun. We ended up with about 25 people for thanksgiving dinner at the church. It was a success. Canda is amazing and planned it perfectly :)

Here's some pictures of these activities.

Lily eating her birthday waffles

Lily and her birthday cake

During said Cake

After

 

Halloween

Luke and a cat at the trick or treat street

  

 Luke's Thanksgiving decorations

 Thanksgiving dinner (after most people had started eating, i forgot to take a picture)

 

 My Handsome 'Big' Boy

 My Beautiful Baby Girl

 

September 2011

We had a fun month. My nana Gray and my Aunty Barbara came in for a visit. We visited some of the sites around Cleveland (including the LDS Kirtland Historical sites down the road). Nana and Barbara spoiled us rotten and we all had a fun time. It took Liliana a little while to warm up to them - in fact for the first few days she screamed every time I was out of sight, she got over it and as you can see in the pictures she started to like everybody.

Luke started school and is still liking it as much as he did the first day. He has been exhausted when he gets home, which is sort of a nice change. Luke also started in a football/soccer league. He is a little ball hog but he had fun which was the point. He is number 9 - something I was exciting about since number 9 is frequently the striker on the team :). His first day he got REALLY muddy. They had the little kids on the muddiest field in the area, it was really a mud bath - not really sure how to get cleats clean, oh well, mud is good for kids. He scored twice, they may or may not have been in his own goal but that is beside the point. He has been telling everybody about his goals so it's not important. Hopefully he continues to enjoy the game because I much prefer soccer to American football (not that I don't enjoy watching football, i just don't want my son getting killed while playing a sport).

1 muddy soccer star

Liliana has decided walking isn't too hard after all. She took several stpes the other day in order to get her binkie from me. She is a binkie kid for sure, she HAS to have it at night and she likes to have it during the day. In fact, Lily just likes things in her mouth in general. I swear there is not a thing she doesn't like to eat. She eats more than Luke and I combined. She's getting chunky but it's cute on a 1 yr old... wow she's nearly 1.

My Chunky Monkey

For me - I redid my dining chairs. So I got these chairs from a friend of mine who was moving away. They had cream seat coverings (uuhh, not good with kids) and they were REALLY dirty. So i had been looking for some material to cover the chairs with. So one day I was at a mall and needed a trash can for lily's stinky diaper. I opened the dumpster that was outside crate and barrel and found a TON!! of fabric (there was nothing in the dumpster except fabric and broken dishes). I pulled out the fabric and someone had thrown away over 6 yds of material. It was beautiful - not a mark on it - and great quality (in fact i googled the brand - $50 a yd). So... i redid my chairs in this pretty red stripped fabric... Pics below.

Before

After

Starting School

So i have issues with my camera, for some reason I can't get the pictures off. When Paul gets around to it, I will have pictures on my computer to put up on the blog.

Well Summer is officially over. Paul went back to school end of August, Luke started Preschool (yay!)beginning of September, I started school again (more on this later) this last week. It's been an interesting month.

As I said, Luke started preschool. He is going 4 days a week for 3 hrs and is LOVING it! One of my friends and I carpool which is super nice. I get to spent some alone time with Liliana and I also get to do somethings in peace. Luke's first day was more traumatic for me than it was for him. He just said, "bye mom, bye dad" and walked straight into the classroom, when he got home he said "lots of other kids were crying btu I didn't". Now I did, just a little. I can't believe Luke is big enough for school and i was also a little offended (not really) that he didn't care that I was leaving him. Hopefully he can enjoy school as much in the future as he does now. He also wants to know everyday why they don't practice the ABC's obviously playing isn't what you're supposed to do in school.

Now me. I have decided to go back to school and get my master's degree in Public Administration. I am really enjoying it so far, even though it is a little crazy with Paul being gone most days and studying and a whole bunch of reading (try reading more than 50% of the federalist papers in 4 days). I plan on being done in about 2 yrs and then the plan is to work for a non-profit organization of some kind. I'm taking 9 credits this semester and love it. Hopefully I'll be able to say the same in December :)

Liliana turns 1 next month, but I'll decuss that in another post. She is nearly walking - something she's been thinking about for nearly 2 months - little chicken. She will walk with a popscyle stick in her hand as long as someone is holding the other end - like dumbo and his feather.

Here's Luke's first day of school pictures and a cute one of Lily