Aubrey's Walking & She's ONE!!!

Aubrey's ONE!!!!

What a diva!!
So I've been working on getting a video of Aubrey walking for a couple weeks, but either Aubrey hasn't cooperated, or I recorded it funny on my camera. So after many attempts, I finally got a decent clip of her taking multiple steps. She's actually been doing this for a couple weeks now, but this particular video was taken on her first birthday (yesterday).




We've also had multiple celebrations already for Aubrey's 1st birthday, with more in the works. My family came into town for a little party last weekend with cake and presents, so we let Aubrey dig in to her very own cake. I took lots of pictures in hopes of getting some good ones, so here a few of my favorites.

She's not sure about that flame.

I think she's thinking, "Mmmm... it's good"

Yep, here's the first birthday picture I was looking for - messy face and fingers.
And here's a few more on her actual birthday. She finally looked at me...almost. There she is! Complete with the pearly whites! (3 to be exact) Happy Birthday Aubrey!

Our Late Christmas Gift

Tyler got his Christmas gift a couple weeks late.

Rock Band for the Wii. The girls love to play with us which isn't too surprising. Abby is actually really good at singing. What did surprise me was how it wasn't just Abby and Tessa. I was in the bathroom and heard noises through the wall and came around to find this: She found the drums back in this corner all by herself, and even got the drumsticks out of their holding place before starting to rock out.

Go Aubrey!

It looks like the drummer genes have found their way down to you from your grandpa and uncles.

Christmas Time

We have spent the last couple weeks enjoying the holidays. Here are the highlights of our holiday season. The girls spent many days dressing up as Mary and Joseph, which I thought was super cute because it was all their idea. We spent a field trip day with Abby's preschool at The Village in Allen where we met some of Santa's reindeer, played in a miniature town, and discovered a Texas-shaped maze. The kids had fun even though it was pretty chilly. The girls also enjoyed their visit with Santa at the Ward Christmas Party. We were very sad that the party was on Saturday this year because Tyler had to miss it due to work. Such is life.

Our Christmas festivities started off with a Christmas Eve party with friends. This was our first year to be home for Christmas morning, which I was excited about. However, Tyler did not want to sit home by ourselves Christmas Eve, so we planned an evening of food, fun, and entertainment that included a reading of the Christmas story complete with kid actors, singing carols, and a pinata. All of these are activities from Tyler's family traditions, so we were very excited to include them in our own evenings' events.

We woke up Christmas morning to snow on the ground which Abby loved. After waiting for Aubrey to wake up, we opened presents. The girls must have been good this year because they came away with a huge Christmas gift haul.

We then decided to drive to my parents, but it took us an extra 3 hours due to icy road conditions. We finally made it and enjoyed the weekend with family. Even though it made rough driving conditions, the girls loved the snow and wanted to play in it constantly. This is like a 1 in 10 years worth of Texas snow by the way!
My brother, John, finally made it from Utah two days late since the airport in OKC was closed. We were happy to have him finally arrive, and the girls loved having him there to play with.

And the favorite gift of this year?
A "Hannah Montana" guitar as Abby calls it. She loved to play along with the rest of us who spent most of the weekend playing Rock Band on the XBox. She also loved the fact that the one song the guitar plays is one she LOVES: Girls Just Wanna Have Fun. How awesome is that!?!

All in all, it was a great Christmas and we celebrated a Happy New Year with family as well. Hope all of yours was as merry and bright. Here's to a great 2010 sure to be filled with more excitement and adventures!

"I'm 5 Now"

If you have seen Abby in the last 4 days, this is the first thing out of her mouth:

"I'm five now."

She's telling prefectly good strangers like nurses at the doctor's office, and random people at the store this. Yes, that's Abby - my total socialite, as someone pointed out to me yesterday. :) So what kind of party did we have? A Powerpuff Girl Party of course. (I don't know why she's so obsessed with this show, but she is.)

We attempted to keep her party low-key so she was allowed to invite four friends, and since that was the case, I was able to make each girl her own Powerpuff Girl dress. Since we had two of each color, I played towards the color-themed party. We played games based on their colors using balloons and gift bags. We honed our Powerpuff Girl skills so we could "fight the monsters" on our monster hunt. Here's one of their "teamwork" games. They did way better than I thought they would.Before her friend birthday party, we also had a family party that included a trip to Chuck E. Cheese. Abby was very excited all week for this because as she said, "I won't be scared of Chuck E. I'm going to go up to him and give him five." She only hesitated a second before letting me get a picture. Thanks Chuck E. for the awesome pose in this pic!
The best delivered present would have to go to Abby's friend down the street. He told his mom he wanted to make Abby a birthday cake for her present. After his mom tried to tell him she'd probably have lots of cake already for her birthday, he just said nope, that's what I want to give her for her birthday. So they made this awesome cake after asking Abby what her favorite flavors were (pink and chocolate). It's the most awesome "cupcake" cake I've ever seen. And it tasted awesome too. Thanks guys! :)

We love our Abby. She's such a good little gal who loves to help, tell stories, and make people smile.

Happy Birthday!

Holidays and Festivities

Well there's always so much going on in December, that I figured I'd get a quick post in catching up with all my favorite pictures that I haven't posted yet. Most are dealing with one holiday or another so I thought they could all go together in this one post. So to start I have to go back to Halloween. Tyler and I went to a couple's party where we were supposed to dress up as a famous duo. Getting Tyler to go to this was hard in itself, but adding on dressing up it was almost impossible. But I talked him into it after creating the perfect duo costume. Can you tell what duo we went as?We were peanut butter and jelly. I told Tyler how if we dressed in the right colors and had "bread" on our backs, then when we hugged, we'd make a sandwich. Cute huh? I thought so. :)

Another party we went to, Tyler showed up late after he finished up at work. This is how he came to the door:

Spooky isn't it? Aubrey didn't seem to mind it at all.

Moving on to Thanksgiving, we had to make our annual pumpkin turkeys. This year Abby also had to make a turkey by tracing her hand herself and adding tissue paper feathers. She had to have that turkey in every picture I took. They actually turned out pretty cute. We traveled to Utah this year for Thanksgiving and had a great time with our family. We stayed busy with eating, playing games, and enjoying the snow (there wasn't much snow by Utah standards, but Abby thought it was "so much" that she got so excited to show Grandma and Grandpa "all that snow" as soon as they each woke up). I guess Abby's a true Texan now if she thinks this is "so much" snow.
I think the highlight of the weekend for the grandkids was when we got to take a ride on the Polar Express to the North Pole and see Santa, Mrs. Claus, and the elves. This is what Abby tells everyone about when they ask her about the trip. It was made even cuter with Grandma's matching homemade pajamas that the kids opened that morning during our "Christmas."
These last pictures are included because I definitely think they fall under the "festivities" category. So I got to go see New Moon with some friends on opening night at the theaters. It was AWESOME of course! I helped kick off that weekend by surprising my fellow Edward fan Kasia with a visitor.

How awesome is that?!? I borrowed Edward from another friend and Kasia had no idea he was coming by. She had a fun-filled weekend using him to scare anyone who happened to be walking in the room at her house. But the movie was definitely an A+ for me. I can't wait to see it again!!

Aubrey's Nine Months!!

Here's an update all about Aubrey. She is nine months old today. It's gone by so fast. I can't believe it's been nine months already. Look at my baby girl all grown up!

I should believe it's been that long however because she can do so many things. Just read on to see for yourself:

Aubrey is standing up with anything she can get her hands on.

She even walks along with anything that rolls.

It doesn't take them long to mirror what they see. Aubrey has already learned the art of talking on the phone:

Unfortunately, she has also started learning how to climb the stairs. Eek!

And... she finally has her first tooth!
We love our Aubrey. Keep on growing girl!

Warning!!! Don't Touch!

So we had an eventful Friday last week. It began when Aubrey stood up by my leg screaming like she was hurt or really mad. I thought she was just really tired so I was getting ready to lay her down for her nap, but she kept acting really upset. I even took off her socks thinking one of her toes got bent funny or something. Anyway, I tried nursing her to sleep but she was too upset to even eat. She does this sometimes when she's over tired so I decided to just lay her down in her crib to see if she'd fall asleep on her own which she usually does, but after about 10 mintues she was still crying uncontrollably, so I went to pick her up. At this point I started to freak out because her lips looked swollen to me. I didn't know if it was just her face from crying so much and for so long but everytime I looked at her, it looked swollen. After talking to my sister-in-law who asked if her tongue was swollen I really started to freak thinking if her tongue and/or throat started to swell that would be very very bad. So I called her doctor and took her right in.

Long story somewhat shorter, the doctor gave her benadryl but we didn't really decide on a reason (and it was just one part of her upper lip that seemed affected.) However, while waiting for the doctor I also noticed that her thumb and first finger looked red and swollen as well. Weird, but it's the thumb she normally sucks so I didn't know if whatever it was started at the lip and went to the thumb when she tried sucking it or vice versa. So we're thinking some kind of allergic reaction like maybe she found some random piece of food she shouldn't have and tried eating it because she's all about picking up stuff off the floor and putting it right in her mouth. But I couldn't think of anything the girls or I had eaten that would do this (ie peanuts or the like). However that's all the doctor and I could think of: maybe she found some random peanut butter or something.

Anyway, so after the benadryl kicked in Aubrey finally fell asleep and after she was asleep and calm you could finally see what was really red and not just from her crying. It was the entire section of her upper lip under her nose and a small bit under her bottom lip, but you could totally see the redness. It was crazy. Now as I write this I wish I had a picture, but at the time, taking a picture was the least of my worries.

So after getting home I went straight to the living room where she first started freaking out thinking I'd maybe find some remnant of some crumb or something but guess what I found! One of these, all curled up like someone had rolled it up between her fingers:

That's right! A caterpillar. And not just any caterpillar, a stinging caterpillar. I'm pretty sure Aubrey found it, tried to pick it up, and probably tried to eat it until it stung her and she started crying. These caterpillars are all over my porch and I've wondered about them for months (what they are and stuff). So after this, I finally did the research and found out.

The southern flannel moth caterpillar,

aka the puss caterpillar. Here's one from bugguide.net.

Every site I found about them had the same warning: don't touch, they sting! Thanks for that a little too late; my poor baby! And after reading other people's experiences with stings from this monster, we're very lucky it was such a minor reaction on Aubrey. But they seriously cover my entire front door frame, porch, and bushes. It's crazy. I'm very relieved that none of my girls or I have ever stepped on one because we used to go outside all the time with bare feet. As soon as Tyler got home and saw Aubrey and the research I had done, he went outside and sprayed every caterpillar he saw with our outside bug spray. The first picture I used was of a dead one that was left over on our porch after the spraying. Here's a picture of our bush that they cover. In this picture alone there's like at least 7 either in cocoon form or empty already. Every khaki blob in the picture is one of them!So, just so you know, if you see a fuzzy caterpillar of any kind - don't touch it! It more likely than not will sting you. Oh, and don't let your infant try to eat one either! We're just glad she's okay and now I have a nice big stock of benadryl on hand just in case.