We're ready for you Santa...

After I scoured the internet to find a look that I loved, I came up with these:

Hadley's:



Mine:



Dman's:


These were a labor of LOVE, let me tell you! They took me FOREVER. No joke. But I really wanted to make them.....growing up my mom made all ours, so I had to make my family's. I am SUPER happy with the way they turned out. They are just so darn cute. Definitely not perfect at all.....an avid sewer would take one look at them and probably die, but for us they work just fine!

I still have to add an 'H' on Hadley's a 'M' on mine and a 'D' on Dad's. But let's be honest, there are 4 days till Christmas......that won't be happening until next year!

These are a few of my favorite things...

Oh Christmas. I LOVE this time of year. It is simply wonderful. I thought I would share a little of what our house looks like right now with all the Christmas decorations up.
Did I mention I love it? *sigh*

Some other favorite things:

-Coming in from the cold to a warm house

-Christmas candles

-Hot chocolate

-Cuddling up on the couch with a blanket and my hubby

-Christmas movies

-Slippers

-Christmas lights

-Whore frosts

-Walking through the dog park while soft snow flakes are falling

-Christmas music

-Excitement, love, joy and all around kindness

-Christmas baking....mmmmmm

-Time with family

-Hour d' oeuvres

-Games

-Ice Skating

-Tobogganing

LOVE IT!

10 months.

Double digits what the what!?
I know I say it every month but I cannot believe we are here.

Here is the Hads at 10 months:

Oh boy oh boy she is a BUSY girl. Would NOT sit still for this picture and definitely wont lay on her back for them anymore. Her new favorite game is called "chase me". HA! Is she really that old already? Can someone pinch me.

Recent developments:

-WALKING!! Just steps for now, but walking nonetheless! The furthest her little legs have taken her so far is about 2 meters.

-Playing "chase me" (crawling though - she gets more speed that way)

-Has turned into a picky eater. Great!

-Trying to wean her off her bottle and to a sippy.......I can already tell it is going to take MONTHS hence why we are starting a little early!

-Gives high fives on demand (unless she doesn't want to of course)

-Flips the pages of books when we read.

-Reads books to herself - SO cute!

-Down to one afternoon nap a day.

That's about it. I will post a video of "chase me" later.

Merry Christmas...card

Since I haven't posted in forever, and this needs to be a quicky, I thought I would share our Christmas card that I made this year.




I am so happy with the way they turned out.
Its getting close........33 days!!! I LOVE this time of year. Its my favorite!

9 months.

Can, can, can you do 9 months!?

Oh wow.

I know I am going to sound like a broken record here but time is a-flying! I cannot believe how close she is to a year. Like, I actually have to start thinking about a 1st birthday party pretty soon here.

Not a lot of developments this month probably due to the fact that she hit so many milestones last month! But,recent developments include:

-walking with her walker ALL around the house (but running into walls just as much)
-eating mommy and daddy's suppers with us (via the magic bullet)
-still NO teeth
-starting to really fight her two naps - we may have to go down to one soon
but she still needs both!
-crawling up the stairs
-We think she may be able to say her first two words - she says mom when she wants me and "ou" when she gets hurt - the reason we are unsure is because it seems too early!
-Her new favorite game is called "lets take all the vents off the heat registers"!! Its REAL fun!
-still as happy and smiley as ever

Here is a little video of Hadley walking with her walker for the G-mas'! Just ignore my nasty man voice. I am a little sick.

Hadley, we love you SO much! You are the best baby in the entire world! Mommy and Daddy always comment on how blessed we are to have YOUR spirit in our family. I thank Heavenly Father for you every. single. night.

WARNING: Scarrrry post ahead.

Just kidding its actually full of cuteness in the form of a lady bug.

HAPPY HALLOWEEN everyone!!

We had a BLAST this Halloween. Everything is so much more fun when you have a little one to experience it with.

Dman and I (ahem, I mean Clive and Christy) kicked the weekend off by attending a murder mystery party.

Then we followed that up the next night with our church Halloween party where Hadley debuted her costume. Drumrolll..........

If you can't tell, but I sure hope you can, I was Princess Leia (get it - Leia...Leah....HA!), Dman was batman, and the Hads was the cutest ladybug I have ever seen.

Then we went trick-or-treating on Halloween...

At our first door....

With the pumpkins....

And then we...Hadley...went through the loot. She had sooooo much fun pulling everything out of that bag. Christmas is going to be a blast with her.....she really gets into it!

And then that was that. Happy Halloween everyone!!

Farmin' it.

This past weekend we took a trip out to a pumpkin farm/corn maze/everything you can think to do farm just north of the City. And we had a blast.

We....

Pet some animals







Pretended to be pirates



Measured our height. Hadley is 2'3".



Rode on a swing



Were enamored by "Super-Pumpkin"



Rode on Daddy's shoulders



Played in the hay



Took a weird bike ride


And.....

Got lost in the corn maze

Went on a hay ride

Saw pumpkins being shot out of a cannon

Ate hot dogs and fudge

Good times. Have I mentioned I LOVE fall?

8 months.

8 months and she thinks she is numero uno (#1)!! We kinda do too.

I cannot believe 8 months is already here. When I was a girl there were a couple ages that seemed soooooo old to me. They were 12, 19, and 23. As a mom there are also a couple ages that seem sooooo old to me and 8 months is one of them!! Oh tear. I just can't believe how fast my baby is ceasing to be a baby!

We have hit A LOT of milestones this month. Boy, have we ever! The pediatrician says that she is "advanced".....haha. I think it is too funny, but I am also perrrrty proud of our little chica.

Recent developments include:

-Crawling (at 7 1/2 months). This girl gets around!! Cannot keep her out of stuff. But I love it - so much fun.
-Pulling herself up to standing on furniture and anything sturdy enough.
-Walking holding onto our hands......and I do mean an actual walk, not a parent forced, oh she moved a foot walk. No, no, a full on walk around the church/house/store walk.
-Walking along furniture.
-Pointing to EVERYTHING with a..... "do"?
-Clapping
-Dancing to music
-Sleeping from 8pm to 8am. For the longest time she slept from 8pm to 7am but now that its staying dark longer, she has extended her nights by an hour and I LOVE it!
-Loves her bath more than ever now that she can boot around the tub and gather all her toys.
-18 lbs.....and I don't know her current height.
-Eating soft solids (ie. breads, meats, egg yolks, etc)
-She's been a gabby girl since she could make noises, but this month she REALLY started to talk to us. Like she will yell at me to get my attention and then when she has it, she lowers her voice and babbles at me as if to tell me something.

And just a few more pics:









Oh how I love this girl. More than I ever thought I could love another human being. I seriously, no jokes or exaggerations, LOVE being a mom to her. Every second of it. Even the hard ones. She just makes everything easy and fun.

Please don't ever change Hads - I adore you!

Prayers needed.

Usually I don't like to get too heavy on the ole' blog. Usually I don't like to play show and tell with my personal problems - I don't want to seem all attention needy or anything.

But this is not one of those times. In regards to this, I don't care how I come off. All I care about are prayers. Let me explain.

This is David:




David and I go way back. You see back in our high school days, Dman, myself and 4 other guys (one of which was David) were inseparable. Everyday after school we would trot off to my house or Nicks house, eat, and play Pokemon on Nintendo 64 (SUPER cool, I am well aware). That is with the exception of football and basketball season because Dman and David played on our high school teams together and practices were after school. Anyway, after high school we have held our quarter annual games nights, celebrated holidays together, and most recently all four guys became uncles when Hadley was born. These guys, and most importantly to this post, David, are very important people in our lives.

Just over a week ago, David had a very serious accident while riding his bicycle, leaving him severely injured and in a coma. At first the docs only gave David a 50/50 chance of making it. Since those first very rough few days, things are getting better. He is still in a coma, and the docs don't really know the extent of his brain damage. But the good news is that they do know that it isn't a brain stem injury (which means he is not brain dead - a fear early on), both of his eyes are responding to light now, he has been taken off most sedation, will hopefully soon be taken off the ventilator, and he is starting to move.

But the docs need David to wake up. This, I hope, is where you come in. I plead for your prayers for David. I know it could be weird to pray for someone you don't know, so heck, I don't care, pray for "that guy on Leah's blog" or "Leah's friend". Please, just please, include him in your prayers if/when you get down on your knees tonight. If you do not pray, then please have him in your thoughts.

We need him to make it and we need him to wake up as David. Hadley needs to know her Uncle Dave. I really cannot imagine having to explain to her who he was and how important he was to us through pictures. I want all of her surrogate uncles to be present in her life.

So, thank you for your prayers. They would mean the world to our family at this time.

Harvest time.

Look what the Hads and I harvested from our garden this morning:




Mmmmmm. I love fall. And there are LOTS more where these came from!

My little helper:




Not one of her best pictures. The sun was bright okay.

And in other news Hadley is crawling (like a for real boot around the house crawl)!! See:




Yes, we wear our PJ's all day around here. Don't judge.

An ode to summer.

Wow, I have been off the posting wagon for a while now. All I can say is that we tried to enjoy summer around these parts!!

This is what we were up to:

-Swimming - lots of swimming. Anytime it was nice we were in the WATER - pools, lakes, legislature grounds - you name it!

-And swinging - lots of swinging! We have a school park about 2 minutes away from our house and boy oh boy, do we ever frequent it.

-Just hangin' out in the sun (don't worry, baby was out of the sun as much as possible)

-Went to Heritage Days and Taste of Edmonton (our favorite summer activities)

-Frequented the Terwillegar dog park......the Hads and the dogs LOVE the river!!

-Matching pedi's

-Spent many a night/evening out on our outdoor sectional on our new deck......LOVE.

And now that it is over I am already looking forward to next summer.......hmmmm do ya think I should move to a warmer climate or what!? But the cool nights are welcomed! And fall....I love fall. The smells, the sights, the food.

So, so long summer. You were too short and sporadic for my liking. Maybe next year you can bring your A game? Maybe?

7 months.

7 months. I compared these pictures this morning and I cannot believe that my girl is 7 months old. She feels so grown up.

For instance, Dman and I were trying to remember last night when the last time she really cried was. She will whimper when she is tired or grumpy but no full on cries anymore......like the oh my gosh, what does she need cry where it just doesn't stop. That represents age to me....like she's got this life thing figured out.

Recent developments include:
-Talking (indicriminate baby talk) like crazy.
Has added ma-ma (finally!), go, row, whoa, ta-ta, and pa-pa to her vocab
-crawling backwards but not forward yet
-can go from sitting to stomach and laying to sitting
-rides in the shopping cart like a big girl
-eating arrowroot cookies and the like
-16 lbs (25th percentile)
-26.5 inches (50th percentile)
-Don't remember the exact measurement but her head is in the 75th percentile. Ha!
Maybe she is going to be smart....big brain?

And just cause, here is another pic from our little 7 month photo shoot:

5 generations.

A few weeks ago Hadley and I packed up and headed out west with my mom and dad to visit my grandma and great-grandma (Nana).

Nana isn't doing so good so it was really important to my mom to get a 5 generation picture. You see, for 5 generations each woman has had a girl first. Ah-hem: my great grandma had my grandma first, then my grandma had my mom first, then my mom had me first, and I had Hadley who is my first. Pretty neat. I don't think 5 generations of all women happens too often these days what with people having kids later. Only one of Dman's grandparents is still alive let alone great grandparents. And Hadley has a great-great grandma!

So anywho we made our way out there over two days and camped with the rents in their little trailer in the mountains.

Hadley at bathtime in the trailer (pics are a bit blurry I know cause she was moving so darn fast - the girl likes to SPLASH!):











Have I mentioned how much I love this girl's personality!?

Anyway, then it was off to do some serious visiting with Nana and get that 5 generation picture. I won't divulge at this point except to say that Nana was one of the coolest people in the world. You have never met a stronger lady. She gave definition to the word woman. Her husband fought in 2 world wars, she lived through the great depression and had a hard-working life. But you would never meet a person more content with their circumstances. And boy oh boy, did the woman have a good sense of humor. And now she has changed. Old age, a stroke, a broken hip, and dementia have done a number on her. I was SO glad that she and Hadley met.









Meeting Nana for the first time (no we did not stage this):








And just cause, Hadley's fist time eating an arrowroot cookie at a restaurant:



My parents flew the Hads and I back home cause we did NOT want to do that drive again all the way back. She did great on the flight. Hammed it up with everyone on the plane and didn't make a peep.

All in all, a good reminder of what is the most important in life:
family.

3 years.

3 years ago today I married my high school sweetheart.

3 years ago today was the best day of my life (sorry Hads, your birth was the 2nd best......but without marrying Daddy, you would not exist so it makes sense).

3 years ago today I made the best decision ever.





Friday we are going on a big date.......dinner and dancing without Hadley!! Grandma is even putting her to bed which means we get to stay out late! Weehoo!

And apparently Dman has a present and date planned out for each night leading up to Friday....we shall see.

I made the hubs a scrapbook of all of our letters that we wrote to each other when he was on his mission (what's a mission? Find out here). 2 years worth makes for a BIG scrapbook. It took a while.

He made me a big frame for my picture wall in the kitchen. And ordered me a bracelet that has charms which are teeny tiny little pictures of my beautiful girl (don't have it yet though).


This anniversary means a lot to me. Why? Because, as any parent will understand, bringing a life into this world with your spouse is the most beautiful thing. I see my husband in a whole new light now. He shines as a Father. He is brilliant at it. Which only means that my love for him goes much, much deeper than it did 3 years ago.

Happy anniversary hun! I love you. xoxo

My new nephew...Kohen!!

I referred to the fact that my sister-in-law was in labor in my last post and here HE is!! Kohen. We did a photoshoot ASAP after he was born. Go here to see more!