christmas eve

Christmas Eve we were invited to Allison's gandparents. We had lots of good food, listened to grandpa Jepson read the scriptures of Christ's birth, sang Christmas carols, and enjoyed seeing the girls play. We had fun putting these huge trapper hats on them.I'm pretty sure they are thinking to each other how crazy their parents are.Danielle is done.

christmas decorations

Ornament ExplorationI made some new stockings this year. I also made this garland by just stringing a bunch of ornaments and pinecones together.Candycane anyone?Hot chocolate mugs all ready to go.Felt Nativity. Berret arranged it, Joseph is informing the shepards that it is flu season...Our tree!!! Strung with popcorn, a couple ornment of Hallie that I made, little stockings made by my mom years ago, and a few shiny and sparkly ball ornaments from Target. It is topped by the star Berret and I made our first Christmas together out of wire coat hangers, duct tape, paper mache' and paint.These are from today. This is Hallie right after her nap, it is usual to find the curtains crazy like this.Warren and Allison stopped by today and Hallie got to have some fun with Dani. These two are going to be trouble together.

random fun before christmas

These are just a bunch of pictures I thought were really cute. Enjoy! Oh and just for the record Hallie is now walking more than crawling.She likes her tummy:)She loves walking because she can carry all sorts of things with her now.Fingers!Notice Hallie's left leg...funny girl.Helping open a package from Mike and Shawna to get to the yummy Christmas cookies inside. Thank you they were delicious!

Thats all for now. I plan on getting this blog caught up before Hallie's Birthday party this coming weekend, so check back soon.

december 11 months

This post is over due, I'm sorry. Can you believe Hallie is almost a year old!?!?!?!? She is such a blessing in our lives and we just can't seem to get enough of her. What is she up to at 11 months? -
-WALKING!!! During our trip to visit our families she was hardly walking since both of our families have hardwood floors and she wasn't used to it. The night we got home she started walking right away. The rest of that week she started to really work on and everyday she was going further and further and she was more balanced and confident. I just love seeing her little wobbily legs make their way around our home.
-She can stand herself up without the assitance of anything.
-Dance while free standing, she is started to shake her hips. She really loves music.
-She is started to do some signs. She can do drink and all done.
-Loves to smack her lips and get others to do the same.
-Clapping
-She can get very bored with the process of eating and completely uninterested and easily distracted even when she likes what she is having. We have found some tricks to get her to eat more.
-She can drink out of a straw and a sippy cup that has a valve and not just the ones with the silicone tops.
-She has FOUR NEW TEETH. Her mouth now has a total of six teeth.
-Experiments with the chewing ability of her teeth. She'll chew on things take them out of her mouth look at put it back in her mouth and repeat. It is kind of gross but she is just getting those teeth figured out.
- She is always thinking and taking everything in, sometime you can even see her just pause to think something over.

lets play catch up

Wow I'm really behind with this blog. This is best time of the year but it is very busy. This blog needs to be caught up because I like to have a record of my family and it is fun to look back on.

We got to visit our families the whole week of Thanksgiving in Oregon and Washington. We started off with turkey the Monday before Thanksgiving at my parents house. My brother Mike had been planning on coming for our Thanksgiving celebration and we were all surprised to find that Sam was in the car with Mike when he arrived. Sam is living in Provo and flew to Seattle and rode down with Mike to surprise everyone. We had turkey the following days. Then on Thusday we had even more delicious turkey and Thanksgiving foods at Berret's parents house. Saturday we went to a ward activity for my parents ward and had even more turkey. It was a great week and between all the turkey eating we had fun seeing family and friends. Then Sunday morning we decided that we had enough turkey and started our drive back to Idaho.

We got to go out and eat at Old Chicago with some old friends and we all had a blast.Hallie trying to get what she wants.Checking out great uncle Charlie's chair.Hallie got to go see the cow with her cousin Gavin. She seemed to really enjoy it.Gavin and Hallie were so cute together and Gavin did a great job being gentle with Hallie.The weekend after getting back we hosted an ugly sweater and white elephant gift exchange Christmas party. It was alot of fun and we had some pretty awful sweaters.

walking

Last week Hallie took some steps, but did it without really realizing it. Today she started walking in between things and did so with more confidence. Today we saw her walk and stop to catch her balance then continue walking again. Everytime she walked a little and got to where she wanted she'd laugh and squeel in celebration. Crawling is still her main mode of transportation. Here is a bit of her walking as she goes after the camera. Aren't her little wobbily legs so cute?!?! Sorry the video is so dark.

videos and this morning

Hallie has a teether that vibrates when you bite down on it. After she tipped over her toy basket and started playing she realized she was sitting on this teether and when she leaned back it would vibrate. Here she is playing with it.

Hallie loves playing with the alarm clock. She opened it for the first time and wasn't quite sure about it and had trouble closing it up again. She seemed almost distraught about it. It doesn't show this in the video but she was happy and dancing before the thing was open and went back to dancing when it was closed again.

Early this morning Berret and I had to do wellness testing so we could get lower insurance rates. We had to wake Hallie up way before she normally wakes up. She did great while we were getting the testing done but was very anxious to go back to sleep when we got home. Look how cute she is all bundled up and trying to look around her hat. Oh and my hair is dark now, it is fun to try something different once in awhile.

november 10 months

Hallie's tricks:
-lots of freestanding
-going in between furniture that needs a step to get to
-walking very confidently with using one hand for support ex. walking along side us holding a finger or walking along walls with one hand touching
-taken about 5 good walking steps on her own but then realzed she wasn't holding on to something and switched to crawling
-says mama and dada, she uses mama more though ;)
-lots of babbling
-loves to dance and jump
-becoming a picky eater
-likes to grab the spoon while being fed with crazy quick reflexes which tends to fling food
-favorite right now seems to be slow cooked roast with veggies or grated cheese
-loves baths but hates getting dressed
-never wants to miss out on anything even if it means losing sleep, like an entire nap
-I think she understanding "NO" more and more and seems to like to test it and make games out of things that shouldn't be
-we see her personality developing more and more each dayShe has liked attacking the calendar but this month she REALLY went after it.It was time to put it away but she wasn't quite done yet.

halloween

When we got into Rexburg we first stopped by Warren and Allison's so the girls could play around in their costumes together. In this picture Hallie is free standing and just starring at all of us. In these first 2 pictures she actually had the duck feet I made for her on.Our friends Liz and Grady invited us to the ward party in our old ward. Here is Berret in a donut eating contest that he won.Liz dressed as Captain Crunch.After the ward party we went and hung out at Brad and Ally's. The guys took Hunter and Hallie trick or treating. Hallie only wore her duck hat trick or treating so she could be in her warmer clothes. For more pics at Brad and Ally's go HERE.

Hope everyone had a fun Halloween, we sure did! Now on to the REALLY fun holidays Thanksgiving and Christmas.