My smart little lovebug!

I am amazed every day at the things that Noah can understand and figure out! Several days ago, I was working in the kitchen and told Noah to go get a bib from his room. I love watching his little mind work but wasn't sure if he quite understood what to do, so I followed him. Just as I was about to walk into his room, he comes walking out with bib in hand!! WOW! To know he can understand a request at such a young age. And yesterday, I was watching a little neighbor girl and she was showing me her webkinz (I am so behind in the times:)haha) and right at Noah's dinner time, he came toddling in with bib in hand! He had gone and gotten his bib and understands that that meant it was time to eat. My cleaver little boy!

One of Noah's favorite people in our friends son, Bowen. Noah has even given him his own nickname, Bobo. And so it stands to reason that Noah wants to be doing what Bobo is doing. So, even though his controller is not connected, Noah was still pretending to play:)

Okay, so maybe Noah has a bit more of Aaron in him than we originally thought (is that possible?!?!) Apparently, he has a great golf stance already! We just need to explain that you don't play golf with a Playstation controller!

This was totally unprompted! We happened to look over at the boys and Noah was all over Bowen! It was so funny! Noah also loves to wrestle and so he'll often go over to Bowen and try to knock him down:)

My little Mr. Personality!

Surprise for Aaron!

Our hall bathroom was painted a lavendar color when we moved in and we never changed it. In fact, I really liked it. But within the last year, it has slowly become one place I can not WAIT to change!(its one of the nails-on-a-chalkboard thing) So, I've been biding my time and finally a perfect opportunity arose in that Aaron was going on a business trip! I thought it would be a perfect time to surprise Aaron with a new makeover on the room and a great change for me!

I have slowly been getting my plan together over these last couple of weeks. Sophisticated Jungle! haha!

Paint, new towels & shower curtain and decorations were purchased all waiting for the moment Aaron left:) I enlisted the help of my best friend Lai and we had such a great time painting and making the change!

Its such a small room, we were able to paint both coats in one night!

And the REVEAL...

I love it! It turned out beautifully! Now, we just have to wait for Aaron's reaction to see if he likes it:)

The Return of Duck part 2

Hi! Guess what? I found my duck!

He's so soft, I love to pet him.


I found a great way to carry him around, what do you think?

Look, he does tricks...fly, duck, fly!

Sit, duck, sit.

Lay down, duck.
Good duck.

And just look at how tall my duck is

It makes me so excited!

Who knows what next great adventure Duck and I will have...maybe we can explore the great outdoors together:)

Flocking to the food

Noah has developed a real love of food. Well, okay...most foods. We're still working on the fruits and vegetables. I'm getting pretty creative at how to incorporate fruits into his diet while still trying to get him to eat them plain.

Whenever I have food out, Noah seems to appear right next to me and then tries to convince me with grunts and whines that he DESPERATLY needs some! He surprised Aaron by asking..."cacker, pease" while pointing to where we keep the animal crackers. Thats right...he can say words, lots of them but Aaron had never heard him make this request before.

Daddy's slippers

So we have discovered that a love of shoes is genetic. Both Aaron and I love shoes and now Noah is all about them too. Shoes were the first thing he crawled towards and often passes the time pulling our shoes out of our closet and depositing them in various parts of the house. :) I was working in our bedroom yesterday and turned to find him having fun with Mommy and Daddy's slippers. I helped him stand up with them on his feet, but he did all the rest. He looks so grown up!
Would you like to try them on too?

Okay, here you go...

Which one do you think looks better?

Yeah, I think so too:)

J & Mary's wedding

Uncle J & Auntie Mary got married on a BEAUTIFUL Colorado day. It was so gorgeous! It was fun to celebrate with them in their day. Here are the favorite pics of the day....

I am so bummed this one was blurry!!! It is classic Noah hamming it up for the camera. Where was that grin for the formal pictures?

Good friends! Steph & Dustin Bennetts

The family in rare form! (man do I look pale, compared to Noah!)

The beautiful Bride and Groom.

Now we can relax and have some fun.

Noah absolutely LOVED the dance floor. He was out there all by himself, but he was toddling all over the place. He really loved the transition from the carpet to the dance floor because he kept making circles. Needless to say, he slept really well that night:)

Trying to dance with my little man

Family. Patty had just gotten back from Costa Rica...doesn't she look so beautiful and tan?

Superbowl party 08!

Its amazing how much can change in a year. I have been thinking about this alot lately and I have to be amazed at how God has created and designed these little bodies to grow and learn and adapt to their world around them.

We spent the Superbowl at my brothers house with the family. (we missed you Melissa!!!)

We had so much fun hanging out and just relaxing. And Noah had so much fun playing with his Uncles and wrestling with them.

Below are 2 pictures from our Superbowl party last year. Just comparing the pictures speaks a ton on how much Noah has changed:)

Hanging out with Noni.

(the blue container he is constantly carrying around was a box of cars)





He was actually sitting still for more than 30 seconds!!

Mikey and I did pushups for the scores. Lucky for me it was a low scoring game! I knew I was out of shape, but not that bad!! So, to make it a little more even, Uncle Robb put Noah on Uncle Mikey's back.

Noah loved every minute!

It actually looks like Noah is interested in the game:)

Uncle Danny & Auntie Katy

Where did Noah go?!?

As you can see, Noah was right in the middle of all the goofyness going on.

Vacation with Daddy in CO

Once Aaron arrived, we went into a whirlwind of activities. He was so busy, we really didn't see a whole lot of him. But he enjoyed his quality time with his best friend, Jeremy. Enjoy all the pics from our time...

My two amazing men:)

Aaron and his best friend & groom....Jeremy

We spent an evening with some of Aaron's old highschool friends. Gracie is 6 months and so expressive! We had a great time.


The whole gang of the evening. TJ, Jessica & Gracie, US, TJ's brother Ty and his wife Kim.

I have been trying to teach Noah how to drink through a straw. He got a monkey cup with a straw as a present and have been racking my brain trying to figure out how to teach a 1 year old how to drink through the straw. We bought these to-go soy milks and after a little research, came up with the idea to squeeze the container and once the milk made it to Noah's mouth, he immediately started drinking and wouldn't put it down until it was completely gone! In fact, he was concentrating on it so hard, he wouldn't move his head at all!! But atleast it worked!!:)

More Daddy/Noah bonding

Noah loves doors. Correction...he loves SHUTTING doors. So he made his way out to my parents deck and then shut the door. He had a great time looking around outside and then looking in on the rest of us:) And yes, it really was that nice that he could go out without a coat or hat.

The Airport

What a disaster the plane ride home turned out to be! The flight from Colorado Springs to Cincinnati was fine, actually great. Noah slept all but the last half hour and the flight itself was smooth. But once we got to Cinci, we found out that our flight to South Bend was cancelled! And whats more, all flights into SB were cancelled for the rest of the night. As we were talking to the Delta rep., she informed us that all flights to SB the next day were completely booked and the soonest we could fly to SB would be 2 days after we were supposed to!! The only other option she gave us was to fly us to Chicago the next morning, but that didn't do much good considering we didn't have a car seat or anything for an overnight stay. So, my wonderful, problem-solving husband got us on a flight to Toledo, OH, which is only 2 1/2 hours from home as opposed to the 4 hours when we were in Cinci. From there, our wonderful friend, PJ came and picked us up. We were so thankful to be home. But just to throw a little more at us to see if we would break, Delta lost our luggage somewhere between Cinci and Toledo...and we didn't get it back until 2 1/2 days later. Who knew we packed so much that we use so frequently!!!

We are just thankful to finally be back in our cold, snowy, windy city!

My happy little camper in between our crazy flights home. He was hamming it up for anyone who would look his way.

He was also rolling all over the place. Doesn't he look comfy? He had no clue what was going on:)

Goodbye!