Toys!

We've had lots of fun playing with our toys lately!

Michael's favorites are ones that have lights and music (especially classical themes!).



He looks like such a big boy sitting up in his little highchair! He likes to look around and see what is going on. He has great head control for this.

His other favorite toy is a little musical keyboard that is strapped to the end of his crib. He will stare at it and sing a long when it is playing! He loves it and it is so fun to see him kick his chubby little legs along to the music. Look how strong he is!

Short Days and Long Shadows

The days are getting shorter and shorter! I find that if we don't think about getting outside by at least two o'clock, we are running out of daylight. We went for a walk yesterday at Jester Park and I was so surprised at how long the shadows were at just four o'clock! I suppose it is a true sign of winter.

The weather was fantastic yesterday. We saw tons of people at the park- and by tons I mean other people besides Michael and I! We are pretty used to getting the whole place to ourselves. It is nice to see other people who enjoy it just as much as I do.

All bodies of water yesterday were pure glass. No wind at all made for some very beautiful reflection photos. I love the way the naked trees look.

Giving Thanks!

Happy Thanksgiving!


Gosh, we have so much to be thankful for this year. Michael, family, friends, security and happiness. It has been a great year and we are blessed beyond means. Hopefully we will be able to share some of these blessings with others during the next few weeks and beyond!

We had a great holiday at our house! It was just the three of us at home celebrating which was very relaxing and special.

Scott even got all of our Christmas lights up and working! Kudos to him for actually realizing there are differences between indoor and outdoor electrical accessories. I had no idea! If it were up to me to rig it all up, our trees would be on fire the minute we flipped the switch.

The power center of our lighted christmas tree forest.

We bundled Michael up and brought him outside with us in his stroller. He looked SO cute in his little snowsuit! Can you believe this was the coldest day this fall so far?

He is so cute when he wears mittens because he doesn't quite know what to do with his hands. It reminds me of when you put clothes on a little puppy dog and they don't really know what to think!

We ended the afternoon with a nice meal-my first Thanksgiving I have prepared all by myself! We had fried turkey cutlets a la Rachel Ray and a very delicious cornbread stuffing with a recipe I found on foodnetwork.com. We also had mashed red potatoes, butternut squash, and green bean casserole.

I hope your holiday was just as great as ours!

Project: Pool Table

Much to the happiness of my husband, our pool table is now in it's home in our basement!



Well, I guess it isn't 100 % done yet. The pool table guys put some very beautiful camel colored felt on it and I need to get down there and take some photos.

Also, fun fact: Did you know when they deliver a pool table it is totally in a million pieces? I had no idea! The slate top comes in three pieces and they seal it together with beeswax so your balls don't get stuck in the crease.

p.s.-how gorgeous is that slate? Wouldn't you love to have that for your floors? :o)

Of course I couldn't forget a photo of my favorite furry friend checking out his new surroundings!

Giveaway!

Would you like to win this??



It includes:

1 Watkins Pumpkin Bread Mix
1 can Libby's Pumpkin puree

And samplers of:
Tomato Basil Dip Mix
Bacon Cheddar Dip Mix
Watkins Cinnamon
Watkins Black Pepper
Mango Shea Butter
Lavender Hand and Body Lotion

D over at All Things G&D is giving it away and I just thought you would like a heads up about it. Head on over there for info about how to enter to win!

Her blog is a regular read of mine and is also an expecting mother who likes to have a lot of fun and has a beautiful home!

Check it out and maybe you will become a regular reader as well, unless you already are!

Grandpa's Visit

This past Sunday, my mom and dad came over for a family meal and also so dad could spend some time with Michael. He has been busy in the fields and only saw him when he was first born!



I would say they hit it off pretty well! :o)

Mom bought this little Santa hat for Michael. It looked SO big when it wasn't on his head! Wowzers!

Can anyone say fat man in a little coat?

My first award!

I was tagged over at Toot Sweet for a Kreativ Blogger award. Yay! She has a pretty little baby girl and I love reading her blog because the photos are so pretty and the layout is so bright and airy.

Thanks for tagging me!

The rules are to name things you value and things you don't value. So here goes:

Things I value:

• My beautiful baby boy who is so good
• My husband, family and friends
  
• My time and routine (especially me time, which is very rare these days)
  
• Honesty and real-ness
• traditions
• SLEEP! :o) And rest time which includes TV.
  

Things I do not value:

• unreliability
• pressure/too many expectations for a new mother
• crowds of people
  
• lots of gifts at Christmastime

And since I am such a generous blogger, I am passing this award on to some of my lovely followers (feel free to pass it on, but no biggie if you don't!)

These are all regular reads of mine, and maybe you will enjoy them too!

Casa de Cunningham
friends of ours who recently moved back to the area-yay!

Fine for Now
great blog from an expecting mother-so fun!

Our Penguin
i enjoy reading and watching her cute little boy grow up!

So this is love...
another expecting mother who always has great ideas for crafts and sewing projects

Abounding Abundance
a friend who lives in the next town over and always has great posts about lots of neat things, cooking and life in general

Houndstooth Photography
great photos! She has the most fun dog, Toby.

The Colorado Desert
lots of great recipes here and she recently became a home owner-yay!

:o)

Baby Friends

Michael, meet Maggie!

We would really like it someday if you guys got married, but if you don't that is okay too.

Maggie was due the same week at Michael but was born a week later. She is a tiny little girl and I'm so jealous! :o)

Scott went to high school with her mom and college with her dad and they met at our wedding. We think they are pretty awesome.

Funny world, isn't it?

We are looking forward to watching you two grow up together!

Newborn Portraits

We got our prints back from Michael's 9 day old photo shoot!

They are really beautiful and I can't wait to work with Darcy again. She is pretty awesome and you can find her @ graphically designing, @ life with my 3 boybarians, and @ his and hers photo.

Also bonus points from her family to ours because we both live in cool houses designed by her husband!

Enjoy and stay tuned for the big reveal (or not) of Michael's birth announcement!

Yesterday I was on my way home and Michael was sleeping soundly away so I decided to keep cruising around and let him get some rest.

And I discovered something that rocked my sad little world...a back entrance to Jester Park!

I had no idea!

Here is a shot of where the Des Moines river starts to turn into Saylorville Lake. Pretty cool!

The back entrance is where the natural playscape and animals are. Since the park was totally deserted, the elk were right up by the fence and I got a nice shot of this big guy:



He was so close I could almost reach out and pet him!

Favorite Things: Moby Wrap

Quite a few of the blogs I follow have been doing "Favorite Things", so I thought I would share some of mine in upcoming posts.

Right now my number one favorite thing has to be my Moby Wrap.



Michael loves it. I love it. I can hold him. I can clean my house. I can use my computer and not feel like a terrible mother.

All parties are happy!

Yay!


p.s., check out mobywrap.com for more info....and to also ponder how those models on the website look so darn cute in it!

Grandma's Visit

Mom had vacation time planned this week so she decided to come spend it at her favorite vacation destination-my house!

It is great when she is here because she loves to hold Michael and spend time with him which leaves me with a little free time to myself!

Mom always tells me how she thinks Michael should come live at her house because it is so weird to have him be part of her family but she doesn't get to see him all the time.

I think she really enjoys being a grandma. :o)

One afternoon during her visit we decided to go to an outing to a tea room in Perry with my aunt Gwen.

Yes...tea room.

I had never been to a tea room before but let me tell you-it was really fun!

We got to eat fancy lunch food in a fun dining room that was all decorated with Christmas stuff. We got to pick out our own flavor of tea and our water came in different little water pots. Mine was the chicken. I liked it so much I really wanted to buy one to have at home....then I remembered I don't really ever drink tea, nor do I have people over for tea. Sometimes I just get caught up in the moment!

The tea room was also connected to a gift shop that had lots of fun things to look at. There were lots of fussy breakable things so I decided to play it safe and not lug a huge baby carrier with a heavy baby in it all over the store.

I think Michael had a good time-what do you think?

Cyclone Weekend!

It was another great weekend at our house!

Friday night we had friends over for some catching up! Matt and Vanessa were here visiting en route from Hawaii to Maryland (isn't it funny that Iowa is right on the way?), Heather and Tim came up from Kansas City, and Adam and Kelly came down from Ames.

We had a great time eating pizza, meeting little ones, playing games, and surprising me with a glorious harmonized rendition of "Happy Birthday"!

Here's the whole gang
(please ignore how un-decorated my sun room looks in this photo-yikes! Any ideas?) :


Scott had to work on Saturday morning, so Michael and I hung out with Heather and Tim before heading up to Ames for Michael's first ever in his life Cyclone game!!

It was great to catch up and hear how everything is going for them. Heather was a natural with Michael! :o)

Michael enjoyed the game from the comfort of my Moby wrap. It was a little chilly, so I zipped my sweatshirt around it to keep him warm. He was definitely cozy-he slept the whole game! Can you believe it!?

It was so funny just to see his little hood sticking out of the whole get up!

The best part of the game (besides winning and becoming bowl eligible, of course!) was the band's encore performance of "Single Ladies" complete with dancing! So awesome!

After the game we headed to Hickory Park with Matt, Vanessa, Heather, Law and Brandy and his parents. It was great to see everyone!

Another great weekend and home Cyclone football season in the books! I have a feeling next season will be here before we know it!

Trees and Tile

It has been an exciting week over here at our house with the guys making progress on the basement tile every day-yay! But to add to the excitement, on Friday our tree guy brought over four more trees to add to our growing collection!

So exciting!

Well...I will let you be the judge. If you find photos of barren trees exciting, well..let's be friends!

Here they are:

A nice maple by the driveway.



Another nice big maple by the road (we already had the closest tree...a Linden tree).



Then he put in two crab apple trees in the side yard to break up the side of the house a bit. I really like the placement because you can see them from the windows! It is such a nice change!



Also, compare the above garden to the photo below:



Wow...I know, right? How depressing is that? Was summer really that long ago?

Here's a fun fact, did you know when your sweet potato vines die (the plants that are trailing over the wall) this is what you can dig up?



That's right. Not some alien or decomposing bodily organ...but a huge, mangled sweet potato. I've never tried to eat one, but I've heard you can. I am always fascinated and slightly disgusted at the same time.

Anyway...on to the tile! We now have grout! And if you aren't tired of seeing photos of my basement floor...here are a couple more!

You Say it's Your Birthday...

...well it's my birthday too!

Happy 27th Birthday to me!



Michael gave me this big smile as a birthday present! He also slept in until 9 and then snoozed in his swing the rest of the morning while I got some time to myself-the best present a mom could ask for!

I think he looks sooo big, but then I step back a bit and he looks so tiny!

Case in point:



We carried on with our normal daily activities before Scott came home with some beautiful flowers and a great gift (see below)!

We decided to brave the Cheesecake Factory for our first dining out experience with Michael. I would say it was a success! They weren't very busy and we got our food very fast which I think helped my anxiety. We thought M was doing so well that after dinner Scott ran out to the car to get the stroller and we thought we would attempt a quick cruise around the mall. We made it halfway around before M started getting fussy, so we headed home. It is so funny how such a small person can change our plans so quickly. :o)

All in all, it was a great birthday!

And yes....that is a Cyclone Snuggie! Do I have the best husband or what?