Family Pictures 2009

So a few weeks ago we had family pictures taken for the first! Makayla is 20 months old and I was starting to feel a little guilty about it! We had a friend do it and she did a fabulous job! She has told me she will make sure we do them regularly while we are out here! Check out her photography blog here. Thanks Becky!

I just love this one! The light hitting Makayla is perfect!

Look at her little tongue!

I love my family!

She had so much fun playing peak-a-boo!

Gotta have one of these shots!

SQUIRRELS!!!

Don't they just look so cute?

That is what they want you to think, but they really aren't all they are cracked up to be! They are annoying!!!!

What is she talking about you are asking yourself. Well about a week ago Caleb and I heard something in our walls and in our attic. I kept telling everyone that we had squirrels in our walls and no one believed me. They said it is probably just mice, even better thought right? Well I was right and they were all wrong. Caleb found a hole outside up by our window and sure enough squirrels going in and out. Needless to say I called the complex they sent someone out to patch the hole and set a trap in the attic to catch the squirrels. To date they have gotten 3 out and they think there are still more up there!!! They told me they will keep setting the trap until they are all taken care of when that will be no one knows. Having them up there sure makes for a hard time sleeping! I swear they are going to break through the wall at any moment.

I chose the picture of the black squirrel because we have tons of those out here and the first two they took out were black ones. Little devils! This last one was a gray one and I got a picture of it in the cage to prove to everyone that I am not crazy!

Not the best picture but you can at least see that there really are squirrels in my walls!

Just one more thing to love about Iowa I guess!

Thanksgiving Week

What a full Thanksgiving week we had!! It all started with Caleb's 28th birthday. Since he had a test the next day we didn't do much celebrating on his actual birthday, but we did find time to open a few presents and enjoy some "birthday" cake!

Enjoying his presents!

We didn't have a traditional birthday cake this time. Since we never eat them all I decided to something different. We really like Papa Murphy's cinnamon wheel, so that is what Caleb got for his birthday cake. Might I add it was delicious!!!

Caleb's birthday wasn't the only thing happening this week as we all know, it was also THANKSGIVING!!! This is my all time favorite holiday, although Christmas come in as a close second. I really like this holiday because it was always a time for ALL of my family to get together. This year was different instead of having Thanksgiving with my side of the family we got to celebrate it with some of Caleb's side of the family. We drove to Missouri where Caleb's mom and two of his brothers live. His sister also came from Kansas. We had lots of fun hanging out and especially playing games!!!

The girls enjoying a break from the dishes on Thanksgiving.

The boys taking care of business, the dishes. Aren't they the best!

One of the greatest things about being in Missouri for Thanksgiving was the fact that Makayla got to get to know some of her cousins better. She was in heaven being able to run around with 9 of her cousins! They were so cute with her and by the time we left she was asking for all of them by name!

Makayla and Savana

These two are the closest in age of all of the cousins there. They didn't really start to interact until the last day, but when they did it was so cute!

Makayla really took to her cousin Amber. She wanted to play with her all the time. Amber was so good to humor her and took really good care of her!

Makayla and Ben!

I didn't take this picture but was happy to see it on my camera. Look at how nice they are playing. (Notice the BYU shirt Makayla is wearing. Even though we weren't in Utah for the game we still showed our team spirit, and it must have worked because they won!!! Go Cougars!)

Makayla was so tired one night she fell sound asleep on Aunt Cami as she read to her. Everyday she would ask if she was going to see Cami that day.

Makayla and her daddy ridding in Uncle Quinn's dune buggy.

Climbing a tree with daddy is so much fun!

While there we also had the opportunity to go and shoot REAL guns. I wasn't too sure I was going to like it, I am not a fan of guns at all. Caleb really wanted me to go and try it, so I did.

I wasn't very good with this one, I guess I will never be as good as Detective Oliva Bensen, rats! I did better with the bigger one which was a 22 riffle. I am still not a big fan of the whole idea of guns.

My handsome husband! He was a natural, and might I add very hot!

Makayla enjoyed her self as well. Everyone thought she wouldn't like all the noise, but she didn't seem to mind it at all.

I know you thought we were done with Caleb's birthday, but my wonderful sister-in-laws put together a birthday dinner for Caleb while we were there. It really meant a lot to Caleb, since he doesn't get these all the time. Thanks so much Yvonne and Jamie!!!

We had a great Thanksgiving and we are so thankful for all that we are blessed with in our life. We are especially thankful for our families and all they do for us!

HAPPY THANKSGIVING!!

(Sorry there are a lot of pictures on this one, I just couldn't leave any out!)

Happy Birthday!!!

HAPPY 28TH CALEB!!!

Today is Caleb's birthday and what is he doing......STUDYING!! Yes you read that right. My dedicated husband has a big test tomorrow so instead of celebrating his birthday he is studying! That is one of the reasons I love him so much. He is a very dedicated man not only to his school work, but also to his family. I couldn't ask for a better husband for me and father for our daughter.

We have done some birthday celebrating already and we will do more later this week.Pictures of the birthday fun to come.

I am so happy to have Caleb in my life!

Happy Birthday!!!

We Love You!!

Sur-"PRIZE"

SURPRISE!!!!

This is the face we got when we introduced her to this:

We had a service auction for a Relief Society activity recently in my ward and one of the things being auctioned off was a playhouse. Anyone who knows Makayla knows that she would love to have one to play with. Well I ended up getting it and we just had it dropped off to us the other day. We had the missionaries over for dinner that night so Caleb couldn't get it put together before she went to bed, so she didn't get to actually see it and play with it until the next day. Boy does she love it!! Almost everyday she will ask "Prize?" and walk to the door that leads to the basement. All she wants to do is play with it all day long.

Here she is waving bye-bye to me as she is shutting me out of it so she can play with daddy. She always wants daddy to come inside and play. Good thing he is such a great daddy and will do whatever she wants (boy does she had him wrapped around her finger). He even built a play phone out of cardboard to replace the one that is suppose to be there but isn't. Next on his list building her a cradle for her babies! When does he have the time? I have no idea but I know he will do it and it will be great!

Milestone

Makayla no longer needs this

OR this

YEA!!!!

We are officially done with the binky phase! She has gone two whole weeks without it, and it wasn't even that hard. When she is ready to do something it happens smoothly and she was so ready to get rid of it.

Now the bottle is a little different story. It has been five days without one of those and we still struggle with it occasionally. I thought she was never going to give the bottle up. We only tried to get rid of it because last Sunday morning while she was drinking one she bit the nipple off. We told her it was broken and she had to throw it away. (Perfect opportunity, right?) She did it so now when she asks for one we just say you broke it remember? We had to throw it away, and she is, usually, ok with it. Naps were hard for the first few days because she usually needs a bottle as a comfort. Now she falls asleep with nothing at all IF I lay with her on the couch. Now the real problem is getting her to drink milk! She won't take it from a sippy cup at all! She takes one sip and looks at me like are you joking me? Now all she wants is juice, ALL the time! She use to get so much milk through her bottles and now she isn't getting any. We need to try something different, HELP!!!!

Halloween Happenings 2009

What a fun Halloween we had here in Iowa this year!

Did I really just say that, fun and Iowa in the same sentence?? Crazy I know but we really did have fun. Maybe it was because Caleb was on a break from school so we got to spend a lot of time with him or maybe it was because we did so many things to celebrate Halloween. Here are some pictures to depict what we did.

HAYRIDE

(If you look behind us you can see the corn stalks that are all over here in Iowa. This is taken at our Church and those corn stalks go all the way around our the building. Our Church is literally in the middle a corn field!)

PUMPKIN CARVING

Makayla painting her pumpkin! She loved doing this.

The finished products. Mine on the far left, You can't see it too well but it says Trick-or-Treat. Next Makayla's the pretty pink one. Next Caleb's a scary skull. Next Carson's and Cooper's, our friends little boys. Last one Travis' Iron Man. They all turned out great and we had a lot of fun carving them.

Here they are with light in them. They looked great on our front porch for about a day and then we walked outside and saw that Caleb's was being eaten by the squirrels!! Everyday as we would come out it was more and more mangled from the squirrels trying to eat it. The funny thing was mine never got touched only Caleb's got eaten!

TRICK-OR-TREATING

We had many opportunities to go trick-or-treating this year. The first one was at a radio station. We went with our friends the Castillon's and thought it wouldn't be that big of a deal, but boy were we wrong. It was packed, but pretty awesome inside. They went all out on the decorations. Here Makayla and Caleb are while we were waiting outside.

Our next trick-or-treating outing was Friday night. Apparently in this area they make you trick-or-treat on certain nights so that not everyone is doing it on the same night. Our area happened to be Friday night. We didn't know where to go, since we are still pretty new to the area so we tagged along with some friends from the ward. It was a cold night, but Makayla loved every minute of it. She was so cute! At each door she would say, "treat" and then "thank you".

Makayla and mommy trick-or-treating! Notice my wind blown hair look. The wind made it so much colder.

Makayla and her trick-or-treat posse!

(Ryan, Joy, Russell, and Makayla)

Saturday night, Halloween night, we went to a ward trunk-or-treat! It was so much fun. Here Makayla is with her buddies Carson, Superman, and Cooper, the kangaroo!

(Family picture at the parade!)

After the trunk-or-treat we went with our friends trick-or-treating around their neighborhood, because they live in another area that was suppose to trick-or-treat on Saturday night. Crazy I know. Then we went to the city's big parade! It was pretty awesome! It lasted like an hour and a half and they threw TONS of candy. Makayla was going crazy! If her friend Carson tried to take her candy she would scream at him! I felt so bad, but it didn't seem to phase Carson he would just pick up more candy and give it to Makyala and then she was fine! What a sweet boy he is!

Even though we had a great Halloween here we still missed seeing Grandma and Grandpa Hunter, the rest of the family, and our good friends! We hope everyone had a great Halloween!

~"CUTEST" Award~

So for one moment I get to brag about my baby girl! Last night we went to Palmer, Caleb's School, for some Halloween fun. They had the kids go around to different parts of the school and trick-or-treat. Makayla had so much fun. It is a whole different story this year with her, she actually knows what is going on. She wants to carry her bucket and she even says "trick-or-treat" in her own little voice. So cute! Anyway after the trick-or-treating they had a little party after with treats and a costume contest. We forgot our camera yet again, but thanks to some friends we were able to get some cute shots of Makayla.

Isn't she adorable!

So back to the costume contest....They had the kids come up in different age groups, so when they called the 1 year olds up Caleb took her up to compete! :) They gave three awards in each age group: most original, scariest, and cutest. As they were deciding and even announcing the winners Makayla was up there screaming and trying to get away, and I was thinking wow she is so "cute" right now! Much to my amazement as I am thinking this they say, "the cutest award goes to the................

LADYBUG!

It was awesome! So Makayla has now won her first "CUTEST" award even though we have always know she is the CUTEST! Here is a picture of her on stage with daddy right after they announced it. Antenna off and ready to go she was so done! She won a gift card to Toys R Us. That will come in handy with Christmas coming up!

18 Months & Halloween!!

I just got Makayla's pictures done and they turned out great! Especially since she has been teething and has been in a lot of pain. See for yourself! I decided to do some in normal clothes because she is now 18 months old, yes that is right my baby is 18 months old can you believe it!! I also had some taken in her Halloween costume because she is just so dang cute in it!

I love my ladybug!!

( I can't get the slide show to post here so look below to see it!)

Makayla's New "Toy"

Makayla has been interested in the "potty" for a little while now, so we thought we would buy her one, since she will need it eventually, and let her get exposure to it. She is only 18 months and I am not expecting her to be trained anytime soon, but having a potty around can't hurt right! So introducing the POTTY!!

Makayla couldn't get enough of the potty when we brought it home. She really thought it was a new toy for her to play with. We had to move it into the bathroom and she is not too happy about it! She wakes up in the morning and asks for the potty, but hasn't really done anything in it yet.

Showing off the Potty!

The funnest thing is when she sits on it she pushes like she knows what to do on it. This is her sort of pushing I missed the really good picture of it.

And she knows to flush when she is done and wash her hands. I am so proud of her and she will do great when she is ready!

She is growing up so fast! I want her to stop and stay little a little while longer!