Wow. It is amazing how time flies. Sweet Hallie turned one on Sept. 30th. I love how easy the first birthday is. I made a banana cake for her, but didn't have any frosting, so it was basically banana bread in a cake pan. Erin put a play banana on top. Classy.
She got some new toys (Topples and Duplos) for her presents and everyone loved playing with them for days. This picture was when we had all four couches in the family room while our living room was under construction. I don't miss how crowded it was in there!
Since it was kind of a busy day, I didn't have time to do anything for dinner (pretty sure I was canning apple pie filling with my sister in law that day). We ended up going to Dickey's for dinner. They just put one in right by our house (yay for new restaurants... still waiting for the grocery store though). They have free soft serve ice cream there and Hallie couldn't get enough of it. I figure since her cake wasn't really messy, at least she got to get messy with the ice cream. Funny side note: when Hallie was just a couple of months old, I went to Dickey's with the Pin-Up Girls. I was holding Hallie while eating my ice cream when the whole thing fell off the cone and onto her face! It was kind of funny. Maybe she just really likes their ice cream?
Here's a bit about Hallie at age one. She is great at standing and has taken some steps, but she is a little scared to actually walk on her own just yet. She's almost there. She is great on the stairs going up and down. That's a relief to me. I was always so worried about her falling down the stairs, and we had the bar stool on its side for months to keep her from going up the stairs. Now she's free to go where she wants safely. I stopped nursing her the day before her birthday and she's been doing great with a bottle. I would even go as far as to say that she is doing better with a bottle than she was with me. After I took her to the doctor last time and we discussed how skinny she was, I started pumping her full of Pediasure and sure enough, she actually did start to fatten up. She's still small, of course, but I don't get the same comments I got before (although that could be because she's more bundled up now and people can't see her skinniness). Jared and I both noticed some fat rolls starting to develop on her legs. I can squish them now!
She likes to feed herself, which makes trying to figure out what to feed her hard sometimes, but we'll get through this phase. She likes to be in the same room as people and cries whenever you get up and leave. She is still into everything, like the silverware from the dishwasher, toilet paper and the contents of all the lower cabinets in the house. She says "dada" and "da" for that. Whenever I ask her to say "mama" she always says "dada" and then laughs. You can tell that her little brain is working when she does stuff like that. She is a loveable, happy baby that we all adore! Such a blessing to have her in our family.
Alex turned 7 on October 10th. He was lucky because that day was the first day of fall break. No school! At about 9:00 the night before he finally told me what kind of cake he wanted, even though I'd been asking him for weeks. He said he wanted pizza for dinner and then a pizza cake for dessert. I borrowed a 14" cake pan from my neighbor to bake the "crust" and picked up a pizza box at the food court that day. The sauce was red frosting, the cheese was grated white chocolate, the pepperoni was fruit roll-ups, the sausage was Whoppers cut in half, the olives were black frosting and the green peppers were kiwis (not that the kids would actually eat a pizza with those toppings, but it would have looked kind of lame with just cheese). Here's how it turned out. It was sooo easy to make. Good choice Alex.
Alex wore this monster birthday hat that he got from school almost all day. For dinner, he asked for the "You are Special" plate and determined that he could eat wherever he wanted on his birthday. He took the plate with some pizza and sat at the bottom of the stairs on the floor.
Instead of a birthday party, I kind of convinced him to take a trip to the new Lego Store. It was pretty awesome. We spent a long time just looking at all the Lego creations they had on display. And then we got to put a bunch of different mini people together. I've always been kind of a sucker for Legos. I let him decide which set he wanted, and was hoping he would choose something from the City series because that's my favorite. He ended up with the cruise ship. It's pretty sweet, if I do say so myself. He worked on putting it together, with the help of some of his friends, for the rest of the day and finished that night. It was a big set too, I was impressed.
He got another Lego type set (Kre-os) from his friend next door and finished putting that together the next day. All the neighbor boys love playing with Legos or Tri-os. I love watching them play together! I feel so lucky to have a great group of friends for him within 3 houses. Just another confirmation of how the Lord was guiding us to this particular house.
Alex is still kind and gentle. His teacher at school says that he is really quiet, which I believe. He has a quiet personality, but he is not shy. There's a difference. And he will be sure to tell you that (you just may not hear him say it because he is so quiet). I asked him if second grade was too hard, too easy or just about right. He said, "It's just about right. Sometimes it's too easy and sometimes it's too hard." I asked what was hard about it. He replied, "Well, sometimes when I finish all my work really fast, it's just hard to wait for everyone else to get done with theirs." Haha. He is a smarty pants!
We were going to go to Cornbellies that night with his friends, but it was too rainy and cold, so we went the next day. We have season passes this year and it's so fun. We've gone several times and done some really fun things. Jared, Erin and I even got to do the mechanical bull riding. I've always wanted to do that. Fun! (camera battery died so there's no proof of it--lame.) We got to pick out some pumpkins as part of our season passes and this picture was the best I could do to show it. It
is nearly impossible to get all the kids to look and smile at the same time, especially with this many.
Happy Birthday Hallie and Alex, and Happy Fall!
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