Dog Walker

Nina is getting plenty of practice walking a dog (in slippers, by the way) in hopes to have a real one some day. She LOVES dogs, but it might be awhile before we get one as a pet. Until then, the doggie house that she got for Christmas will have to do.

Christmas Morning - Part 2

After enjoying Christmas morning together at our house, we went to my parents' house to celebrate with the rest of the family. We missed Garland and Emme who were there earlier but left before we got there to help avoid passing on a "bug" that Emme got, but we had a great time enjoying the morning eating, laughing, enjoying some nice gifts, and being thankful for the many things we've all been blessed with.

Back at home later that evening, Mark and I enjoyed a nice dinner together, and Nina did some coloring with her new art supplies and art table.

Christmas Morning - Part 1

We started off the day at our house on Christmas morning. We were so excited to bring Nina down from upstairs and see the reaction on her face when she saw her big present...

However, this was the unexpected reaction we got from her instead...

Thankfully, things recovered quickly and Nina really loved her new kitchen and the other gifts she had under the tree.

This Year's "Visit" to Santa

Since we didn't make it to a real visit to Santa this year, we decided to do the next best thing and make a visit to the neighborhood Santa and life-sized snow globe. Actually, they're right across the street (yes, we're really slacking this year). Anyway, Nina gave Santa a hug, and stared at the snow globe for awhile, then her nose was red and her hands were freezing, so it was back in the house for us.

Making Christmas Cookies

While there is nothing easy, efficient, or remotely clean about making cookies with a 1 1/2 year old, there is something very cute about watching her get so excited to help be a part of something. Nina took her job as "helper" very seriously, and the extensive clean up effort was well worth the fun of cooking together.

He Made It!

When Bo left for Virginia Tech 4 1/2 years ago, we all shared one wish...we hope he graduates! Well, on Friday we got to witness the accomplishment for ourselves. I can remember his preschool graduation like it was just a few years ago, so it was hard to believe that he was already graduating from college. We're all proud of Bo and excited to see what comes next for him.

Our Trip to Florida

We have been in Florida for the past few days visiting part of Mark's family that lives there, and we got the chance to spend some time with family and enjoy the beautiful Florida weather. I have some pictures to post of our trip, but I also have some cute video of Nina with her cousin, Ryan. I was planning to put those on this post, but we had an eventful first day back home, so I will have to follow up with those a little later when I get a chance to load them on the computer. We were glad that we got to see so much of the family in the time that we were there, and we enjoyed the opportunity to visit before the pre-season starts again.

Little Artist

While the fascination with markers first began with taking the tops on and off, it has grown into a real enjoyment of coloring. For some reason, markers are much more fun to Nina than crayons (maybe it's the potential for that much more mess), but we're enjoying watching her creative side come out. These pictures were taken after Nina dumped applesauce over her head, hence the interesting hair doo. With marker on her face and applesauce in her hair, a bath was the next thing that followed.

Christmas Tree '08

Each year since Mark and I have been married, we've gone to a tree farm to pick out and cut down our Christmas tree, so it was no different this year. We looked back at our pictures from last year's tree cutting, and Nina was just over 6 months old and spent the afternoon in the Baby Bjorn while we were tree hunting. This year was a much different experience. She seemed to enjoy tromping around the fields of the tree farm, and we found our perfect tree just before it got dark.

We finally found our perfect tree.

It's at this point when Mark has been laying on the cold ground cutting down the tree and then has to drag it back to the tree store that he wonders why we don't just buy a pre-cut tree each year!

We made it back just before it got dark.

Thanksgiving at Hartfield

Here are some pictures of our time at Hartfield. We had great weather on Thanksgiving day, so we all spent a lot of time outside - Mark and Garland shucked oysters and fried the turkey, and Emme and Nina made Thanksgiving "soup" and mud cake. My grandfather took all the family pictures, so I'll post some of them when I get copies from him, but we had tons of food (as usual) and a very nice Thanksgiving. Nina also got to experience Play Doh for the first time, and she really liked it!

So Much To Be Thankful For

With Thanksgiving right around the corner, I wanted to take a second to pause and say that our family has so much to be thankful for. We live in a free country with so much at our disposal, we are healthy, our families are healthy, we have good friends and good families, and we know that God has blessed us in so many ways. Sometimes it can be easy to "forget" all that we truely have to be thankful for as we get busy with the demands of life, but I'm so glad there is a holiday like Thanksgiving that just allows us to take time out to focus on just being thankful. So, we're headed off to Hartfield tomorrow to meet up with my family to celebrate the holiday. We won't be back until the end of the week, so I'll update the blog site with Thanksgiving pictures then.

In explanation of these pictures, I was trying to get Nina to smile on command (since we have holiday pictures coming up), and the first one didn't work for getting a smile. The second time I got a hint of a smile, but then I asked her to show her teeth (meaning, when she smiled), and the third picture is what that request produced!

Fishing!

Yesterday afternoon we took Nina over to a pond near our house. Mark taught Nina how to help reel in a fish, and they actually caught quite a few. As you can see in the video, they're HUGE! After it started to get dark, she got to play around for awhile on the pond's playground.

Here's a cute video of Mark and Nina fishing together:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V9k9-1w9GlI

Friday Morning

Since Mark had the day off and Nina woke up not feeling the best, they took advantage of some couch time together while watching Dora the Explorer.

Time Change

The time change is just a little rough to accommodate sometimes. Nina had fallen asleep in the car for only about 5 min. at what used to be her nap time (now, obvioulsy it's an hour prior according to the clock), and she was barely able to be awakened. I might have let her sleep if she already had eaten lunch, but since I had to wake her up and feed her, she wasn't in a pleasant mood when I woke her.

Happy Halloween

We had so much fun with Halloween this year. Nina was excited to get into her costume, and she seemed to get the whole concept right from the very first house, so it was a lot of fun for Mark and I to watch her. We knew we had moved to a very family oriented neighborhood, but we had no idea the amount of kids that we would see just in the street that connect to our house. There were tons! We actually ran out of all our candy in under an hour (and I thought we had a lot of candy)! Mark and I went out together with Nina for the first 20 minutes, then we took turns so someone could be back at the house, but she ended up staying out for 1 1/2 hours. Needless to say, she had a blast and slept like a champ last night!

Ready to head out to get some candy!

Her first house - she got the idea very quickly that going up to doors was going to be a good thing!

What did I get?

This is so much fun!