17 Months

Nina turned 17 months old last week, and she's growing and changing every day. We're fascinated at how much things change so quickly at this stage in development. Among her favorites are her blankie (which goes with us everywhere), her froggie, pandas, dogs, maccaroni and cheese, reading books, and running all around. Here's some video of Nina just being herself. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pp2TdIlAr_E

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0CRJwLXCpMI

Spooky Saturday

Mousey and Poppy invited the girls over on Saturday for making some spooky Halloween treats. Eating the treats was just as much fun as making them. As usual, our quirky and creative hosts made everything so fun - spooky decorations, music, costumes, and balloons made it a perfect pre-Halloween party!

He's Still Got It!

The 1997 team. Mark is in yellow.

This photo was taken by a professional down on the field.I didn't get very good pictures from where I was sitting with my camera.

I also tried to get some action shots, but I was too busy watching the game,

so my action shots didn't come out well.

Mark and his former goalkeeper coach, Allan Kelly.

Nina was with us for all the events this weekend and did pretty well. She recognized her daddy down on the field when he went out for introductions prior to his game. It was cute b/c she was pointing and saying, "daddy."

We spent this past weekend downtown celebrating the 10 year reunion of DC United's 1997 championship team. While Mark hasn't been away from the competitive aspect of soccer (now on the coaching side), it's been awhile since we've seen him suited up to actually play in the net. He played along with his former teammates in the first part of the tribute match for Marco Etcheverry on Saturday and did great. He exited his portion of the game with no goals scored on him, and he had a great time playing again. While celebrating the '97 year brings back some memories for Mark of a very tough time in his life (surgery, knee infection, more surgeries, etc), it was a lot of fun for him to catch up with some old teammates he hadn't seen in awhile.

Pumpkinville

Yesterday, we took Nina to a place called Pumpkinville. It's a big outdoor area with lots of fall activities for kids to do. One very sad, but also neat, thing we saw was this Bengal Tiger. This is, by far, the closest I've ever been to a tiger which was amazing, but it was so sad to see such a beautiful and wild animal enclosed in a cage in some suburbia attraction. However, on a much brighter note, I realized that Nina is a lot more of a daredevil than I was giving her credit for. Mark thought she might like to try the big slide all by herself, and I thought she would be terrified. They both proved me wrong, and we spent the next hour (not kidding) with her going up and down the slide, and she cried when we left it. After that, everything else in Pumpkinville wasn't interesting - she kept walking back to the area of the slide.

Here's a little video of the daredevil:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_fWXDJX7oKg

Time to Party

Nina went to her friend's birthday party on Sunday, and she really enjoyed herself. For some reason, she likes to sit in the rain collecters beneath gutters and she found one just her size at the party.

Hello from Baby Simpson

Baby Simpson just wanted to wave hello to everyone and say that he/she will see you in a couple months!

Not Mommy's Helper...

Click on the picture to get a better look, but while I was putting away some stuff into closets, Nina found a tube of mascara and somehow managed to get it open and all over herself in the span of about 30 seconds!

Monkey Girl

We were doing a little test run on the Halloween costume we got for Nina. We had originally gotten her a puppy costume, but wearing it only produced tears and tantrums, so we took that back and tried something else. As we should have known, the monkey suits her personality so much more. Check out the video for some pre-Halloween monkey action:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W2KavqtUtlw

Oh Yeah...Baby Ryleigh!

Having been somewhat shadowed from the limelight by her crazy counterparts (Nina and Emme), little Ryleigh Ann has been steadily growing in size and strength to one day be able to join the pack. Luckily for Ryleigh, she won't be the lowest on the todem poll for long - come March, even Ryleigh will have someone to boss around!