First Ponytail

Only ten months old but able to wear a ponytail. Such fun hair!

New Shirts

Thanks Uncle Jake for the fun shirts!

Ice Sculptures

While visiting Nana and Papa after Christmas they spoiled us by taking us to the Gaylord Ice Sculptures exhibit. It was a long wait to enter, but it was well worth it. During the wait Dani had many pictures taken. If you look closely at this one you can see her first two teeth. We discovered the second tooth (top second incisor) on the way home from this exhibit.



My only regret is that I did not charge our camera battery before going and it ran out of power in the first room. At least uncle Jeffy had a new camera and has promised to share his pictures in the future.

Dani and the tree

I have been asked many times how Dani handled the tree. We did not have any issues with her messing with breakable ornaments or being rough with the tree. The bottom layer had ornaments that she was allowed to play with. The first week she was thrilled to play with her new "doll" a plastic santa ornament. She also loved playing with the note and treble cleff bells and pointing at baby Jesus in the nativity ornament. Every time she saw a lighted Christmas tree she got very excited and had to see it up close.

"Gingerbread" Houses

Back in 2005, some good friends of ours invited us to make "gingerbread" houses out of graham crackers. Admittedley, that was my first experience in the contsruction of such architechual masterpieces.

This is Jaymie's house from that event. We know it is hers because almost every square inch is covered in candy.

This is my house, complete with marshmallow smoke and snow man. And squashed marshmallow in the front door. I guess there was some sort of tragic accident involving the testing of the malleability of marshallow men.

So this year we continued the tradition of building houses for Christmas. We invited over the most creative people we could think of to see what they'd come up with. They built a mideval castle, complete with serfs, gummy archers, and licorice drawbridge.

This is them holding up their creation making their best mideval warrior faces....okay well at least he made the face.

Close up of their castle. They must've come with a layout in mind as they rapidly laid their foundation and had their house mostly built while we still barely had our houses put together.

Jaymie made a more traditional style house this year as we had <1 yr old to wrestle with through the evening. Again, you can spot her house by the one that has every square inch covered in candy.
A beautiful model next to our houses.Close up of Jaymie's house. In the back left corner she even built o pretzel manger and had a full nativity set going on that even included a sheep.


My house this year was going to be a Hurrican Ike ravaged beach property. Instead it turned out to just be a beach house....ON STILTS! It turns out engineering stilts for a gingerbread house is not very easy.
In the back you can see Manitoba with his fishing pole, trying to catch his orange slice fish in the sea of blue coconut shavings. If only Manitoba were really here to see it...Thanks for starting a great family tradition for us!

Happy Birthday Sweety!

Thank you B. for watchin Dani for us so we could go out together to celebrate.

Festival of Lights

We went to the Festival of Lights held approximately an hour drive away from our apartment. When we were about 10 minutes away the fog appeared. By the time we were there, the fog was so thick that we could not see what was on the side of the road unless it was lit. It was a night where Rudoloph would have been helpful. We were so far into the journey that we decided to make the trip anyway. It was still amazing and Dani had great fun looking at the lights. She particularly liked these trees.

Here she is blowing kisses, a new skill she learned from Melanie on our way to go visiting teaching.

Pondering the gingerbread making opportunities.

It was so foggy that you could feel the moisture in the air. Dani's hair was even slightly wet from the moisture. She had more curls that night than I have ever seen on her.

Mesmorized

Dani's first snow

It amazes me how one day weather can be in the 70s and the next day it is snowing. I didn't expect Dani to have snow this year, but I'm glad we could introduce it early. She will have lots of snow next year.

Obedience

So far, Daniella is the most obedient toddler I have known. She is so sensitive when it comes to restrictions that even a simple warning such as "be careful" will sometimes make her tear up. The other day Jess and I had "Are you smarter than a 5th grader" on television and the contestant was answering an obvious question wrong, Jess yelled at the TV "No!" because she was so amazed at this guys ignorance. Dani was playing with her blocks just next to the TV and thought it was in reference to her, so she turned towards me and started to ball!

Aunt Jess

We were very blessed to have Aunt Jess come visit with us for a while. Dani loved having someone to play with and even decided she was able to walk around the apartment while Jess was here. Jess was a very sweet guest and offered to take care of Dani so we could go out on our third date since she was born. She also took some updated family photos for us and treated us to some Trentino Gelato - yum!


Though she does not want to be featured in the pictures of this blog, we are happy to have photos of Jess for Dani's memory book. Here are some pictures from our trip to the park.




We had lots of fun looking at flowers.





This looks like a mischevious grin to me.



"Dad are you really going to take another picture?"





She contemplated climbing in her favorite fountain.

Dani showed off her new Zombie walk all over the park and threw a huge tantrum every time she was picked up.

If you look closely at this picture you can see her teeth buds. Also, her tongue is twisted upside down in this photo. This is something she loves to do and I cannot imitate.

Thank you so much for visiting with us Jess! We really enjoyed having you here.

No More Monkeys!

This was Daniella's bedtime story tonight. I love how she really got into the story. The timing was more precise before the camera was brought out, but I still think it is cute.

Zombie Walk

So today Daniella really took off walking everywhere and all the time. Tonight she walked from one end of our bedroom to the table in the kitchen without falling and afterwards she realized that she can walk any time she wants and does not need Mom or Dad to be behind her. She no longer falls backwards just to make sure we are still behind her, and is not as bothered by falls as she used to be. She just keeps her arms out like a little zombie and keeps walking.

Motherese

I noticed yesterday that whenever Daniella talks to Jackson, she speaks in a high pitched tone. I learned in my speech classes that mothers speak in a high pitched sing-songy tone called "motherese" to their babies. I didn't think that my "motherese" was so pronounced that a nine-month old would pick up on it, but I as I was videotaping Dani, I realized my pitch was also notably higher.

Double Stroller

Dani and Jackson love the new double stroller. They will often pat each other along the way and instantly calm down when placed in the stroller because they know their fun walk is coming.

Thanks B. for giving this to them!

On a side note, for those who know me, the photo with both babies smiling was not Photoshop-ed at all.