A few more from the holidays...

Happy New Year!
Tonight we are off to make/eat pizza with the Lewis fam, Sibleys, and Turners! Pictures of all the little people to come...
Here are a few from the past week that didn't make it in the last round:)






And, here's a video clip of Madelyn reading "Good Night Moon" to her baby.... She shuffles off in the middle to get another book, "The Run-away Bunny." If you speak Maddie-dialect, you can hear her telling baby about the moon, "the end," baby bunny, and "(get) another book:) Becoming quite the reader, it's exciting to watch!

HAPPY HOLIDAYS!

Happy Holidays to all of our friends and family!

Hooray!!

Hooray! Michael passed the final Wyoming State Appraisal exam today!! It was an 8 hour beast... he reported that he got worked towards the end, but it appears that he came out on top! One more step in the final process involving sending in some work to the State and he's done! Job well done!!

In other news, my parents and brother are visiting for the week. We are having lots of fun - my parents did two days of "daycare" while I was still at work - they hit the pool, Maddie got to drive the "car" grocery cart at Whole Groc., went on some strolls, pretend tea parties, playing in the sink, and hundreds of other fun odds and ends. Now that I'm out of school, we are really focusing on the potty training for the next two weeks. Maddie had 6-7 "hits" today! Another hooray! She's quite proud of herself, and I think having such an audience is really helping move things along!

Snow has finally arrived! We had a few days of really nasty below-zero/single digit weather - it's exciting to finally have some of the white stuff! It makes cold temps far more fun! Yesterday we got geared up, hopped on the sled, and picked up Leah. We had fun sledding in the park between our two houses, trying out both Leah's toboggan and Maddie's sled. Pictures of that adventure to come later.

More character than you can shake a stick at!

Well, Madelyn saved the day in a round-about way... she peed on the couch cushion as we were reading good-night books, causing us to take the cushion off, and there it was! The missing digital camera downloader thingy! Ahh, the silver lining to potty training:)

Anyways, I had to laugh at the collection of pictures that were backlogged on the camera - this little person has such big personality in such a little body! And the camera hardly does it all justice....

Here is Madelyn, just figuring out what pockets are all about. She toted her crayons from the kitchen to the livingroom and back, taking them out, putting them back in her pocket, over and over again.


And Madelyn going to daycare on Friday wearing her tu-tu. It started out as a "fancy" (her word) hat on her head, but eventually made it's way to midline...reverted back to fancy hat once we got to daycare!


This is Madelyn "helping" me to make cookies in the kitchen. I assumed she was quietly spooning flour on the floor from one bowl to another... so wrong:) When I turned around, she was on her belly licking up the flour in the bowl like a kitty-cat drinks milk. I think that was the image she was going for... the flour had turned to paste on her face and took multiple scrubs to come off:)



And finally, here is Madelyn playing with one of her grandparents' latest gifts... some holiday garland, that quickly became a stylish belt and bracelet. Baby-doll (not pictured) got one as well!

Thanksgiving at the West Nest!

We headed up to Ennis, Montana last Wednesday afternoon and met Margot, Andy, Kevin, Laura, Hazel, Leah, Aaron, Mark, and Ryland at Margot's parents' house. What a gift to be all together, for multiple days! A four-day slumber party and eat-fest with so many of our closest friends and favorite people!! It was great. Every night I was so torn, knowing that we would be up EARLY, but also knowing how valuable time with such close friends is....like Laura and I discussed, there's nothing like doing 5:30 a.m. morning duty with those we love:) It certainly makes the grogginess much sweeter!

It was SO good to see everyone, especially our out-of-town friends Kevin, Laura, and Hazel... seeing Madelyn and Hazel was SO MUCH FUN! Maddie was instantly in love... and was asking about Hazel any time she left her line of sight. We drove out of Ennis on Sunday afternoon and Madelyn feel asleep immediately, but as soon as she opened her eyes further down the road, the first thing she said was, "Hay-hay?? Go???" (translation - where did Hazel go?!). It was really endearing to see them interact together. And therapeutic to have parenting time together with Kev and Woolfy:)

There are a few pictures of our dress-up birthday party - Leah celebrated her 28th birthday while at the West Nest... the ladies hit the thrift shop and brought back snazzy attire for everyone:) Complete with a full set of some pretty good-looking trucker hats! Although Aaron's high-water polyester pants really took the cake in my book.

Thanks to Margot and Andy, and Nancy and Sandy for providing such a great time/space for all of us to enjoy! You are the best!

Here are a few pictures of the trip (well, OK, mostly the first 2 days because we ran out of memory on the camera because those girls were so darn cute together!!). I will try and add more pictures from others' cameras as they are posted...

quick fix

Here's a quick fix for some of you who are needing more pictures.... Tate and Madelyn made some delicious banana bread with Hatilie yesterday - thanks Hatilie!!

We are still working on getting Thanksgiving pictures posted - we lost our picture downloader and had to be crafty about getting them off the camera. I will try and get that done tonight. Needless to say, we had a fantaastic time at the West Nest with so many close friends, and watching Maddie with Hazel was about the best thing I've seen in a long time!
More to come soon...

Back out in the world

Well, THAT was a long week!? We were all recovered from the flu by Sunday and are excited to be back up and at it this week. After 6 days of being shut-ins, we were climbing the walls!? Here are a string of video clips that give you a peek into what Madelyn was up to between fevers... She's suspiciously quiet in these clips -she's been chattering away, starting to hear two words strung together more frequently, and hearing ourself parroted every other word:)

Flu arrives

Well, all three of us have been duking it out with the flu for the past few days. The fevers seem to come and go, so we're all over the place! Overall, I think we probably have mild cases. The roughest part has been sleeping, for all 3 of us. Here's a picture of M. this morning -she's using the boogie-sucker on her baby:)


Least you think she's down in the dumps, here's a picture of her shortly after breakfast -she was dancing around so much I could hardly catch her on camera!

insights into a 1.5 year old's mind

I was telling my mom today how fun it's been to watch Madelyn make some rather big discoveries and ask those big questions (in her own limited-language way of course!). Madelyn has been discovering the fact that there is something to that black scribbling that adults seem to read. She sees the letters on her waterbottle and says "name." And of course transfers that to a lot of other print... I have seen her starting to notice print in books as well.

Madelyn and I took a walk tonight, and thanks to daylight savings, we were watching the sun set at 5:00 (!?) We were noticing all of the beautiful colors and naming them. I said something like "the sunset colors happen when the sun goes night-night." And Madelyn thought about it for a minute and then asked with a shrug "go?? night-night sun. Go??" Which is her way of asking "where does the sun go when it goes away??" How fun to see those little wheels turning!

Other fun(ny) things:
Madelyn is pretending to drive the car in the back seat now and then, sound effects and steering wheel movements to boot.

She will loudly announce when she has "gas." In case we hadn't heard:)

Madelyn took one look at a picture I drew of her in her ladybug costume and quickly proclaimed "COW!" The black polka-dots and antennae must have thrown her off:)

She is enjoying "spicy." She does taste spicy now and then, but pretty much lumps anything with a strong flavor into the "spicy" category. Tonight she was enjoying dipping parts of dinner into a small blob of mustard and then telling us how spicy it was, along with the dramatic wave of a hand in front of her mouth and chugging water.

We were reading Goodnight Moon last night... the red balloon is prominent there on the first page, and then disappears from sight for a few pages. Madelyn asked where it went, and then answered her own question with "pop!!" and giggled to her self...

Lots of "2 year old moments," but along with the brief fits and overactive "wants" comes a lot of fun insights into the way the world works for such a young person:) So fun to be witness!

Our little ladybug

A friend loaned me this great little outfit for Maddie's Halloween costume...too cute! Madelyn still has no idea what candy is, so we kept a relatively low profile today. We visited our friends Anne and Pete and Leah so that Madelyn could have a reason to dress up, wore it around the house a few times, and called it good.

Madelyn did a great job decorating our pumpkin with marker over the past week. She was excited to see it carved and lit up tonight! We went out several times to check on it.

As for trick-or-treaters, we had FAR more visitors when we lived in Kelly! Mike had one neighbor kid come to the door with no costume on and ask for candy!? I'm proud to say Mike read him the riot act, but did cave a little and gave him some of our shwaggiest candy:)

Maddie reads and sings

Here's Madelyn reading a book (Thanks Wayne and Carol!) and singing a little song as she goes...

Adventures in potty training

Well, there has been quite a lot of discussion about underwear at our house lately, as you can see.... Today Madelyn got 6 pair of "big-girl" underwear (with a little extra padding, because we're not quite there yet!)! She was quite excited to put them on tonight and show Grandma Jude and Grandpa Jeff. So excited in fact, that she put on a 2nd pair over the first! David - the "undies on the head" picture is for you!:)

Madelyn is quite adept at the whole potty business, but seems to have taken a few weeks hiatus... these days she doesn't like to have it suggested that she sit on the potty, she won't except being put on the potty, it has to be entirely her own idea (hello 2's!). So, hopefully being able to feel when she's wet will be a quick motivator! We'll see how tomorrow goes!

Fun pic

Madelyn booted the geranium out of the window this evening so that she could reclaim her window-seat.

pumpkins on the square

Pumpkins on the square! Fun seeing Megan, Sita, Jess and many others!

Clips from the week

Here's a movie clip of a few moments with Madelyn this week... quite the ham!

Lots of bundling up and playing outside this week. Just came back from the pool - Madelyn did an excellent job of putting her face in the water all by herself, swimming underwater, going down the GIANT slide with Michael (8-10 times!?), jumping off the edge... turning into a regular fish!

First snow sticks...

Yesterday we had our first significant snowfall stick around. Not cold enough to stick around on the roads, but I had almost 8 inches on the car yesterday morning when I went to work. Madelyn was in heaven! She played outside for a long time yesterday at daycare, despite the fact that her snow clothes are still in the mail (thank you g-ma Gore! Our gift cert did the trick!), and was begging for more when we got home yesterday afternoon. Yes, that is Madelyn's tadpole hat from last Halloween:) It still fits and I couldn't resist.

A family walk

It has turned COLD outside! We had a high of 42 yesterday, and today the snow was on the ground in Kelly until late afternoon!
We went on a little family walk yesterday - Madelyn looked too cute in her warmer attire:) Here are a few pictures, and a movie clip of Madelyn walking the stroller...

Bathrobe time

Madelyn was quite excited to wear her new bathrobe after seeing Grandpa Jeff in his via i-chat! Listen to Madelyn "sing" her ABCs!

Whew, busy!

Both Mike and I can hardly move, we're so tired tonight! We spent a busy day packing all of our weekend "to-dos" into one day... collectively we covered general cleaning, mounted a roof over our storage space (under the front porch), 2 runs to the paint shop to pick out a few colors and painted our table and benches, 2 runs to garage sales (one for drop-off, one for a look-around), mounted a ski rack on back porch, put away the planters, a visit to the park, organized Madelyn's closet, and went to the Harvest Festival and saw everyone and their brother..I meant to take pictures at the Festival, but my hands were full of great produce, local honey, a bison burger, and Madelyn!). Seriously, we are now drooling on ourselves.

But, that means no work tomorrow! Mike is playing in a golf tournament tomorrow, and Madelyn and I are headed up to the Shuptrine's for a Harvest Celebration dinner. Should be fun! I think we are going to try a new recipe with the boletes in the freezer- a wild mushroom tort (herbs, shallots, cream, Swiss cheese) We shall see...

Alas, I have no pictures since Tuesday... I think these video clips were actually taken last week, I just haven't posted them. Note Patsy's beautiful sweater - we are excited it's finally in the wardrobe rotation!:) Just in time for fall!

Back To School Potluck

The whole fam went to the back-to-school potluck last night in Kelly. Here are a few shots of M on the playground and in my classroom:) She was very excited to find her long lost guitar in my room - went right for it and wanted to strum a tune right away!