Lobster attack

Here are a few pictures of Nora from Halloween. If you can't tell, she was a lobster. She had a party at daycare and got dressed up for trick-or-treaters to come to our house. She loved having kids come to our door but didn't understand why I didn't let her sit down and eat the entire bowl of candy.

Pumpkin Farm

Here are some pictures from a recent trip we took with the Wilsons to a pumpkin farm near Adel. For some reason Nora is scared of cats but she was beaming from ear to ear the whole time she was riding a horse. We had a great day and the girls loved riding in the cow train and jumping in the inflatable trampoline.

Its been a while...

Its been a while since I posted so here is a little of what we've been up to. Nora is 16 months old today and walking is old news for her. She seems to add a new word about every other day and her most recent word is "owie" which she has to use often since she runs into stuff frequency. This picture shows her favorite hiding spot of wedging between the fridge and the stove and she's working a good look of her bracelet with PJs. Thank God Uncle Matt saved her bracelet from falling into Lake Red Rock earlier this summer or she'd have no way to accessorize!

No one else may get excited to look at a bathroom but remodeling was about a 6 week process for us and ended up being a lot more decisions than we anticipated which made it a lot more involved and it seems picture-worthy to us even though it might not be of interest to anyone else. We were about to bump back the vanity about 18 inches so it opens up the space quite a bit and we were able to put a vent in the shower to help the moisture from building up. We are pretty happy with the outcome. The first picture is before and the other two are ...

Family Vacation

It has become a tradition to spend a week week at a cabin at Lake Red Rock with my family and we've been doing it for the past 7 or 8 years. This year was a little more hectic, but fun, now that Nora and Jarod are mobile and both very busy. We had a great time and were fortunate to have nice weather so that we could spend a lot of time outside. We went on Matt's new boat 3 times and Nora loves the water. She just doesn't love being contained by a life jacket.

In other news, we had to have tubes put in Nora's ears this past Friday in effort to relieve her from her never-ending ear infections. We know it is a very common procedure but we were still pretty anxious. But it went very smoothly and just like everyone had told us it would be; there was about an hour of torture as she was waking up from the anesthesia but then she took her morning nap and woke up as good as new. She has to wear X-small size earplugs every time she takes a bath now but that is much less painful than having her on antibiotics once a month like we have been doing. Yeah for healthy babies!

One year pics

This photo session could have been titled "The Faces of Nora". You can take it from us... she makes some good ones! She is pretty easy to read and is so happy the majority of the time but she will definitely let you know when she ready to be done with having her picture taken. And, you'll see, her tongue sticks out most of the time letting her drool flow freely, which was also captured well in these pictures.

Number One!

As hard as it is for us to believe, we've now got a one year old on our hands! We celebrated with a cupcake party on Friday. We weren't sure how Nora would react to the party but she got a good nap in on Friday afternoon and was prime for having all of the attention. She loved having everyone sing to her and dove right into the cupcakes.

Here are some Little Tykes trying out Nora's Little Tykes Table.

Here is the birthday girl and her sweet new wagon and water sensory table.

May Milestones

In addition to celebrating my first Mother's Day, I also graduated from Drake University with my MBA. I debated on whether or not to go through the commencement ceremony considering I've been done taking classes since December but I was glad that I did it. You feel a little more of a sense of accomplishment after wearing the cap and gown and going through the whole pomp and circumstance.

It isn't necessarily that Nora is especially excited about my graduation but showing off that she is "so big" has turned into her favorite picture pose. For those of you who remember the "Superstar" Saturday Night Live character from a while back, it is a similar move.