Chunky Monkey

Look what Alaina was doing with her baby gate. I guess in a couple weeks she will be climbing right over them. It never ceases to amaze me, the things our 9 month old is able to do. Just thought you would all enjoy the picture.

Day at the park

Today we went to the park with John, Juli, Ava, and Isabelle (Dave works with John and his wife is Juli--then by elimination, that makes Ava (1 1/2) and Isabelle (4 months) his 2 kids). We had a lot of fun playing. It wore Alaina out and she fell asleep about an hour and a half into it even though she had just taken a nap. It was a lot of fun being outside and playing. Ava and Alaina get along so well together.

It has been in the 70s here lately so great weather for the park. This is the first time that we have been to this park and it is really nice. I think the best part is that it is only like 3 miles away from our house. Hope you are all enjoying your weather in your parts of the country. Miss you all!

Alaina with Santa

2 days ago Alaina visited Santa. She really liked him and seemed as though she would have been happy sitting with him all day instead of coming home with me. She walked (while holding my hands) right to him and when we go to him she let go of me and stood up holding his knee and reached up to be picked up. I'm glad she liked him because it meant a really good picture!

Post Pigtails

Here is a post-pigtail picture. She has left them alone all day and finally had enough and pulled them out. They were cute while they lasted. Now I think we have to wash her hair tonight to get the crimps out.

Piggy-Tails

Alaina had pigtails today and I thought they were cute enough to deem a picture and a post. Dave and I made peppernut (sp?) cookies and finished up our Christmas shopping for Alaina. We got the presents all wrapped and safely up in our room so Alaina won't open them before Christmas.

Later tonight we will be going to Sears. Who knew that if you had ice cube trays on top of your stove when the oven was on they would melt and ruin your burner...All my fault...I admit it. Learning experience I guess. I tried to freeze my burner and the plastic so the plastic would turn brittle and break off easy. It actually did, but unfortunately it took off the top layer of the burner with it.

I am so lucky! I have such a wonderful husband. I just had to brag him up quick. Yesterday he completely scrubed down my kitchen for me and right now he is sweaping again! I couldn't imagine a better husband than him!

That's all for now. Hope you all is going well up north and out east!

Alaina's Last few days

Yesterday Alaina visited Daddy at work. Jodi (the Mom of the boy I babysat for) held Alaina for a while and let her play with all of the "toys" at work. She gave out a lot of smiles and let quite a few people hold her. She loves getting out of the house and seeing new people.



It is really warm out today. It is close to 80. Since it was so warm, we deciced to break out the summer sun dresses again. Alaina was doing her best to drink out of a big girl water bottle. She does pretty well when she has help but drenches herself when she does it alone.



Alaina loved my birthday cake. Once again she attacked cake with gusto. She really got a sweet tooth from me!

Some more pictures

Hey everyone. Sorry it has been so long since the last post. We are all doing well and enjoying the weather. It has been in the 60s most days and beautiful.

Alaina is doing really well. She now has 8 teeth. Yes, she finally did get her 2 front teeth. This week has been a really big week for her. She got her last tooth, learned how to climb up the stairs, and she learned how to climb up on the gaits. I found her hanging on the gait about 4 inches above the ground standing with her toes in the plastic mesh stuff in the gait and her hands over the top. She really wanted to get into the kitchen. She is finally starting to learn the word no. If she is doing something she isn't supposed to be doing and you say no, she stops and looks at you and then startes doing it again. After about 2 or 3 times of this cycle she finds something else to do.

The pictures I sent are just random pictures from the last few days. Hope you enjoy!

Love,
Dave, Wendy & Alaina

Birthday Cake

Alaina got to eat her first birthday cake tonight. We celebrated our next door neighbor Brynn's 3rd birthday. Brynn also has a sister, Bailey, who demolished her cake. Alaina ate some, but most of it ended up all over her. When she was done, I took my shirt off, grabbed her and brought her straight over to our place and into the tub. Alaina had a lot of fun though. She has also been pulling herself to standing a lot more. She found out today that she can pull herself up on the couch, so she is amusing herself more and more. She also got in another bottom tooth this week. Wendy put in the baby book that all Alaina wants for christmas is her two front teeth. She is still missing the top ones. Things in Texas are very good and warm, unlike what some of you are experiencing up in the north.

Love you all,
Dave, Wendy, and Alaina

Family Picture

Grandma Johnston is here right now and she took some family pictures of us. After about 10 tries this is the good picture. We are having a great time right now with Mom, Laura and Josh here. Alaina is loving all of them

She Can Stand!!!

Alaina was able to grab onto our new humidifier and pull herself up for the first time without any help. Here's the video.

One more cute picture

Here are 2 more cute pictures that didn't fit on the last post. Alaina loves her Daddy so much and told him so today! Well actually she just said dada, but we know what she meant. She said it when it was only her and him twice this morning and later when I was holding her and "dada" walked out of the room. Too cute!!!

Hey all! Here are some pictures of Alaina today and tonight. We just put up baby gates and Alaina loves to stand and look out at what she can't get to. Daddy and her have had a lot of fun tonight. Dave also got up with her this morning and fed her a bottle so I could sleep in. So nice! Miss you all!
Love,
Dave, Wendy, & Alaina

6 more years

So, I re-enlisted for 6 more years in the Army Reserves today. It was something that both of us talked about and I wanted to do it. I had the ceremony out at the railshop where I work in front of one of the locomotives. My NCOIC (non commisioned officer in charge) went out and got a cake for the occasion. Seeing as we are planning on hopefully staying here for an extra year, it really made a lot of sense to re-enlist because I will have less than 5 years left on my newest contract when we move back to wisconsin. It feels really good to know that I am going to continue serving our great nation for at least another 6 years.

She has her eggs and is kinda eating them too...

More playing than eating with her scrambled egg yolks, but she enjoyed them regardless. She also found Daddy's football which she loves playing with. The picture of her asleep on me is with her cuddled up with the blanket that my cousins Grace, Sophie, and Emily, made for her. It is such a soft blanket. She is doing really well. She is getting into everything now. I swear that if there is a fuzz ball in my living room she will find it and try to put it into her mouth. She still loves everyone. We just had new neighbors move in. They have an eleven month old daughter and a daughter who is almost three. She loves playing with them. They all crawled around on our front porch for about 45 minutes today.

New Car!!

We just got a 2003 Toyota RAV4. I love it!!! It is so nice to have a vehicle that has space in the back. Alaina loves the tinted windows. It is nice to finally have a vehicle to replace the truck that we sold. Believe it or not, it gets better gas mileage than Dave's car. Now we have a vehicle to drive to see you Laura and Josh!

Why Alaina wasn't sleeping

So I mentioned in my last post that Alaina didn't sleep well last night. Actually she hadn't slept well for the last couple of nights. I now understand because she broke a tooth through on Monday and just got another one through today. Hopefully that means tonight will go better!!

I also added another picture from our vacation with my parents. Grandpa was giving her her sippy cup.

South Carolina Vacation

From October 4th through the 12th we all went on vacation to South Carolina to see my parents and sisters. We had so much fun! Dave and I went fishing a lot in small pond by their house. We caught a couple of big bass. We went to the mall in Savannah one afternoon and we got to watch Betsy play 2 volleyball games. Betsy took her first solo glider flight while we were there. Her glider is a small plane that doesn't have an engine. It is towed up in the air by an actual plane. Then she flies around and lands. We are all so proud of her!! We wanted to go to the beach, but unfortunately it was too cold while we were there. We also were planning on going to Charleston, but unfortunately downtown was flooded while we were there. We got to meet Haley's boyfriend Daren. I wasn't sure if he actually existed seeing as she has been dating him for over a year and this is the first time I had met him. But fortunately he does exist and he is a really nice guy. It was a lot of fun to meet him and his family. Mom and Dad have a new puppy. Alaina loves animals so she had a ton of fun with the animals at my parents house. She even loved the horses. Mom got pictures, but I don't have copies yet. I will post pictures of her with the horses when I get copies.

Well, I'm really tired seeing as Alaina kept me up all night last night (still not sure why) so I think I'm going to try to sneak in a nap. Miss you all!

Halloween Costume

We are back from our vacation to South Carolina. After I get my pictures organized, I will post about that. We had a wonderful time!

Last night, Dave, Alaina, and I went shopping for a Halloween costume. We decided that she would be a ladybug this year. I put her in her costume today and took a couple of pictures to post. We also got our stuff to carve pumpkins this year! I'm so excited. I love Halloween! It is such a fun holiday.

Vikings lost but...

It still made a pretty good photo shoot for Alaina and Dave.



On an even better note the Packers won! It made me happy. Alaina and Daddy did have fun watching football together. Even though she grew out of her Packers shirt and still fits into her Vikings shirt, I am not giving up hope that she will be a Packers fan!

Just some cute pictures

Here are just a couple of cute pictures of Alaina from this week that I wanted to post. We are going to be going to South Carolina in a week and a half so we will have some really cute pictures of Alaina from down there. We are so excited!!!

My Independent Baby

Alaina has gotten so much more independent over the last week or so. She won't eat her food unless she is holding the spoon, she won't take a bottle unless she is holding it up, and she won't even stand up if Dave or I set her on her feet. She has to pull herself up while holding onto our fingers. If we lift her to a standing position she just plops back down on her butt and wants to pull herself up. If things keep going the way they are she is going to be quite the handful as a teenager! Anyway, tonight she wasn't taking any food that I was trying to feed her and wouldn't let me help lead the spoon to her mouth while she was holding it, so I let her go at it on her own. Needless to say, after she was finished, she went right up to the bathtub! Dave got some great pictures of her eating. She looks way too innocent for the mess she has made!

A long walk...

Alaina and I went out for an hour long walk today. We had so much fun!! She slept for the last 15 minutes of it. It felt really good to get out for such a long walk. It has been a while since I have had a chance to do that.

Tuesday with Laura

Laura and Josh came back to our house on Tuesday. Josh's truck broke down this weekend, so they took a rental car back and came on Tuesday to pick up the truck. It was too bad that their truck broke down, but it was so much fun to hang out with them for the day. They came at about 1pm and left at 6. Laura spent quite a bit of that time holding Alaina (which gave me time to cook dinner without entertaining Alaina). They are so cute together. Soon before they left, Alaina fell asleep on me and Laura took a picture of it. So much fun. They need to move closer to us!!!