Christmas Lights, Coming Soon!

Kristin and I are hard at work putting up our Christmas lights tonight and tomorrow morning. We are going with an all new color scheme this year: Blue and White, with some twinkling lights thrown in. We were so frustrated when we took out our lights from last year and realized that only about 25% still worked. We were able to repair some of the bulbs, but some we never did figure out... So, off to target for new lights (and we thought last year was the "rebuilding year"). We will post pictures as soon as we are done!

Fun with Leaves

A couple of weekends ago was a fabulous Indian Summer day, 70 degrees and sunny. I put Lily in one of her favorite dresses, probably for the last time and we took her to the park to play in the leaves. James took some good pictures and I thought I would share some of them here.

Doing the Itsy Bitsy Spider

Lily is growing bigger and bigger every day. She continues to amaze me with the things she knows and picks up just from observation. She is really into mimicking us right now. She tries to brush her hair with my brush, she likes to brush her teeth when we do, she even goes around our bedroom picking up stray socks and pajama's and throws them down the laundry chute. And I think her dad has taught her to find all the shoes I've left lying around, and bring them to me to put away.

Her baby sign skills are improving each week as well. For the longest time she was doing a sign, that I thought was her rubbing her belly. It wasn't until James did a baby shoot of Baby Aiden that we discovered she has been signing "please" this whole time. No wonder she would get mad at me when I repeatedly asked her to say "please" when she wanted something. Now, she is able to say "more, please" and "thank you" when she wants something. She can also verbalize those words, but sometimes she just not in a talking mood.

Today is her 18 month check up. Originally James was going to take her so I didn't have to leave work, but today has been slow and I realized I missed her last check up, so I really want to go.

Next week we are off to visit my family for Thanksgiving. Lily will get to spend 5 whole days with her Grammy, Papa Dude, Auntie Kim, Uncle Nick, Aunt Vicki, Naomi, Gigi and Papa. She will be loved and spoiled tons!

And Auntie Kim is going to do some wedding dress shopping for the first time!

Boo @ the Zoo Pictures

So it's been a while. It took James a long time to upload the hundreds of pictures he took of Lily from Boo @ the Zoo. And then it took me even longer to pick which ones too post here. Hundreds to go through, literally. If you want to see them all go here: jameswearphotography.com

Look at that Belly!

Done with the stroller. And costume.

See that monkey?

I kind of like my blue jeans!

Looking at some Koi.

Some thing's in there I just know it!

Loves to ride the carousel!

I don't see any elephants. Where are the elephants?!?!?

Oh here's what's left of one. Just kidding. We saw plenty of elephants.









I'm going to toddle off now, to find these so called elephants!


Oops fell down.

Look at me go!

Bright Foliage

Look how pretty our neighbor's tree is! See my photography blog for some nature shots taken today at Shawnee Mission Park.

WaterFire Kansas City 2008

Here are some pictures from WaterFire KC 2008: Lillian was be-boppin' to the World Music and watching the bonfires! Kristin and I enjoyed the smells of the incense and food vendors. I got some great abstract artistic shots of the fires (timed-exposure, mostly) which I will post on my other blog later this evening. Kristin also got a great shot she is very proud of, I will have her post it as well!

Weekend Recap

**Pictures to follow this evening**
We had a fun filled weekend. For some reason I can not remember if we did anything on Friday. I'm going to have to say probably not. I think we stayed in, ate pizza, and played with the Wii Fit. But the rest of the weekend was jam packed. Saturday we went to the KC Zoo, for Boo at the Zoo. Lily wore her pink three-eyed monster costume, and we spent most of the day there. We came home only long enough to feed her dinner and give her a bath, then we bundled her up in her PJ's and headed down to the Plaza for Waterfire, which I thought was fabulous. It was a little chilly, but don't worry, Lily was the coziest of all, in her pj's and bundle me. She eventually fell asleep, but not before we received lots of compliments on what a good baby she was, and how cute she was. I saw two co-workers while we were there, and may have drummed up some photography work for James. One of my co-workers needs to have his daughter's senior pictures taken, and their chosen photographer keeps flaking on them.
Yesterday we stayed at home in the morning, then met Stephanie and Zach for lunch at Red Robin (yum). After lunch we headed to Louisburg Cidermill to pick out our pumpkins. We ended up with 4 small pumpkins and one twenty-five pounder. It was too windy to stick around so we left after picking out the pumpkins.
Last night we carved two of the pumpkins. Now I know why my dad always did that part. It's hard! James is a master carver, me, well I'm a little messy. James carved a skull and bones and I attempted a spider web w/spider. James ended up cleaning mine up for me, so you could actually tell what it was, but I didn't do too bad.

We took lots of pictures this weekend. I thought James was posting them last night, but I think it takes a long time to take the pictures from his camera to the computer to the website. We will post some this evening.

The things you know

Lily is not a baby anymore. She's all grown up *sniff*. Yesterday morning before we went to school, James said he thought she was "working on a project", code for dirty diaper. I asked her if she was "stinky", she repeated "stinky"right back at me. Then I asked her if she wanted me to change her diaper, she said "yes!" then toddled off to her room and brought me a diaper back. I didn't teach her that.
Then yesterday when I picked her up, she saw me and said "oh good", then toddled over to the cubbies and got her coat. There were 15 coats there. How did she know which one was hers?
And we've also discovered if you sing "Ring around the roses", she spin in place and hum, then say "dooowwwn", but won't fall down. She doesn't like falling.

So if I had any reservations about sending her to daycare and not being a stay at home mom, those are all gone now. I don't know that I would have the presence of mind to teach her all those things. Eventually she would have picked all that up, but shes only 17 months old and so smart.

I bet all the parents think that though :)