Wednesday, December 30, 2009

Gabriel - Nine month portraits and more!

At 9 months Gabriel crawls, pulls up, waves, claps, and babbles. He does a lot of shrieking and grunting as well! He can say "mama", "ball", and "up" too. If he would perform on command I would put up a video of it but since he won't you'll have to take my word for it. :-)

Lately he has been very interested in anything that we eat. We've added small pieces of bread and crackers to his veggie/fruit diet. Along with his organic fruit puffs he now eats sweet potatoes, green beans, brown rice, squash, avocados, yogurt, mangoes, peaches, and bananas. But his favorite is the bread, crackers, and puffs.

He continues to be highly entertained by his big sister and wants to play with all of her toys and eat her books!

Happy 9 month birthday to my sweet boy!



















I'm including some fun other pictures of him too - here is his first teething cookie



Start 'em young....



Loves anything that crinkles, rattles, bangs, etc.



The first picture is when I first found him sitting up in his bed just before Christmas and then the second one is Christmas morning!



Ready for barn chores! He's playing with a feed scoop :-)



Tuesday, December 29, 2009

A Christmas Winter Wonderland

Isaiah 9:6 "For to us a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government will be on his shoulders. And he will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace."




Merry CHRISTmas and Happy New Year from snowy Oklahoma!

We were excited for James to be off for 9 days over Christmas and we had a great time as a family just being together celebrating Christ's birth. On Christmas Eve we had Oklahoma's 2nd ever recorded blizzard! It began as rain, then sleet, and then finally the snow came......




We were suppose to go to James' parent's house in Oklahoma City but the turnpike was shut down and the side roads were bad as well. On to plan B for Christmas dinner! It wasn't the "traditional " christmas dinner, but yummy anyway. Playing in the snow made us all hungry and also very grateful for a warm house and hot chocolate.








Gabriel's first snow....



We opened our gifts Christmas Eve morning because we thought we were going to OKC on Christmas day.... but the kids didn't know the difference :-)

Here is Hannah with her new doll house and accessories!



Gabriel was so excited about all the paper and bows!



Hannah's little furry puppy dog.... and both were very interested in the chocolate that mama got!





Making snowflakes..... And Gabriel's new trick - pulling up.



Hannah playing her favorite computer game.... and I threw in a cute pic of her hugging on her papa!



More of Gabriel's new trick.... peekaboo!


Friday, December 18, 2009

December Fun

At 8 months old Gabriel decided that he'd had enough of the rolling across the floor to get somewhere and started crawling. It was very special that he learned to do this while my parents were here and got to witness it!



He is now officially into everything!






It was so special to have my parents and older sister, Michelle, here for a week after the Esther's wedding. I love seeing Hannah and Gabriel interact with them.
Grandma introduced finger paints to Hannah and together they created beautiful artwork!



At the mall in Tulsa they have a full sized carousel and Grandma and Grandpa took Hannah to ride it. She LOVED it and got to ride 3 different horses. Even Gabriel got a turn! His first carousel ride. He held onto the pole tightly and just took everything in as we went around. He never cracked a smile because he was too intent on looking at everything!



More fun with Grandma and Grandpa.....











Fun with Aunt Chelle



Aunt Chelle made Hannah and herself matching "Kuspuks" for Christmas and a beautiful play quilt for Gabriel.






We went once again to Pleasant Valley Farms to cut down a Christmas tree. We went last year and they also have a pumpkin patch in Oct where we went this year.



Daddy and Jason cut down the trees while Hannah loved on the goats :-)



We all took a horse-drawn wagon ride pulled by Becky and Cassie, two Percheron mares.



Gabriel wasn't so sure about Santa.... (and Hannah wouldn't even get close to him).



At home we had a great time decorating the tree. Hannah did a wonderful job.



Gabriel's first Christmas tree!





Hannah put the star on top with help from her sweet Papa