Christmas Get-Together with the Winona Gals...

We try to get together with some of my girlfriends from Winona during the holidays every year. This year we met up at Rainforest Cafe at the MOA. Teri and her boyfriend Cary were in town from California. Kellie and Jon, Kelsi and Jeff, Jessi and Hannah, and Shea, Larkyn and I live around the area so it worked out well to get together. Unfortunately Molly and Tara were unable to join us this time, but hope to get everyone together this summer for Kellie's bachelorette party! Larkyn enjoyed eating her dinner in a new place. She didn't even get scared when the lights got low and it thundered!

Hannah was enjoying her meal too! Larkyn and Hannah sat at opposite ends of the table to eat.


Larkyn was being quite silly when we were trying to take the girls' picture!

There we go!

Kelsi, Jeff and Larkyn

Larkyn decided to wear Kelsi's scarf and go through her purse...

"Hmm...what's this? Anything interesting in here?"

Kim, Larkyn, Kellie, Teri, Kelsi, Hannah and Jessi

Just the 3 of us...Christmas 2010!

This year we celebrated Christmas as a family of three a few days early. We read the Christmas Story that Larkyn received from Kiki and Tim. We also sang Happy Birthday to Jesus. Larkyn really enjoyed opening up and playing with her gifts. It was fun to watch her excitement and determination in getting the wrapping paper off. We hope to be home in the years to come to continue our family Christmas together on Christmas morning!

Larkyn opened up a baby doll from Santa. She LOVED it! She was so interested in getting the baby out of the box that she could care less about any of her other presents. We named her Jesus II after the doll she plays with at Tracey's. It's name is Jesus, and Larkyn loves giving her kisses!


"Hi Baby!"

"Just a minute baby, Mom and Dad insist that I open up one more present!"

Santa brought Larkyn a handful of books, a baby doll and clothes, and a Panda pillow pet.

Kim got a new pair of earrings from Shea and Larkyn.

Kim and Larkyn gave Shea a Grind and Brew Coffee Maker.

More photos from the evening...

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Christmas 2010 in Wisconsin...

We spent the weekend before Christmas in Wisconsin with Shea's family. We arrived late on Friday and Larkyn decided she had slept enough on the way and wanted to hang out for awhile before going back to bed at midnight! (She slept all the way there because we left at her normal bedtime. We thought she might transfer okay...not this time!) Larkyn was so excited to see everyone that she was up by 7 the next morning! We got to see and spend time with Charlie's daughter Mandy and her son Diesel. It has been a couple years since we last saw them, so it was great to catch up. We also saw Art this weekend and went to Zach's hockey game...well everyone else did. Larkyn and I stayed back to take a nap! Saturday afternoon we enjoyed opening up gifts and being together.

Diesel loved playing with Larkyn and helping her open up her presents. Diesel's mom (Mandy) is expecting twins in May. He will be a great help with the babies!

Larkyn got some new fleece jammies! They have been wonderful in this cold weather!

Larkyn did a great job pulling off the wrapping paper. I think she enjoyed the paper more than what was inside!

Larkyn got a Fisher Price Little People Car Wash Garage from her cousins Breally and Cayden.

Larkyn and Grandpa Charlie

Mandy, Larkyn and Diesel

Larkyn loved Diesel's new toys...a remote control car

and Stinky the Garbage Truck!

More pictures from the weekend...

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Larkyn Kate is 9 months old...

Our little ham-chop is already 9 months old! She is as busy as ever and in to absolutely everything! Larkyn Kate is crawling all over the place, pulling herself up, saying "Dada" "baba" and "hey". Believe me, I'm still working hard on "Mama". We hope to get that down soon!

Larkyn had her 9 month doctor's appointment and showed Dr. Mitha all of her new skills. After checking her out and answering our questions, she said to us "And you're off---good to go!" Larkyn immediately put her hand up and waived good-bye to her! Dr. Mitha started laughing and couldn't believe she made the connetion to leaving! Larkyn dropped below the 90th percentile in weight this month...just barely:). She weighed in at 21 lbs. 7 oz. She is 28 inches long, which is the 75th percentile. Her head is 18 inches...over all very proportionate!

Larkyn is eating more table foods this month. She has tried turkey, chicken, hamburger, beef roast, lasagna, green bean casserole, bread, potatoes, grilled cheese, yogurt, noodles, and much more! She is beginning to feed herself more, but has a hard time grabbing on to the slippery bananas, peaches, and pears! It is also quite a drawn out process and takes a little bit longer to finish a meal!

Larkyn plays Pat-a-Cake, claps, waves buh-bye, blows kisses (when you ask her to blow a kiss she brings her hand immediately to her mouth, but doesn't quite extend it out yet!), puts her hands up for "So Big", cheers on the Packers by waving her fingers in the air when we say "Goooo Packers!", pulls herself up on everything, opening cupboards, and much more!

Some of Larkyn's favorite toys include her new Fisher Price Nativity Set, Jesus (the baby doll at daycare:)), cell phones, remote controls, bowls and spoons, and many of her books.

"Hey Giraffe...is your tail growing longer?"

"Ahhhh, Giraffe how I've missed you! Let me kiss you...or just bite your tail!"

"Yes, I can be a little stinker...what was your first clue?"

"Okay Mom, just one more!"

Is that 28 inches round? What a cute little butter ball!

I think this is the best mood she has ever been in when measuring her!

Still lovin' the bath...

"So Big!" or "Goooooooo Packers!"

Another snow storm...

I feel like I was just writing about this! It is the middle of December and we have had sooo much snow! We were supposed to have our holiday party this weekend with all of our friends and neighbors and we ended up canceling due to the weather. We hope to have a post-holiday party sometime in February. Even though we cancelled we had quite a few neighbors that still joined us for some appetizers that were already made and beverages. Thank goodness our babysitters (Courtney and Kayce) came up on Friday because they were able to trudge through the thick snow to watch all of the neighbor kids at one of our neighbor's house.

This was the next morning...

Do you see all the people out snow blowing and shoveling?

Visiting Santa...

We heard about the "really good Santa" from some friends so we had to check him out this year. There is actually a small store that is set up for photos with Santa on the third floor of MOA. We signed up for a time online, came in 10 minutes prior to our scheduled time, and waited for a couple children before it was Larkyn's turn. When it was our turn Santa left the room while the photographer set up a small chair in front of Santa's chair. We put her in the small chair and the photographer distracted her with a musical book while Santa sneaked in behind her. They got a couple photos of her in front of Santa and then he picked her up facing her out on his knee. After two shots Larkyn turned to see who was holding her and started screaming! It was a good thing we had already gotten some great pictures! Here are a couple we took...

"I don't know about this!"

When we got home Larkyn was a very happy girl so I took a couple more photos of her in her Christmas dress!

Not only happy...silly too!

Preparing for the holidays...

We put up our tree while Larkyn was napping one afternoon. When she woke up we brought her down to look at it with us. She just stared at it for a couple minutes...

"Woah baby! What is this thing?"

"Hmm...this looks interesting. What does it feel like?"

It only took a few days and Larkyn was into the ornaments. She loved the shiny ones the best and of course they went straight to her mouth! We had to "re-decorate" after a while and our tree no longer had a lower level of ornaments.

Here are some of our attempts at getting photos for our Christmas card! We were going for the JOY theme, so she is holding a candy cane upside down for the "J".

After many attempts, this picture won out!

We didn't have a wreath small enough for her to hold, and we know how much she loves ornaments, so this was our attempt at the "O" photo!

This was the only photo that the ornament wasn't completely in her mouth!

The "Y" was quite tricky. Here are only a couple, but she was all over the place!


We finally had to bring Larkyn's learning table in the photo to get her to stay in one spot!

One family tradition we have started is making Christmas cut-out cookies together. Larkyn even got in on the fun this year! The little stinker was sneaking cookie dough to her mouth. She for sure got a pinch or two to eat. Must have a sweet tooth like her mama!

What a great helper Larkyn was cutting out the cookies!

Frosting? That was a different story! It was all over!

And it tasted good too!