Cookies, Cousins, and Bubblewrap

(This post was from a few weeks ago....I was trying to figure out how to turn the video around, but haven't so you  might have to watch it with your head turned!)
On Saturday Becca and I went to Grammy's house for our traditional cookie day.  My sisters, mom, and I always get together in December and bake yummy (or nummy as Becca would say) treats.  Becca wasn't too interested in helping.  She loved running around and playing with her cousins Ava (or Apa as she says) and Tyler.  At one point Christor received a package that contained a large sheet of bubble wrap which the kids loved! Here is short video clip of them having fun.  Why buy toys when all you need is bubble wrap for entertainment! :)

Family Pictures

Yesterday we had our family pictures taken at Wabash College.  It was a lot of fun.  Becca got to play in the leaves, climb rocks, and hug trees.  I think she had a lot of fun.  It is really hard to photograph a toddler, but catching them in their moments and photographing their personality can be fun! :)  Kim had an Elmo doll that Becca would not let go of.  As soon as she saw him she wanted to hold him.  So this year in many of our photographs, our friend Elmo is part of the family.  I love this.  Years down the road we will remember that Becca LOVED Elmo and most of the Sesame Street characters.  It just makes me smile thinking about it.  Here is just a sample of one of the pictures.  I am excited to see how the rest turned out! :)

Potty Time???

Tonight Becca pottied in her potty!!!!! Yea!!! I was so excited.  For the past 6 months she has been interested in it and talks about the potty.  Last week she even put her stuffed animal, Snuffy, on the potty and said he was going potty.  I wasn't sure if she was ready to start the whole potty training process though.  Tonight when we went in the bathroom to brush her teeth she opened her chair and said "Potty." So she sat down and laughed then got back up and then sat back down after I showed her what to do and all of the sudden there was success!!!! Yea!! I think I was more excited than she was.  So....our potty training adventure begins.  It would be great if she were mostly trained before our second child arrives in April.  We will see though.

Halloween pics

We did take Becca Trick-or-Treating this year.  We only went to a few friends houses though.  She still doesn't really understand the whole concept, but thought it was fun to visit a few friends.  It was fun walking down the street in her cute lady bug outfit.  When she saw the other kids in costumes, I'm not sure she knew what to make of it.  She was a trooper and had fun.  Here are some fun pics.

This is my evil grin and laugh!

Ahhhhh, get me out of this costume.

August, September, October, Oh my!!

I can't believe it has been two months since I've posted.  I guess life this fall has just been so busy.  With school, marching band, and extra activities I think I've been too exhausted to sit down and post anything.  Being pregnant and in the first trimester that past few months hasn't helped either.  I have been so sick and tired that all I wanted to do was lay down (which is hard to do with a toddler!).  So, instead of writing every single detail of the last month I will just post a few pictures of our fall.  There were football games, marching band competitions, pumpkin patch fun, as well as pumpkin painting.  I do have some videos I will post later when I get them converted.  Becca is growing so fast.  She actually is getting hair and is putting lots of sentences together.  She knows her numbers 1-9 and some of her letters of the alphabet.  She also knows many of her shapes and a few colors (blue, yellow, purple, brown).  I so enjoy watching her learning process and I think it helps me as a teacher to understand the stages better.

Anyway....enough babbling....here are some fun pics of the fall!

Sporting our new Elmo slippers :)

Marching band competition in Columbus

Football games (watching daddy conduct the band with Peter)

Pumpkin patch with the Vaughts

Pumpkin fest with mommy

She wanted to climb on the cow

Fun in the Moo choo train

Pumpkin painting (The thought of carving pumpkins this year didn't appeal to me, so we painted!) Becca painted the background of the pumpkins and then I painted the faces on them.

Great Horn Angle

Well school has started again.  We are now in week 3 and I'm still feeling like I'm trying to run a race to catch up on everything.  The house is back to not being clean, dinner is hurried, and the mornings are rushed.  By the time I get home, fix dinner, and get Becca to bed I'm too exhausted to do anything, but there is much to do.
So far the year has been off to a good start.  I enjoy my classes and marching band is going well. I have two awesome families that watch Becca on marching band nights.  She loves hanging out with them which makes it easier on me.
I don't have much to update....Becca is starting to put sentences together.  She will say things like, "That is a shoe." or "I see Daddy."  It is really cute.  She also is recognizing her shapes and colors.  She also loves Veggie Tales right now. She squeals with delight when we get home from school and I turn on the video while I get dinner ready.  She dances around and conducts.  It is cute.
Here are just a few new pics of her.  She learned how to blow in the recorder.  At first she would just put it up to her nose and hold it really high.  I said she had a great marching band horn angle. :)

Drive-In

While I was getting dinner ready last night, Becca decided to sit on her "bus" and enjoy a nice Elmo Sing-Along.  She has her own personal Drive-In. :)

Fun with iphone4

The new iphone has a feature in which you can see yourself on the phone while taking the picture so Becca and I had some fun last night.  She loves seeing pictures of herself on the camera!

Sand box

Here is a picture of Becca's first experience in the sandbox yesterday.....as you can see she isn't too sure about getting dirty and didn't want anything on her feet.

What is this stuff???

This is a picture of today in the sandbox.  She now enjoys sitting in the sandbox and throwing sand everywhere and on her!

More Band Camp Pictures

Shaving Cream everywhere!!!

Fun times!

Seniors 2010

 

Being hosed down

AHHHHHH!!!!

I can't see!!!!!

Daddy and Becca!

Pie in the Face

So this past week was band camp.  It was a great week.  We were very blessed with wonderful parent help, awesome hard working kids, and great weather....okay it was still hot, but not as bad as it has been in previous weeks.  The Seniors decided on the last day they would surprise Joe and give him a pie.  Here is a fun video of the last day after we did awards!

18 months!

Becca had her 18 month check-up yesterday.  It went really well.  She doesn't usually like to get weighed (but hey, what girl does! :), but when she saw the paintings of the Sesame Street characters above the scale she got excited and talked right through the nurse weighing her and measuring her length.  She finally went back up on the weight chart which is good.  She weighs 22 pounds and is 32 inches long.
She was very vocal with the doctor and talked her ear off.  She smiled and played peek-a-boo.  Maybe this was because the doctor told her no shots this time!  Dr. Joshi said that Becca made her day and that she was a really smart little girl.  Good news with her ears as well...they were completely healed with no infection! Yea!!!

Elmo, Elmo, Elmo!

Anyone who has been around Becca recently knows that she LOVES Elmo.  She also loves Cookie, Oscar, Ernie, Na Na(this is Big Bird....not sure why...), Count, Zoe, Abby, uffy (Snuffy).  These are the names she can say.  Becca gets to go play that the Thompson's house on Wednesday nights and they have all of the Sesame Street character stuffed animals.  Obviously she loves this.  When we dropped her off one night they graciously gave us a picture of her in a frame that they had made.  It is adorable.  Here is a picture!

Becca's Buddy Brian

We had a bunch of high school and college students over to our house this afternoon in order to prepare for band camp this coming week.  Becca, of course, loved the attention and decided she was going to tell all of them a bunch of stories.  She is not shy at all! :)  Is it bad that she especially likes to talk with the boys already?  She would hand them her books and want them to read to her and also give them her baby dolls and want to play.  I'm not sure they liked this, but she loved the attention from them!

Since Becca knows the Thompson family really well, she of course loved the fact that Brian came over as well.  She actually goes around calling his name when he is not here.  She did that after he left tonight.  After our meeting, the kids decided they wanted to play the Wii and Becca wanted to get right in and play with them.  They would yell and then she would squeal and clap.  Brian, being such a nice guy, let her "help" him drive the Mario cart.  She was having a great time. She also wanted to be a big girl and drink the same drink Brian was drinking as well.  Unfortunately the bottle was a little big for her.

It was a fun afternoon.  Having all of the kids here made me think about what it is going to be like when Becca has all of her friends over.  Good thoughts.

Fun with Cousins

Today Becca and I met Meghan and Tyler at the Indianapolis Children's Museum.  We had a lot of fun.  I'm amazed at how much Becca remembers from our previous visits.  When we entered "Playscapes" (the area for children under 5) she kept saying ducky, ducky.  She remembered that she played with the ducks in the water last week when we were there.  She is now very comfortable in this area and enjoyed running from one side of the room to the other while mommy got a workout chasing her back and forth.  She also remembered climbing through one of the tunnels and finding daddy at the other end. So today, she tried to climb through and kept saying "Daddy, daddy."  She also did this as we were riding the carousel.  She is so used to seeing daddy standing there waving.  No daddy today though.
It was fun seeing Tyler and Becca interact with each other and the kids around them.  I really enjoyed spending time with Tyler and Meghan.  It was nice to get out of the house and talk with another mommy and sister!

Fun Adventures This Summer

I thought I would have more time to update our blog this summer, but that obviously hasn't been the case.  We have been enjoying the summer and here are a few fun pictures from our adventure so far.  We have taken a few trips to the Indianapolis Children's Museum, which Becca loves.  We also went to a place called Monkey Joe's in Lafayette.  Monkey Joe's is an indoor facility that houses inflatable bounce houses and slides.  It was a lot of fun.  Becca enjoyed seeing Elmo on the 5 and under bounce houses, but she really enjoyed going down the big slides.  I think it was more of a workout for me trying to help her climb up the big slides.  I was exhausted afterwards and a little sore! :)

This is Joe and Becca on the Carousel at the Children's Museum.  She loves to ride it and has to at least 3 times every time we go! :)




This is Becca on July 4th in her cute Osh Kosh outfit.  We didn't do much for the 4th.  Joe and I played in the Civic Band on the 3rd, but no fireworks this year.


We tried glue for the first time today.  I know it is probably a little bit early for her, but I'm trying to come up with new things for her to experience.  She caught on right away and wanted to do it herself (which is a big thing right now!).

Becca has a lot of fun "swimming" in her little pool.  She can stay in for a long time and loves the water. She also loves to swing ("Weeee" as she calls it) and slide.  She climbs up the slide the wrong way, but we are trying to teach her to climb up the steps and then go down.  We really are enjoying our fenced in backyard!

This is a narrated video from Monkey Joes.  Joe decided he would give you a step by step account of what was going on.  I didn't realize until I uploaded everything that we really didn't get any pictures from Monkey Joe's, just video...so here is the best one!  Becca loved going down the slides! :)

Teach us to number our days...

I know this blog is mainly to keep everyone up to date on Becca, but I also feel the Lord impressing upon my heart tonight to write thoughts down as well.  I'm amazed at how quickly the time flies by.  I've been thinking a lot about this lately, I don't know if this is just because summer is flying by and I get sad when I walk into a store and see the school supplies being stocked up; or if it is the fact that Becca is growing so fast.  Every time I think of her getting older, I am overjoyed yet saddened at the same time.  I want to cherish every moment and commit it to memory.  She is in her "NO" phase right now....or will this phase ever end? :)  She says No really clearly.  She also does not like being strapped in to her stroller or carseat right now.  Guess it is good we aren't taking the 11 hour drive vacation to Philly this summer.  Playing in the backyard sounds like a lot more fun!
Moses said in Psalm 90:12, "Teach us to number our days, that we may gain a heart of wisdom."  I find it interesting that I've been thinking a lot about time and this was in the devotional I was reading tonight.  Our time on this earth passes so quickly and there is so much to do while we are here.  I need to be spending my time more wisely.  I need to ask the Lord every morning to guide my path and show me how to honor and worship him today.  Sometimes I get caught up in the fact that I don't really have any "free" time anymore and I can't just sit down and read a book.  The Lord has totally changed my thinking on this lately.  What a blessing it is to have a wonderful little girl to raise and spend time with.  God has entrusted us with Becca to raise in His ways.  What an honor and a blessing.  I pray that I can serve Him by raising Becca and guiding her heart to the things that truly matter.

Fun at Turtle Park before getting sick

Becca, Joe, and I went to Turtle Park and Darilicious on Thursday to hear Elijah Keller play drumset in his band. Becca loves saying Elijah's name and actually thinks any boy with glasses is Elijah. (We were in Walmart yesterday and she kept shouting lijah to this little boy). Anyway, one of the band parents was at Turtle Park and snapped a few pictures of Becca swinging on the swings. It was a great day and we got half price milkshakes as well. Unfortunately the next day Becca got sick with a high fever and has another ear infection and sore throat. This weekend hasn't really been very fun. She threw up on Joe and her fever hasn't really gone below 102. Hopefully she will feel better tomorrow. We just keep praying that the Lord will heal her little body!

Thanks to Terri who took the great pictures on Thursday!