Video: First Steps!

While she is not a full-blown walker yet, Ava is attempting to walk by taking 3, 4, 5 steps at a time. Here she is on Christmas Eve w/ Daddy and I, practicing. She was trying so hard and we actually got it on camera.

http://s71.photobucket.com/albums/i146/mnallen79/?action=view¤t=videowalking.flv

We WON!!

Thanks to all our friends and family for your effort in securing a win! We had nearly 400 votes! WOW!! Thanks again!

We Need Your Vote!

The company who did our Christmas Cards, secretstorksurprise.com, has a Holiday Photo contest going on. As a customer, through a consent form, I gave my permission to them to use our photo in the contest.

Soooo, thanks to the determination of Ryan and myself, my MIL (MOSTLY), and now BIL (Uncle Aaron), we are currently a contender for first place. We need to pull through to close the deal!

Here is the website:

http://secretstorksurprise.com/gpage10.html

We are picture #9.

Sadly, voting is limited to 1 per IP address so feel free to email this to your friends and family!

Thanks so much!!

I promise I've been good, Santa

Pleeeeeeease don't put me on the naughty list. I'll work on my sleep, I promise. My mommy says I am so so good!

Listen to what Ava has to say....

She has learned something new....

I wasn't quite sure that she put two and two together w/ Santa and "ho, ho, ho", but it was confirmed this morning while we were at the grocery store.

We were at the grocery store and just cruising around, I'm all in my element and just jibber-jabbering back and forth w/ baby girl. She was holding the grocery list for me. All of a sudden she starts in on her "ho ho ho ho" thing. Once she starts, she does it for like 5 minutes. There was no Santa around so I figure, well, I guess she doesn't quite get that "ho ho ho" goes w/ Santa, but whatever, it must just be a new word/sound. Well, about 3 minutes later I look down while she is still saying it and she is concentrating so hard on the shopping list and what do I see at the bottom of the paper? A santa hat! It was on the SPCA note pad we got and it had a dog w/ a santa hat! So she DOES get it! She was saying "ho ho ho ho" to the santa dog. So CUTE!!

Getting ready for the Holidays!

We actually decorated for Christmas this year in a timely manner, so we get to enjoy the decorations for a whole month as opposed to a few weeks. It was so nice, as always, to get the tree out (pre-lit and fake--how very un-green of us) and decorate it. Ava was a big help, as you can see. We listened to Christmas music and thought about making hot chocolate, but since it was in the mid 70's here and we were both sweating, we decided water would suffice. Christmas is one of my favorite times of the year and I have such fond memories of it. I can only hope that Ava will one day feel the same way.

Here is Ava "helping" us w/ the ornaments: