Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy (late) Thanksgiving everyone! We had a whirlwind of a holiday! We visited with my family thurs-friday and had a good time hanging out. We (Grant and I) even got a good night's sleep at Grant's brother's house while Olivia stayed overnight with Grandma and Papa. She slept really good overnight (not so good for her naps, though!). We had a good time hanging out and seeing everyone. My brother's dog, Ozzy, really took to Olivia - he became quite mesmerized by her and would not let her out of his sight. He wanted to protect her from all of us and follow her around constantly. Which wouldn't have been an issue, except that he is a 90 lb puppy! And VERY clumsy! She'll have a friend for life with him!

Then we drove up to Grant's parent's house for the weekend and had a nice time visiting with them. We even got to see NC State beat Carolina while we were there, which made the trip even better! :) (sorry Sara and Scottie!) I didn't get any pictures while we were at my parent's house (we were so busy I forgot about the camera!), but we did get some while we were at Grant's parent's house.

Here's Olivia hanging out with Nana:


Sitting with Granddad:

Then, for a special treat, Granddad took Olivia and cousin Drew out on the four-wheeler! Olivia was a bit scared when she first got on it, but was screaming for more when they came back! She LOVED it! She truly is a little dare-devil!

Here's a nice little family shot:

Then we let Olivia run around out there until it got too cold out and we had to go in:

She LOVES leaves - always has to collect them every where we go!

Then she played a little basketball with Da-deeee before we went in.

Here is Granddad with Olivia and cousin Drew:

Then, once we were back in town, I got to babysit Gracie so that Randy and Sara could go to the hospital to see her brandy-new little cousin. The girls had a blast together, but my house looked like a tornado had hit! Gracie even taught Olivia a new trick - how to use the water dispenser on the outside of the fridge! Only problem - they weren't filling anything up - just squirting it all over themselves and the floor - so they were both soaked, as well as the floor. This was about the time that Grant got home from work so we had to wrangle them both and change them into pajamas!


Then here is just a little video of Olivia running around like a little crazy person a couple weeks ago. Grant loves to watch her run - "she runs like a girl!" - yup, she sure does!

Other than all of that - she has been really starting to talk a lot more lately. Over the last couple of weeks she has started really repeating all sorts of things and really trying to learn all that she can! Her favorite words right now are:

no or no no - she will DEFINITELY tell you if she doesn't want something!

"happy happy" - if you ask her if she is happy, she'll say happy happy! It came from he little book of opposites - happy vs. sad

out - if she wants out of the crib, down from being held, or out of the car seat - she'll repeat "out" until she is free!

bye bye - she is very good about saying bye bye now - but sometimes it is after someone has already left!

jeeeuuusss - (juice) - she loves her juice!

moy - lately instead of saying "more," which she used to say very clearly - she say moy! (like soy sauce) - even if we say "more" she'll repeat "moy"

graygsheee - or something like that - she now know's Gracie's name. It comes out a little different, but she gets the point across (she even knows how to say Livi now, too!)

on-gie and memur - (Angie and Mur Mur (Muriel)) - she definitely knows how to say her daycare ladies' names!

She still LOVES to talk about kitty and doggy's too!

She also knows Handy Manny (ME!) and mickey mouse (mou!), too! But they have both become one-syllable!

That's all I can think of for right now, but she is learning more each day!

Piano Lesson

Hello everyone! Here are some pictures of Olivia and Gracie playing a couple weekends ago. Olivia loves giving hugs, the only problem - they're full contact, tackle hugs! Check out her giving Gracie a hug:

I'm not sure what the fascination with climbing IN the toy box, but they spent quite a bit of time in there. Here's Gracie smiling for the camera.

Well, not much to tell this entry as far as Olivia goes, except that she got to have a fun "piano lesson" from my friend Harmony, who just got her piano set up. Harmony was nice enough to invite us over for Olivia to play with the piano since she LOVES music so much. She had a blast with it and it was fun to see her so excited about it. Maybe Santa will bring her a keyboard or something . . .

Here are some videos of her musical genius:

Other than that, we got to go to the hurricane's hockey game on Friday night. Our friends Aaron and Pam Hipp were in town and invited us to join them and Aaron's sister, Katie and her husband. We also brought Randy and Sara with us. Olivia and Gracie stayed behind with Randy's mom for the night. The girls were still awake at 10:30 watching Shrek when we got back. They had a wonderful time - thanks SO much Sandra for helping us out! We appreciate it.

It was really nice to see Aaron and Pam again. Here they are:

and of course the game went into overtime . . . and we lost anyway! Ugh!

Aside from that, we've just been really busy. Grant is still putting in a LOT of hours at his clinic and my work has started picking up. I was in Greenville, NC on Thursday (~1.5 hours east), and Kannapolis (just outside of Charlotte, ~2 hours west) on Friday. I have to be back in Kannapolis tomorrow and Tuesday so I'm staying with mom and dad tonight and tomorrow night (thanks guys!). Grant is home with Olivia for the next couple of days.

That's about all for now.

Happy Halloween!

Happy Halloween everyone! Well, we had a VERY busy Halloween weekend with little Olivia. On Friday, they had a Halloween party at daycare and all the kids got to show off their costumes and eat lots of yummy snacks.

Here's a picture of Olivia with Jordyn (left) and Sophia (right) munching on the cookies! As you can see, Olivia was Minnie Mouse for Halloween:

Here are the boys - Ethan (left) and DJ (right):

Here's a video from the party:

Friday night we went to a Halloween Festival, "Goblins in the Park," with some friends. Sara and Gracie went with us and we met our little friends, Logan and Masyn with their parents, there. It was a good time and we enjoyed seeing all of Olivia's little friends together. Olivia and Gracie entered the 2 and under Halloween costume contest and got to parade around. Olivia didn't win, but we thought she was adorable. (A baby garden gnome won!)

Here we are hanging out before we left for the festival:

Here's little Gracie dressed as Curious George:

Grant met us out there when he got off work. Here he is with all the little ones.

From left to right: Masyn, Olivia, Gracie and Logan. Aren't they all so cute! Logan was a kitty cat and Masyn was *supposed* to be a pumpkin but didn't feel like wearing her costume.
(this is the best we could do with getting a group picture!)

When we got home that evening, we let Olivia and Gracie hang out and play a bit. Here's Gracie (wearing a pair of Olivia's PJs) and Olivia *sharing* the little bike. Olivia was on it and Gracie jumped on in front of her!

Then on Halloween/Saturday Olivia got to wear her costume to The Little Gym:

They ALWAYS love the bubbles at the end of class:

THEN, that night, it was time to get ready for our FIRST trick-or-treating adventure! We went around some of our neighbor's houses (especially all the neighbors we know really well) and Olivia got some yummy candy. Olivia has already REALLY enjoyed a dum dum lollipop while we were out.

Here she is with ready to go:

Then on Sunday, Grandmom and Granddad came to visit us! So we spent the afternoon hanging out with them. Grandmom even brought Olivia a little Minnie Mouse stuffed animal to play with in honor of her cute little costume! So, after a long weekend filled with friends, family and fun - we are all pretty worn out!

Hello everyone! Not a whole lot to share on this blog. A couple weekends ago we went to Sunset Beach, NC to see my co-worker get married and my parents came up to watch Olivia for the weekend. They got to have lots of good Olivia time with her. They even took her to the Little Gym for her class. Thanks again guys for helping us out!

Other than that, we also had some friends over for dinner about a week ago and one of them (Jenn) has a little girl that is 9 months old, Reese. Here they are playing together:

And cuddling in their jammies . . .

Here's just a cute picture of Olivia looking so innocent! Yeah, like that's really the case! :)

She is starting to get more hair now and it is even starting to curl as it gets longer. Especially right after a bath. Here's a good picture to show you her new curls coming in:

And here's a good picture of us pulling for our team (even when they are down!). GO PHILLIES! :)

We have also discovered that Olivia LOVES her punching balloon that I got her. Here's a picture and a video. (Be careful with the video - she finishes it off with a crazy scream!)

Pumpkins!

Hello again! So, this past weekend was VERY busy for us. We've already told you that we went to the NC State game (and that was after we had our Little Gym session and some friends over for a pre-game party). Well Sunday, we went to Hill Ridge Farms, which is a big farm that has hay rides, animals, a pumpkin patch and lots of other fun activities for kids. Along with us was Randy, Sara and Gracie AND Grant's parents decided to come up to join us (they just can't make it very long without seeing the little one! :)


We had a great time and the girls got to spend lots of time running around and hanging out as little buddies! Here are tons of pics and videos for you all to see the fun we had.


Here's Olivia running around the Hay Maze:

There was a cool tunnel that the girls LOVED running through. It made for some cool pictures, too!

Then we went to check out all the animals they had there.

Silly Girls:

Here's Olivia going down the slide - a bit of a hard landing, though!

The girls both loved the HUGE sandbox that they had:

One of the really cool things they had was a room filled with corn kernels. Although, after playing in it - I later found a handful of corn kernels in Olivia's diaper when we got home! ha ha

Before we could leave for the day, we had to do the hay ride. Here's a family shot on the hay ride on the way to the pumpkin patch to pick out our pumpkins:

Then we got to go pick out our pumpkins . . . . so many to choose from . . .

Then after we selected our pumpkins, it was back onto the hay ride to head back to the main part of the farm. Here's another family pic:

Well, that was about all from that trip. We all enjoyed ourselves and it was nice to spend the day with family and close friends. Next weekend Grant and I are heading off to a wedding on Sunset Beach, NC without the little one! This will only be the 2nd time we've been away from Olivia and the last time it was only for one night - this will be the whole weekend! My parents are coming up to watch Olivia for us (thanks guys!). And we are looking forward to sleeping in and a nice weekend at the beach (though it will be cold and we'll miss our little one!). Until next time, take care!

1st NC State Football Game

So we went to Olivia's first official NC State football game last weekend with our friends Randy and Sara and Gracie. Needless to say we only made it to half time before it became VERY evident that we needed to head on home. And we BARELY made it that far! We think that the girls just knew how ugly the game was about to get and wanted to save us from having to watch it! Thanks Olivia and Gracie! We DEFINATELY didn't need to see that!



Anyway, the girls did look adorable in their little NC State cheerleader outfits. Even Gracie had one on that Sara (a UNC Alum) actually bought her! Wow! Maybe Randy is turning her over to our side! :) Here are some cute pictures and a couple videos from our day:

Here's daddy touching base with some friends to meet up

Just hanging out with mommy at the game

Thankfully we had TONS of snacks to keep them occupied . . . for a little while!

Just watching some football! Go PACK!

Aren't they the cutest little cheerleaders!

Here are the girls running back toward our car at half time:

A nice group shot of us all!

Well, all I can say is that it was an experience . . . maybe not one I am willing to repeat again in the near future. It is just too hard for the girls to be able to sit still in such a confined area for so long. I'm thinking that since we have tickets to the State - Carolina game, either we'll need a babysitter or we'll need to try to sell those tickets. Anyone interested??

Little Gym

Hello again! So, I have been wanting to get Olivia involved in some sort of organized activity and Sophia at Olivia's daycare goes to The Little Gym and absolutely LOVES it and her parents have been raving about it to us for quite some time. So, now that the summer has come to an end, we figured that it was time to go check it out (since the classes for her age group are on Saturday mornings). So, we signed up for a trial class for last weekend (and even managed to convince Sara to sign up to bring Gracie along, too!). It took Olivia a few minutes to warm up to the class and get used to the environment the first class - but then she had a good time. Gracie didn't need ANY time to warm up! She was off and running around from the first minute! Both girls loved it and Sara and I signed them both up to continue on with the class through the rest of the semester, which runs through mid-January.

Here are some pictures from the first class. That class was "backwards day" so they learned how to do a backwards roll and back handspring (over the little octagon log - with help).

Here's the big inflatable bouncer they had for them to jump on. Gracie jumped around all over it - it took Olivia a little while to figure it out - then she started moving around on it pretty good.

Here's Olivia working on the balance beam:

Here we are working on her backward roll:

We had our second class yesterday and it was "counting day" so we counted some balls, bean bags and scarves. Then counted our fingers and toes. Olivia and Gracie had a good time with the bubbles again and had a good time meeting some new little friends.

Let's just say that I was calling these two the Dynamic Duo (Randy was calling them Thelma and Louise!) So, remember how we said that Gracie was running around in the first class and Olivia took a little bit to warm up, well in the second class - Gracie was still running around (but did come back to the group activities once we started them) and every time she ran off - Olivia followed! Monkey see, Monkey do! This was their favorite place to run off to - the donut wheel:

They worked on their basketball skills and Olivia did get the ball through the hoop on her own before I got my camera out - but then she wouldn't do it again for me to get a video of her doing it on her own - so I got a video of Miss. Rachel helping her:

Here's Gracie getting one in:

They all LOVE the bubbles at the end of every class:

See if you can see the bubble that got caught in her little alfalfa hair sprout sticking up on her head. It almost looked like one of the Who's from Who-ville with a bubble hanging perfectly from the end of a curl and it stayed there for a while!

After class we went out to lunch and the girls practiced their driving skills in the arcade:

This afternoon we went to visit our friends Ralph and Sheetal from college and their family. We got to see all the new little ones and they got to meet Olivia for the first time. The last time we saw them I was pregnant with her. We always love going over to see them and their family - they are all so wonderfully nice. We really need to try to see them more often. Hopefully it won't be so long until the next time we get together!

I also wanted to show you you guys some cute pictures of Olivia eating some ice cream from last week. She did really good all day and finished all of her dinner - so as a reward, she got to have some ice cream. She LOVED it! We also brought some of these little ice cream cups as dessert today to the get-together with Ralph and Sheetal for all the kids and they all loved them, too!

I also have one other video of Olivia showing off some of her *skills* for you all:

She's just a ham, isn't she? :)