Friday, December 25, 2009

Have yourself a merry little Christmas

Our tree ran out of room this year, all due to proud grandmas and grandpas that love to spoil their granddaughter. We didn't even bother to buy Raeann anything this Christmas. Over 20 of these gifts are for her.
This is her "meager" pile of presents. She liked Tom and Amy's package the best - it had a bow on top. That was all she was really interested in.
There she is, looking adorable, about to yank that bow off.
So I had the duty of opening the presents for her and letting her explore at her will. Trust me, by the time we got to the last one I think she was a little over-stimulated.

Here's my saying for the year: "Repeat the sounding joy!" May you all repeat the sounding joy of Christmas and the love God shared with us that day throughout the year.

Christmas cookies

I wanted to make some Christmas sugar cookies (the only time of year I like them - they belong at Christmas) and Raeann decided to help. Well...it was more like, she wouldn't let go of my pant legs so I gave up and put her in the Snuggli to make them. I think she enjoyed watching and trying to grab all the utensils.


Before...
And after...okay, so I'm not that creative, but they sure are yummy!

Saturday, December 12, 2009

Too Cute!

This is one of my favorite outfits that Raeann has worn so far, and it was just thrown together one morning. I actually think that shirt is really a dress, but it's December in Colorado so...yeah, enough said.


Is this a sign of an early walker? Raeann has always known what she wants and has been determined to takes steps to get it.

Saturday, November 28, 2009

Left Out

I ordered this play pen, or cage as Mike calls it, mainly to keep Raeann penned in while Mike and I both were doing something, but realized that for the first month we would have to keep it around the Christmas tree. I don't know if Raeann thinks this is fair, but Tadd certainly likes it (notice him on the other side of the fence to Raeann's left).

Wednesday, November 18, 2009

Patty Cake

We had to get a short clip of Raeann's reaction to this nursery rhyme. She's super cute and funny every time I do it with her.

Sunday, November 8, 2009

Everywhere at Once

Raeann is tiring me and Mike out rather quickly these days. She's pulling herself up on everything, so we have to be there constantly to catch her if she falls or pulls herself up on something not as sturdy as it seems. Needless to say, she's bumped her head more times than we care to count, so now she's starting to learn to let herself down more slowly, as you can see in this video. She also loves the camera so instantly starts crawling for it. We wish you all could see her in person!

Saturday, October 31, 2009

Happy Halloween!

I refused to spend money on a Halloween costume for Raeann this year because she would not be able to do anything anyway and would be in her pajamas at 6 o'clock, so to compensate I bought this cute jack-o-lantern onesie, pants, and hat. I even sewed the black bow onto the hat so that she would look more like a girl. I thought it turned out pretty cute.
No, I did not place Raeann this way for this picture. Her new thing is pulling herself up to a standing position. I guess crawling and sitting are too boring now.

Thursday, October 29, 2009

A New Hat

This post is strictly for my mom's sake. She made Raeann this adorable hat and wanted to see pictures of her in it. We had a recent reason for her to wear it - we got 4-5 inches of snow on the ground in the last two days. When she is in the car seat the hat frequently slides down over her eyes. I can always tell when this happens because she becomes instantly silent for the rest of the ride, like she can't talk if she can't see.


Sunday, October 25, 2009

Sitting Pretty and Pulling Up

You can put a hundred toys around Raeann and she doesn't care one cent about them. She would rather play with everything and anything else - specifically things you don't want her to play with. This particular night she thought her little cloth booties were the best toy in the world.
Pulling the string out of the bootie.
As if crawling wasn't good enough, Raeann has now started to pull herself up on things. I think the couch cushion is her favorite thing to pull herself up with. Luckily, right now she rarely gets past her knees. Mike and I are starting to wish she'd slow down a bit!

Jack-o-lantern


I finally carved the pumpkin we chose from the pumpkin patch a few weeks ago. I wanted to take some pictures of Raeann with it. This is pretty much the only picture where she even seemed to notice it was there.
She seemed much more interested in everything else around her and we had to place her next to the pumpkin several times as she would instantly start crawling away to check something else out. I think here she is interested in a particular spot on the concrete.
Finally I just held her so she would stop crawling away. As you can see, she's not all that excited about being made to hold still.

Monday, October 19, 2009

A Determined Sound


We noticed on Saturday that whenever Raeann would get very determined about getting somewhere or something she would clamp her jaw, scrunch up her nose, and make this huffing-puffing sound. Mike was getting her to do it by making the noise himself and then she would mimic him. This particular incident all started because she was determined to crawl over him to get the remote. It's hard to hear her make the noise, but you can definitely see the face she makes!

Saturday, October 10, 2009

At the Pumpkin Patch

We started a new tradition today by taking Raeann to a pumpkin patch to pick our own pumpkin. It was $5.00 a pumpkin, so we will probably only do this once and get any more we want from Walmart, but it was a lot of fun.
A small one for our girl...I don't think this one is worth $5.00.
There were many pumpkins that looked like a good choice. We choose this one to sit on mainly.

I wasn't sure how Raeann would take to being put on the ground, as last time my dad placed her in the grass she started screaming, but she was more curious this time in what she could grab from the ground than the fact that it was something new and unsettling.




The pumpkin patch was so exciting that she slept for an hour in the car while Mike and I drove up to the Uncompahgre Plateau to look for some colors, but unfortunately all the trees above our elevation had pretty much shed their leaves already. Bummer...

Wednesday, September 30, 2009

Going Places

On Sunday Raeann officially started to crawl. She's been very determined to be able to go somewhere for some time now and I think she's delighted that she can actually go and get what she wants. I'm not too sure that our cat Tadd is thrilled with it however, after watching her diligently crawl after him even after he ran away and changed directions several times.

This is Wednesday...as you can see the crawling is no longer hesitant or slow. I think we are going to have our hands full shortly, as it seems we have a child determined to go places and at a fast rate too!


Sunday, September 13, 2009

A New Toy

Raeann has recently grown just enough that she can now play in the exersaucer. This has been a long time in coming, considering that I put it together in June. I think she's enjoying figuring it out.
This is one of my favorite expressions! My friend Claire says that she may have Mike's face but she has my expressions. Is this the "I wonder what you're doing; I'm not doing anything" look?

Sunday, September 6, 2009

Crib Fun

Raeann is getting so much more expression in her face and actions. You can certainly tell what she wants and how she's feeling.

Moments before I went to get the camera she was trying her hardest to eat the large rainforest noisemaker attached to her crib. Of course, once she saw the camera she decided to show off instead.

Saturday, August 22, 2009

Crystal Reservoir


Mike was doing some never-ending Colorado research and found that we have two reservoirs about 20 minutes from us that we didn't know about and they were suppose to be pretty good fishing. We haven't gotten any fishing in this summer, with Raeann, so we haven't even bothered to buy fishing licenses, but we wanted to go check it out and see if it was worth fishing at next summer. Crystal Reservoir is formed between Morrow Point Dam and Blue Mesa Dam and looks more like a river than a reservoir. The water level is constantly rising and dropping and you either walk your boat down or walk down and shore fish, which means not very many people take advantange of the fishing here. You can see Morrow Point Dam in this picture. I thought the coolest thing about the dam is that the power plant is actually built inside the mountain on the right.
Raeann LOVES the Snugli now that she can actually be turned around in it and see everything.
The reservoir is actually joined by Cimarron Creek. I saw at least two fish jump here at the seam.

Cimarron Creek
After crossing the bridge there was an even longer trail along the reservoir.

I finally got Mike to wear the Snugli. I think he actually enjoyed it.

Sunday, August 16, 2009

A Movin' and a Shakin'


I just love her smiles and giggles! It's really hard to get a giggle captured on the camera because you never know what she's going to laugh at. Something she laughs at one minute suddenly isn't all that funny to her the next.

I was hoping to catch Raeann's "headplow" where she puts her head down and her butt up and tries to push herself, but this is a cute capture anyway.

Wednesday, August 12, 2009

The Early Bird

Whoa birds! This scene in our backyard yesterday morning reminds me of Alfred Hitchcock's movie "Birds." These birds emptied both feeders that I had filled the morning before in just a couple of hours.

Silvershield Trail, Ouray

After seeing the falls, we decided to try this new trail we'd seen driving in. It was pretty steep at some parts, but we only went to the first overlook, which was about 0.3 miles.
A beautiful view of Ouray about halfway up the trail.
At the first overlook, called Memorial Overlook. The bench and rock memorial was built in memory of a woman. What a great place to leave your name!
The northern view...
Across the road were three mining buildings still intact. I've put orange squares around them to help you locate them better. It's amazing how the men even got to work every week!