More Teeth and where has the year gone!!

So Evalyn has gotten her top two teeth!! She now has her 4 front teeth. I will post pictures when she actually lets us see them. I only get to see them when she is on her back getting her diaper changed. They are super cute!!

Just started planning Evalyn's 1st birthday party. I can't believe that she is going to be one! Time goes by way too fast!

Merry Christmas everyone!

Fun Misc. PIctures

Just some fun pictures.

Evalyn really likes whip cream.



Grandpa playing with Evalyn...she just loves him!



My beautiful dog. Bear was such a good sport for me. This was in our back yard while raking leaves.

Santa!

Now that we live out in Minnetonka, we have new places to go do things. We went out to Excelsior for thier open air market. We got to ride the trolly and Evalyn met Santa for the first time! It was so cute. She did pretty good, but was pretty tired by the time she saw Santa. She couldn't take her eyes off of him, it was really sweet.

Thanksgiving

We went to Lowell's for Thanksgiving. We got to see Mary, Patrick and Addie too. Addie is walking now, so cute! The girls were so cute together. I can't wait to watch them grow up. They are so blessed to be close in age!

Great Aunt Lynn was in town from Sweden. It was so nice that she got to see the girls.


Love this funny face! She makes us laugh!



Grandpa with the babies! He's so in love with them!



Addie in her new winter coat and hat. She's stylin'!

Halloween

Our first Halloween in our new house!! We got a surprise visit from Aunt Mary, Uncle Patrick and Cousin Addie!! We were excited to meet some of our neighbors. We had a grand total of like 15 kids!! So different from going to the Monners where they get several HUNDRED!!

I love little kid costumes. They are so sweet. We had farm animals in our family this Halloween. Connor had fun picking out his costume at Ragstock. It was one of the costumes that he will be able to wear again. One of his favorite things to wear is his top hat that we got him for our wedding. He went trick-or-treating in downtown Hopkins with his friend Gilbert. They had a good time running around... oh, and getting candy :)

Here are some pics!!

Scary Connor:


Cool Connor:

Here are the little ones. Addie the chicken and Evalyn the cow.

Funny Addie!!

Hmm... is Addie's cheek soft??

The beautiful babies!

Here is Evalyn outside on the front step... with the pumpkins.

Crawling

So my life had changed quite a bit!! Evalyn is now crawling. It's so cute to watch her move around! I was checking email one morning (as usual) and Evalyn was playing on the floor with her toys. I looked up to see her and, to my surprise, NO Evalyn. She had crawled into the kitchen. She was happily playing with a pair of my shoes. These shoes now get dragged all around the house.

Gus and Bear are not so keen on the crawling. Bear is better, as long as he is not sleeping. He lays there and lets her tug on his ears and play with the tags on his collar. It's so sweet. Of course, he gets to clean her ears and face while she does it! Gus just gets mad now, and leaves.

So, here is where she ended up the other day....under a chair in our family room!!

She was also moving around at Addie's birthday party.

Connor's Championship Game

Connor played football in Big Lake this year. It was sometimes difficult to get him there, but Chris and Kevin (Connor's Step-Dad) managed to work it out.

Connor's team made it all the way to the championship game. They came in 2nd! It was a really tough game. The Rogers team that they played was undefeated, and the ONLY team that Connor's team lost to. He had a great season, made some friends and had a good time. Connor is really fun to watch play, he's really good!!

Here are some photos!

Evalyn's Dedication

We dedicated Evalyn on October 4th, 2009. We were blessed to have family and friends attend. She is very loved and has many people that are praying for her, and are excited to teach her about Jesus.

Connor, the Hasketts, and the Monners all came up and prayed for her and pledged to teach her about God.

It was such a wonderful event. I cried through most of it because it was so amazing and I felt so blessed to have so many people there that love our family and little Evalyn.

Did I mention that Connor is Evalyn's favorite person!!

Pumpkin Patch

We took Evalyn to her first pumpkin patch. We had lots of fun getting pictures of her. She usually wants to touch everything she can get her little hands on, but was not interested in touching anything at the pumpkin patch.

Connor was hanging out with Uncle Jim working on a retaining wall. He is very much in the teen years and wanted to earn money. He did well that day! Jim was very happy to have the help of a teenager too.

Daddy had a good time showing her all the different pumpkins and squash.

She wasn't real sure she liked sitting on the pumpkins. It was a little strange, but so cute!



Mommy and Evalyn posing for Daddy.

Getting Bigger

It is so amazing how fast babies grown. Evalyn is almost 6 months old now. She is about 15 lbs and growing every day. She has changed so much in the past month, it's so awesome to watch.

It seems everyday there is some new thing that she is doing. I love to watch her change and learn new things. She is grabbing for toys on her tummy now, and she can move around in a circle. She is sitting pretty good, she just needs a little help to steady

herself. She loves to chew on my fingers and puts them in her mouth every chance she gets. Good thing she doesn't have teeth

yet! She bites hard!

We gave her rice cereal for the first time today. She did pretty good, as long as she could suck on the spoon too. Hopefully that will continue to go well. Dad is going to try tomorrow night :) She is so interested in our food that we need to get her going before she tries to eat ours!! She intently watches you put the food into your mouth and then go for more. It's really funny to watch.

She still loves to stretch and stand. She loves to talk to her toys a lot. She gets frustrated when she can't shove them into her mouth.

Father's Day Weekend

We all went up to the cabin for Father's Day. Chris, Connor, Evlayn, Lowell and myself. We had lots of fun. We went and got ice cream, the boys went to the races, we went for a boat ride and Chris and Connor played video games. Chris and Connor even braved the cold water and went swimming with Bear. Evlayn and I hung out on the boat, she can't wear sunblock yet. It was so beautiful on Saturday. Sunday it rained, but that provided father/son bonding time for Chris and Connor... playing video games.

My Mosaic

There are some really cool things on facebook. I really liked doing this. If you have some time, this is a fun thing to do. Here are the directions on how to do it:














a. Type your answer to each of the questions below into Flickr Search (http://www.flickr.com/).
b. Using ONLY the first page, pick an image.
c. Copy and paste each of the URLs for the images into Mosaic Maker. Change rows to 3 and columns to 3 (http://bighugelabs.com/flickr/mosaic.php).
d. Save the image and post it on this note!
e. If you're tagged, pass it on. And tag me. :)

The Questions:
1. What is your first name?
2. What is your favorite food?
3. What is your favorite color?
4. Favorite drink?
5. Dream vacation?
6. Favorite hobby?
7. What you want to be when you grow up?
8. What do you love most in life?
9. One word to describe you.

Fun Craft Project

Last year I made a bulletin board set for Cora for her birthday. One side was padded and the other is for pins. Madeline turned 5 today! Sarah thought that she would really like the same thing for her birthday... with Butterflies! So I decided I should make one for Sophie too. I was worried that Sophie would feel left out with Cora and Madeline each having one. Plus they are really easy to make and lots of fun! Here are some pictures.

Amazing

I have had the wonderful opportunity to stay home with Evalyn. Granted it was not by choice, YF made it for me, by laying me off and giving my job to the person I helped hire to take over while I was on maternity leave. Crappy thing to do, but I am looking for the positive in it.

Evalyn is 3 months old now and amazing! She changes so much everyday. Just today she figured out that she has hands. She would look at them and then put them in her mouth. So cute! She is close to 12.5 pounds now. We are working on getting her on a schedule, that's a lot of fun. Working out nap times and bed time. She likes getting a bath now at least. It probably helps that we have a heater in the ceiling of the basement bathroom. It's like her own personal dryer. She LOVES it. Chris holds her under it and she just smiles!

She is starting to recognize people other than Chris, myself and Connor. She knows her Aunt Sarah, she gives her lots of smiles! She loves her Aunt Jen too. She likes it when Cora sings to her. It seems to calm her down.

We were lucky enough to have Uncle Peter home for Easter this year. Evalyn loved him. I think because he has a deep voice like her daddy. Peter changed his first diaper while he was home. It was a fun learning experience! Peter took some pictures to mark the occasion. I will have to post those when I get them! Here's a pic of the two of them!

Great Grandma Emily was home from Arizona for Easter. She got to see Evalyn for the first time. It was so great to have her finally meet her. All Evalyn wanted to do was stretch, but let Grandma hold her anyway.




We are also trying to do tummy time. She is NOT a big fan of that. I do try, but I am a wimp, and we she gets upset I move her back to her back. I got some advice from some people at church to try using the boppy to do it. That has worked better. Here are some cute pictures.





She is also so in love with her daddy. Chris came home from work yesterday, she was nursing and stopped so that she could look at her daddy and smile. She always stops and looks at Chris when he comes into the room. She also knows his voice really well and constantly looks for him if she can hear him, but he's not in the room. It's so sweet. We also think she is starting to look more like him.

She went through a weird phase of not wanting to nurse any where except at home, and if I did manage to get her to nurse somewhere else, it had to be laying down. I got the cutest picture of her at her Granpa's house! She was so conked out!


Over spring break we went and took pictures with Cora, Sophie, Madeline, Elizabeth, Connor and Evalyn. They are so sweet. Big Connor in the middle of all the girls that love him so! If we get digital images of those photos I will put one on. I just love how they turned out.

Will write more soon!

1 Month Old

What a great 1 month birthday, Valentine's Day! It has been an awesome month. We love having Evalyn. She continues to grow, over 8 lbs now. She stared smiling, so cute! She is sleeping at night now, but only as long as she can sleep on mommy. I like getting the sleep, but miss being able to sleep on my side. She loves to lay on the floor and stretch. She's still so long! She is an amazing blessing and watching her grow and change is so wonderful. I could stare at her all day long... wait, that's what I mostly do all day ;)

Evalyn with Family!

Evalyn had some visitors this week. Her grandpa, and her Aunt Mary and Uncle Patrick came to see her. They brought her 3 month old cousin Adeline with. We also got a nice picture of her with her big brother.

She continues to do well. She lost 10 oz in the hospital and they wanted me to supplement with formula to get her weight up. I did it for 2 days, but was really unhappy with the idea of giving her formula. So I stopped, and decided I would try feeding her every 2 hours. It worked! She is now up to 6 lb. 7 oz.