Merry Christmas!!!

Okay, so I know I have a lot to write about between my last post and this one, but I figure I should write now on Christmas night while it's quiet and I'm feeling all warm and fuzzy.

So this has been the hardest Christmas I've ever had.  Lots of emotions, especially a mix of happy and sad.  In 29 Christmas' I've only spent one away from my family and it was 5 years ago.  I was a mess then knowing my family was 1300 miles away, but also hopeful because I knew that we would be joining them in a few short months.  We were also with part of Spencer's family and we didn't have any babies, so things were very different.  This year we were all alone just the four of us.  We were also right in the middle of a difficult move.  Some how all that stuff, though it made Christmas hard, just didn't matter.  I sat feeding my sweet little Alice then letting her cuddle on my chest before putting her in bed tonight reflecting on what a wonderful Christmas we had after all.  I will admit I was skeptical that it would be great.  I was emotional and lonely leading up to today, but ended up having a wonderful Christmas.  I got to spend Christmas Eve baking cookies for Santa with my happy and fun loving Lila who had a blast "painting" cookies for Santa.  I had fun letting her open her jammies from Auntie Cindy, putting out cookies, milk and carrots then reading "Elf on the Shelf" one last time before tucking her into bed.  Then once the girls were asleep I spent the next 2 hours wrapping presents.  Lila and Alice were so excited when they got up.  Lila ripped through all the presents, including Alice's.  They had so much fun playing with their new toys all day.  I got to cook my first Christmas dinner and I have to say it was pretty stinking good.  I spent the majority of the day doing that while watching Lila and Alice spend some quality time with their dad.  Watching Spencer play Play-doh cake factory, princess castle and "red light, green light" with his girls made my heart melt.  He even managed to get some things put away around our new apartment, not an easy task, I know.  We were then able to video chat with my family.  I miss them so much that it aches sometimes.  Christmas has only amplified that.  There were times today that I would watch Lila play so good by herself and think that she should be playing with her cousins.  Hopefully we will be able to go see them soon.

With all that said everything in my life, as hard as it has been, has helped me focus on the people that I truly love with all my heart in this world.  I am so grateful for an amazing husband who is such a kind, loving person.  He is strong for me when I am weak.  He is such a good support.  He is a wonderful father.  Lila even requests his bedtime stories over mine on occasion.  He is also my best friend.  I am so grateful for my two healthy baby girls.  I have felt so bad for them for the last couple of weeks.  I have not been able to give them the attention that I normally give to my sweet girls and it kills me.  I know it affects them some days because they get whiny and into stuff they don't normally care about.  I just have to remind myself to be patient, it has been hard for all of us.  I love these two with every fiber of my being.  The days can be long, but my love is strong and the time goes by so fast in hindsight.  I am so grateful for parents that love me and my family unconditionally.  As usual my mom and dad spoiled the girls rotten for Christmas.  You are both amazing parents, I love you!  I am grateful for my two sweet, funny and incredible sisters.  There is no one in the world like you two and I am so happy that we are as close as we are.  I wish we talked more, but I know life keeps all three of us busy.  I cherish every moment when we do talk.  You are both my best friends. I love you two like no one else, it is special and hard to describe.  I am so happy to have two girls.  I hope that they can have the special relationship that we share. I am grateful for my brother and nieces and nephew.  Maia, you married a wonderful man and made beautiful babies with him.  I love you kids like my own, truly.  Spencer and I are sorry there were no presents sent to you this year :(  We both felt bad, but know you understand.  We love you always and are very proud of you.  Brent you are like my brother, but I guess when you've known someone since you were 8 years old it's hard not to see them that way.  I love you!  Thank you for always being so sweet and fun with my Lila.  I know she loves you.  I am also grateful for my friends that I don't see very often.  I have a handleful of you and even though we don't talk much now that we are so far away I love you guys and cherish our friendship.  Who knows maybe one of these days I will be able to live close to you again.  With the way Spencer and I change the course of our lives anything could  happen (eye roll) hahaha.

Heavenly Father has a funny way of putting us through VERY trying times to help us focus on what really matters in this world and getting us on the path we are supposed to be on.  All I can think is mission accomplish (please no more trails, please).  I truly believe that everything happens for a reason.  The longer I live the more I believe that.  With that said, Spencer is now focusing on going to PA (Physician Assistant) school.  It is a two year Master's program.  It is very competitive to get into just like medical school, but I really think Spencer will be a great applicant and won't have too many problems getting in.  He will take micro-biology this spring and the GRE then apply for school. We will know no later than spring 2016 where he will go to school and by fall 2016 he will start school.  I am so beyond happy with this decision.  2 years as opposed to 7 years is awesome!  Plus it's cheaper and feasible to live on a VERY tight budget for 2 years.  I am excited for the process to start and to find out where we will be living while he goes to school.

Merry Christmas!!!! I had a hard, but wonderful Christmas!  Enjoy the pictures.

Santa came to our house

Helping Alice open her present

The after math

This one's for you Texas peeps

Ready for bed with our new bedding. Thanks Grandma and Poppy!

Lila "helping" Alice get to sleep

Almost there....

Well as of today I am 38 weeks pregnant!  I seriously cannot believe how fast this pregnancy has gone by.  I felt like with Lila I was pregnant forever because of the anticipation.  This time I'm super excited, but I guess with chasing my little Lila around it's made it go by so fast.
I ended up switching OB's back to the one I had with Lila and before her.  I REALLY like him and am glad I made the switch back to him.  Plus the hospital he delivers at is SO much nicer in my opinion.  I had an appointment with him today.  He said everything is looking and sounding great.  He's estimating our little girl to be about the same size Lila was when she was born (just under 7 lbs.).  The only down side is he's leaving for vacation the morning of May 8th (the day after my due date).  He wants to be the one to deliver the baby and I agree, so we have a possible induction scheduled for May 6th.  I'm super nervous to be induced seeing as how I REALLY want to go with no meds for this baby too.  I really think it's the healthiest choice and now I know I can do it.  We will see what happens.  I'm keeping my fingers crossed that she will come on her own before her due date like Lila did (she was 2 days before her due date).  Also the induction may be very tempting as I am SUPER uncomfortable this pregnancy.  It will be nice to have that pain gone, but I also know I will just be replacing it with the pain of breastfeeding and the recovery of childbirth.  Oh what we women go through for those precious little people. :)

38 weeks

With all that said we are completely ready for the new addition to our family.  Car seat is installed, clothes/toys washed and put away, swing and floor mat up, co-sleeper out, 20+ meals frozen and hospital bags packed.  Lila is going to stay with my mom and sisters for a few days while we are in the hospital and to have a couple days to bond with our new little baby in our house.  I'm having a hard time thinking about Lila being gone from me.  I've only ever been away from her for 2 nights in her 22 months of life.  I know she will have a blast with everyone and I will still get to see her every day, but I'm still worried about it.  I'm also so concerned about how she will react and feel about having to share her mommy.  Just today we were talking about it and I asked her if she will be okay to share me with the baby.  She just looked at me kinda funny and never really gave me an answer. hahaha.  I know it will all work out.  I guess these are just normal mommy concerns.  I'm pretty much done with my to do list before baby comes.  Just have a few food/meal preparations to finish, some cleaning and one very small sewing project to finish.  However after my appointment today I'm pretty confident I have at least one week or more to finish my list.  I feel like it's taking forever to get my things done.  Usually I'm pretty good about getting things done quickly, but with a toddler and having to take so many breaks because I don't feel well it's taking quite a while.  Where there's a will there's a way.  It will get done....I hope.
I have been lucky enough to have some nice breaks.  Spencer and I went beach camping for a weekend in Port Aransas.  We had so much fun getting away.  The weather wasn't warm enough for swimming, but we at least got to sit on the beach and relax.  Plus we were able to have a wonderful seafood dinner one night and four movies (2 rented and 2 in the theater).  We also had a nice relaxing breakfast our last morning.  He also treated me to an early Mother's Day date.  We had a nice dinner just the two of us and then went for a couples massage.  Oh that massage was a miracle.  It relieved so much pain and pressure.  Wish I could have one everyday.  It's been nice getting to have all this time with my Spencer. Unfortunately that is probably the end of it for a while.  Now with baby coming and Spencer REALLY hitting the books to take the MCAT on May 31st we won't have much time for anything else.

One of the things on my to do list was to get maternity pictures done.  Granny bought Lila an Easter dress, so I thought what a perfect time to get pictures.  So on Easter Sunday Maia, Hannah and Seth went with us on a little nature trail by their new house to get some pictures.  I was so happy with how they all turned out.  Thanks Maia again for our wonderful pictures.  I love having a photographer at my beckon call.  We had a great Easter.  Good food and company.  Although we missed Poppy and Grace who both had to work.  The kids and I decorated eggs and did an Easter egg hunt.  Both of which were a first for Lila.  We really didn't do anything like that last year because she was too little.  I had so much fun helping decorate and find eggs.  I think my favorite part of the day was her finding her Easter basket.  We got her a little basket filled with some candy and a few small gifts.  I then hide it outside and gave her a little poem to help her find it.  She knew right where to look from the poem.  She walked right outside into the backyard and said "It's right there!"  hahaha.  No fooling that one.  I'll post the video, but no laughing at my waddle.  Like I said I'm VERY uncomfortable.  I had such a fun day on Easter with my little family.  It's so fun getting to do these things with Lila now that she understands more of what's going on.  Funny part is when some one would ask her what she got in her basket the first thing she would say is "chocolate". lol.  I don't let her have candy/sugar very often, so she was obviously VERY excited about it.

We are excited about the near future and can't wait to share her name and pictures with everyone when she decides to join us.  Hopefully I will be able to write about it soon.

This little girl LOVES music.  She is singing/dancing ALL the time.  Just thought I'd share.

Sick Babies are NO Fun

Not sure why I feel inclined to write this post, but I do.  We have had a TERRIBLE cold and flu season for the whole family including the Emmons' and Boring Bunch.  When Maia and Brent moved from Shiner Spencer had a pretty nasty cold and from there it has just been one thing after the other.  It was about a week before Thanksgiving that Spencer came down with the cold.  He helped Brent and Maia move that weekend and shared with all of them.  Lila and I caught it as well, but it was only bad for a few days and then we were fine.  Well about 2-3 weeks later Spencer got sick again with what at first seemed like a cold, but we later figured out was a sinus infection.  Maia and I also got hit with a sinus infection a few weeks after our colds dissipated.  Lila thankfully never had her cold turn into one.

Then right before Christmas Lila got a stomach bug. YUCK!  Luckily the really gross part only lasted about 12 hours, but the nausea and loss of appetite lasted almost a full week.  Just about everyone in the family got this bug.  I think only Grandma, Poppy, Brent and Hannah made it through that one.  Lucky ducks!

Then just after New Year's Lila got a fever (only lasted a day, but was high 103) and a weird rash on her tummy and diaper area.  I think it was hand, foot and mouth disease, but a VERY mild case of it.  It only seemed to bother her for a few days and she was back to normal.  No one but Lila had any illness from that one.

Then just shy of 2 weeks ago Grace got really sick.  Fever, chills, aches and pains, and sore throat.  We had just been with her the day she got sick and I thought great now we get the flu.  Grace ended up however with Strep Throat and thankfully no one else got that one.

Just shy of a week after Grace came down with Strep Throat Lila got REALLY sick.  She started acting odd Sunday and by Monday afternoon had a fever.  The only other symptom I noticed with her was a stuffy nose besides the aches, pains and chills that come with having a fever.  She was miserably sick with a high fever, the highest it got was 104, from Monday afternoon until Thursday late morning.  I knew her throat wasn't sore though because she did a great job taking in fluids and never complained about her throat.  I guess I feel so inclined to share this is because that is the hardest thing I think I've ever had to go through.  Seeing those temps of 103 and 104 were terrifying.  There was about half a day where I had an extremely hard time getting her to take in fluids, which scared me to death.  I have this terrible habit of imagining the worst possible scenario.  Thank goodness this didn't even warrant a trip to the pediatrician.  On Thursday I called and got an appointment, but just a few hours after making the appointment Lila started getting up and moving around and eating like there was no tomorrow.  There were so many times though that I would just hold her and cuddle her and cry wishing my sweet, happy, lively, energetic baby back.  I couldn't even think that I wish I could take this illness from you because then I would be putting her little sister in danger with that high fever.  So far and luckily Spencer and I haven't gotten sick.  It sounded like the flu, but there is no way to be sure.  Could have been the flu, sinus infection or just some weird kid virus that Spencer and I have already had or our bodies know how to fight off.  I'm just keeping my fingers crossed that I don't end up with that high fever.  Needless to say I am SO happy that she is almost back to herself.  She is still a little sluggish and weak with a appetite that is hit or miss, but the worst part is over.  One night talking to Spencer while holding our feverish baby we talked about just how hard it is to have a sick child, the worry and sleeplessness from the worry.  I expressed how hard it is to be a parent.  Don't get me wrong it is the best most rewarding thing on this planet, but it's hard.  It's hard to love someone so much because you worry.  You want everything to be perfect for them.  You don't want them to get hurt or be sad or get sick, but you also know that all those things are just part of growing up and life in general.  I love being a mom so much and am so grateful to have a healthy and happy little girl. I just can't believe that she is 19 months old and besides that one short day she had a fever she has not had a severe illness, mostly just a few colds here and there.

So today I called my mom to see if we could come over to watch the Superbowl on Sunday and she tells me Seth is sick with a cold (eye roll).  What is it this season?  Guess we won't be seeing the Emmons' or the Boring's for a while still.  hahaha.  Hope you feel better soon little dude.

Baby Scott #2

I've been putting this post off for quite some time.  Always thinking well after this, or after that.  So I'm finally doing it and am excited to.  On September 3rd our little Scott family found out we are having baby #2.  I had been putting off taking a pregnancy test in the beginning because I was so nervous to have another newborn especially this time with a VERY active toddler.  I finally took the test that morning and sent Spencer a "are you ready" text because he was already at work.  I eventually took a second test just to double check that the first one was telling the truth ;) hahaha.  We waited to tell pretty much every one until after our first doctor appointment that was on September 30th. Although funny story is that SO many people guessed or had a pretty good idea that something was going on with me before we even spilled the beans.  I guess that wasn't too difficult when I was green around the gills oh ALL day and night. YUCK!  Mom of course guessed around 8 weeks, although I'm sure she knew before then by the way I had been acting, that was just the first time she vocalized it.  I got sick at exactly 6 weeks and stayed very green until 14 weeks.  I got so lucky with Lila, which I think made this even worse because I was not expecting it.  When I was 7 and 8 weeks is when we had our road trip to Nashville.  Let me just tell you that being in the car for a minimum of 14 hours (one way) was not the ideal way to have morning sickness and fatigue.  Why by the way do they insist on calling it morning sickness?  I changed the term for this pregnancy to all day sickness.  I would even wake up in the middle of the night from a dead sleep nauseous.  Boo, no fun!  Anyway I was very glad when that all ended and just in time for all the holidays with yummy food.  I definitely made up for any lack of eating in the beginning during the holidays.

8 weeks

At 16 weeks, just before Thanksgiving on the 21st I went to a sonography school to see if we could see the gender.  The weren't positive, but said they thought it was a boy!!!!!  Spencer is so excited to have a boy.  So am I of course.  All I want is a happy, healthy little baby.  With that said I was secretly hoping for another little girl.  Not only do I know what to do with girls seeing as how there are SO many in my family; I was also hoping for Lila to have a sister and playmate close in age.  I know boy or girl we will be so happy. 

It's a boy!!!????

One of my main pregnancy woes is that I worry A LOT about this little baby.  Luckily I felt him kick right about 17 weeks and he hasn't stopped since.  That gives me so much piece of mind.  Before I knew if I could get into that sonography school we bought a doppler on Amazon to hear the heartbeat at home.  I was having a freak out moment one night at home so my sweet Spencer bought it for me to ease my mind.  We didn't have insurance :( after my last appointment on the 30th of September until January 1 because of his awesome new job.  Sooooooo I worried even more not having heard the heartbeat yet.  On our doppler everything sounded great and at the sonography school every thing looked great too.  We went to the doctor again, finally, on January 6th and he confirmed that everything sounds good.  While we were there we scheduled our next visit which will include our anatomy scan seeing as how we weren't able to get one done at 20 weeks.  Hopefully we will be able to know for sure if it's a boy or girl.  I really will not be surprised to be told boy because of how different this pregnancy has been and because the sonography school was pretty convinced that it's a boy.

I've been putting off publishing this post, yes, again, until we had our anatomy scan.  Well after being rescheduled almost two weeks ago because the technician was sick I finally had it done today.  I had to go by myself because Spencer had to stay home with a sick Lila. :( The first thing she looked at was gender.  She told me "oh, your having another girl!"  I looked at her funny and responded "really, are you sure?"  So our little boy is now our little girl.  I was very surprised by this information.  I was really convinced it was a boy.  The rest of the scan went great!  The baby is measuring right where she should be and all the organs and bones look just as they should.  I waited til I got home to tell Spencer about the sonogram.  At first he didn't believe me haha, but we are both very excited.  All that matters to us is a healthy baby.  I'm excited for Lila.  I hope having a little sister will be fun for her.  I'm happy that the girls will be close in age to share toys, dolls, clothes, make up, school years, etc.  I love my sisters, they are my very best friends, but I was always a little sad that we never really got to share those things growing up.  I never went to school with Grace and only went to school with Maia for 2 years in elementary school.

face on

profile

It's a girl!

26 weeks

This sonogram made everything very real and got me super excited to add to our family.  Only 2 weeks left of the second trimester!  I have this sneaking suspicion nesting is just around the corner.  I've already started thinking about frozen meals and getting a few baby items that I'm hoping will make the transition from 1 to 2 babies a little bit easier.  More to come on the progress of the pregnancy and of course how our family is doing.

Holiday Season 2013

I loved our holiday season this year!  I know I already talked about Thanksgiving and our visit from Papa and Granny, but I forgot to add pictures of their visit to the last post so I will add them here with this one.  I felt bad not including any of those pictures.  I hadn't even thought to ask Granny for pictures because for some reason Spencer and I didn't take any (eye roll). I'm so bad at taking pictures.  Any way we loved our visit with them as always.  Can't wait for them to come back for another visit.  I would also love to make a trip up to Oregon to visit the farm again.  Maybe by the time summer is unbearable here in South Texas we'll be able to go visit.

Furniture Shopping

Seeing Spencer's work for the first time

Spencer's work

Eating Lime

Early Christmas present from Granny and Papa

Lunch with Granny

learning the color red with papa

playing with our new baby doll

The rest of the year was amazing for this little Scott family.  After Papa and Granny went home I had Spencer get out all of our Christmas decorations.  We realized that none of our lights worked anymore so we made an awesome trip to Target to load up on lights, a timer, Lila's stocking and holder and a few other fun decorations.  :)  That weekend Spencer and I decorated the house while Lila was taking a nap.  She was SO excited to see the tree and the outside lights.  It was so fun seeing her excitement over Christmas.  Granny got us an elf on the shelf this year and Spencer named him Buddy.  Lila has so much fun waking up each morning and looking for him.  On Christmas Eve we read Buddy's story one last time; she blew him kisses and waved bye and was totally fine with it.  I thought for sure that she would be upset when he wasn't there any more, guess not.  I think one of my favorite parts of Christmas this year was every night Spencer would come home from work and Lila would be at the door waiting for him and beg him to take her to see the "daindeer" aka reindeer.  One of our neighbors had a lawn ornament of a reindeer that moved its head. Lila thought this was the greatest thing ever.  Spencer could hardly get in the door from work and change his clothes without Lila having a meltdown over the daindeer.  Cutest part was that she equated the daindeer with dad.  So the two of them would bundle up and walk to see the daindeer and the other lights just about every night in December while I finished dinner.

enjoying some dad time before Christmas comes

Besides Christmas shopping there wasn't much else to do leading up to the big day.  Spencer and I got each other a new TV and a Chrome-cast.  The rest was all for Lila.  We had lots of fun wrapping her presents the difficult part was keeping her from unwrapping them before Christmas.  She did great up until Christmas Eve.  I was vacuuming and getting ready to host Christmas Eve dinner when she took advantage of mom not paying super close attention.  She got 1 1/2 presents opened before I realized what she was up to. hahahaha little stinker!  We let her watch her Sing-along-Song she opened, but kept the one she half way unwrapped under the tree one more day.  I have to say given the fact that she is so busy, into everything and very curious I thought for sure our tree would be destroyed at first sight, but she did really well.  Every once in a while she'd take an ornament down, but didn't break them.  The one she did break was really more my fault than hers.  It wasn't even on the tree at the time it broke.  Christmas Eve was awesome.  I thought it turned out really well.  We had tons of food. We ate yummy steak chili, biscuits and salad for dinner.  Then we baked Christmas Cookies.  I wasn't sure whether to double the recipe or not.  Well I doubled it and was cutting out cookies for hours.  It was a lot of fun, but man was I tired after.  Note to self DON'T double the recipe next year.  I always have so much fun doing this with the kids.  I'm glad I've had Maia's kids around to do it almost every year and soon enough my little Lila will be my helper.  I've done it by myself a few times, but it just isn't the same.  Spencer and I had so much fun hosting in our new house.  Spencer really got into the whole Christmas thing this year.  Usually he's just along with me on my crazy Christmas ride, but this year he got really into it.  I think with Lila being older and us having a place of our own really made the difference.

Helping our cousins open their Christmas Eve Jammies

Christmas Eve with our new diapers

Decorating a "daindeer"

Decorating cookies with our cousins

Eating Chili

Cookie Decorating. mmmmm Frosting!

Watching our highjacked Christmas present on Christmas Eve

Christmas day was wonderful!  We woke up just the three of us in our own house to Santa presents.  Lila made a straight shot for her big Santa present and started ripping into it.  She got a Cozy Coupe and some Elmo stuff from Santa!  Then we ate breakfast.  After breakfast we Skyped with Granny and Papa while Lila opened the rest of her gifts.  She got two more Disney Sing-along-songs, some food for her kitchen, a helmet, and a baby doll bed from mom and dad.  Dad shopped and picked out his own present for Lila, a Disney Princess Adventure Hut with tunnel.  Lila and the cats love this gift.  Spencer did a great job.  I'm glad he did that for Lila.  One of my greatest memories of Christmas is always having a gift from just dad under the tree.  I think there was only one year he didn't do this and he's heard about it plenty since then.  Guess what though dad still does a dad gift every year for his three adult daughters.  Love you dad!  After presents were done we played for a little while then got ready to go to Grandma and Poppy's house.  We had more presents to open up there of course.  The Boring's got her a music set equipped with drum, tambourine, maracas, castanets, and keyboard type things.  Lila LOVES these toys. In fact, on the way home that night she would NOT get in her car seat unless she could hold onto her drum and drumsticks.  Grandma and poppy got her a table and chairs as well as some more Little People toys, Grace got her a stuffed animal that looks just like Grandma's dog, Oskar, that's even what she calls it, and a book.  We ate lots of good food all day and enjoyed everyone's company.  It was a great day and so nice to be together as just our little family Christmas morning.  We didn't get that last year because Spencer was working on the ambulance, but now that he's a teacher he got the whole week of Christmas off and two days for New Year's!  Yahoo!  Really enjoyed having him home with us, but it was hard when he had to go back to work.
We also got our cloth diapers from Granny and Papa, Thank you!  So far I am really enjoying the cloth diapering.  It's really not as hard or gross as I thought it would be and the extra laundry really doesn't bother me at all.  I'm so relieved and glad we decided to go that route.  Thank you Granny and Papa!  Lila also got a gift card and we all got pajamas in the mail from Spencer's Brother and Sister.  I'd say we had an incredible Christmas!  Felt lots of love from all of our family and friends.

Santa Presents Christmas Morning

Tree Christmas morning

Waking up Christmas morning

This is why we got a helmet for Christmas

Our first bike ride

our new car

Christmas Jammies

Dad putting our car together

Opening our presents with Granny and Papa

New Year's was fun too.  We went over to Grandma and Poppy's house for New Year's Eve.  We ate finger foods and had our friends/family Luke, Jalayne and Janie come over too.  We had a great time until Lila got tired, hit her head on the stair railing and then freaked out when Hannah tried to distract her by taking her outside to see the fireworks. hahaha It was a miracle that she even went to bed.  Although I'm convinced that her being tired was part of the problem.  It was so sweet though.  She was trying to be brave, but every time she'd here a firework go off she'd say "boom, fire" and then make this weird, awkward laugh like she thought it was funny, but you could tell she was terrified.  Awww sweet little baby.  Any way Grandma and I got her calmed down and put her in bed and she was out like a light. :)  Good girl!  The rest of the night was spent playing an insanely long game of Uno with Maia, Grandma, Hannah, Teen, Seth and Rissa.  I stayed up til 2 AM!!!! Wow I haven't done that since Lila was born and I didn't have any other choice. Hehehe.

Spencer and I had a wonderful year!  Lots of great things happened for our family.  The best coming in my next post. :)  I'm sure 2014 will be just as good if not better.  I'm excited for our future together.  We've already gotten off to a good start.  We bought an annual zoo pass and already got to go this past Saturday.  Lila had SO much fun.  It is amazing how much she is learning, growing and changing.  Just since the last post she has started saying phrases.  She can even put enough words together to retell something that has happened.  She can now count to 5 and can say her alphabet up to the letter D.  She is so independent and determined.  When we took her to the zoo she of course didn't want to stay in here stroller because she can't see everything, so we take her out, but she doesn't want to hold hands.  So, we had to buy her a backpack with a tail/leash to hold onto her.  It felt weird at first "walking" my daughter, but it worked for all of us.  She was happy and I knew where she was.  I can't wait to take her again all she's talked about the last few days is the elephant and tiger.  Oh ya and she can say elephant now.  :)  I love my little family so much.  They make me one happy mommy.

Day at the zoo.  We LOVE Elephants

our new backpack

Playing in mom's sunglasses

helping Poppy

uh oh!