Merry Christmas!

We are having a fabulous day and hope you are too! My younger brother and mom were able to come over and we have been having lots of fun. Santa was very good to us, Avery got lots of fun stuff, as did mom and dad. Of course the best present of the year came in May, we are having a great first Christmas as a family of 3 (10 counting all the animals) :).

She makes my heart sing.

Christmas card photo shoot

I wanted a picture of Avery with all the dogs for our Christmas card this year so we got everyone dressed up and started snapping away. We didn't have much luck since no one would hold still but oh well. Here are a few cute ones! The dogs hate being dressed up...

After

Here is Michaels back now-

7 Months

Another month gone by way too fast! I think things have really sped up due to the holidays. I am excited that Avery will finally get to meet her Uncle Bud! Here are the things I want to remember about Avery right now:
-Wearing 6 month pants and 3 and 6 month shirts
-Hates getting her nose wiped
-Loves to eat bananas, applesauce, carrots and squash. Hates peas. We can't eat much anymore without her wanting to try a bite!
-Size 2 diapers
-She is starting to move around, a lot! She kind of army crawls/inch worms all over but gets up on all fours and rocks, too. We're pretty sure she'll be crawling by the end of the year.
-Still no teeth!
-She bit me the other day when she was eating so I said NO kinda loud (it hurt!) and she stuck out her bottom lip so far and cried like I had really hurt her feelings. It was sad.
-She is still sleeping 12 hours a night.
-She knows what 'cute' means. Anytime someone calls her cute she gets the biggest smile.
We are very excited for Christmas next week and for Avery to see all her toys! Here are some pictures- it's getting harder to get good pictures, she's always moving!

Love this shirt...

And LOVE this girl!

Wordless Wednesday- Booger face

Before...

Michael has had back problems off and on since we met. About two weeks ago he hurt it again but it didn't eventually get better like it did in the past. He went in for an MRI and it showed a pretty bad herniated disc. He was referred to a neurosurgeon who recommended surgery. That was a week ago- and today here we are getting surgery. So here is the 'before' picture of his back, we'll take an 'after' picture later today!

Why I bought shatterproof ornaments

Because who can resist sparkles?

Food!

We've started feeding Avery baby food on a more regular basis. Usually in the evening I'll set her on the counter in her bumbo and feed her. It worked pretty well but the last week or so she has been more interested in trying to twist around and grab whatever is on the counter (knives, the blender, toaster, other kid-friendly stuff) instead of eating. So tonight we pulled out the high chair and she did great! Here she is with her apple-blueberry mustache.

Christmas Parade

Today was the Bend Christmas Parade in downtown. Avery and I went down and met up with Chad, Kayte, Paige and Rory. It was a beautiful day! A little chilly but sunny and clear skies. The parade was really long, I think at one point they said the longest Christmas parade in Oregon but it was fun.
Avery didn't seem too impressed- but probably because it was her nap time. We saw the polar express, old cars, lots of horses and of course Santa! The funniest (or saddest, however you look at it) was probably the Bend high school alumni float- I'll include a picture of it so you can see what I mean.
Overall it was a fun day- we got home and took a nap since we're both a little sick and then our new freezer got delivered. So excited to have a bigger freezer in the garage! Our old one just decided to quit working about a week and a half ago- I lost all of the breast milk I had been pumping and freezing for the last SIX MONTHS. So sad, it made me sick to have to throw all of that away. Anyways, we got a good deal on a new one so I guess it's time to start filling it up! I see a trip to Costco in the near future.

Getting in the spirit!

Our tree is up and decorated and it's only December 1st! I'm pretty sure that's a record for me. I actually put it up and decorated it last night but I thought it could use more so I went to Target today and bought more ornaments. I think it looks awesome! II think it would still be cool to put even more on but I'll give it a few days.

We are going to buy Avery a new ornament every year- this year we found one at the holiday show we went to a couple weeks ago. It has 3 bears on it, a mom, a dad and a baby and we had them write her name and the year on it. We thought it was perfect because our name for her is 'tiny bear'.

We are getting really excited for Christmas this year. Even though Avery won't really know what's going on its going to be fun!