Wednesday, January 5, 2011

Where to begin...

It's been a bit since I've done some major updating.  The holidays are always so busy and this year wasn't any different.  I'll do my best to try and remember some of the happenings during the last month...

Some sad news--Our friends the Nudd's officially moved to North Carolina:(  I'm so excited for them, but it's definitely been hard for everyone here in Chicago, especially Mike and Melissa, as they were best friends.  For a farewell party, some of us ladies went downtown for a ladies night/day:)  We stayed at Hotel Sax.  It was so fun.  We had a blast shopping, laughing and staying up almost all night talking.  It's been a few moons since I stayed up that late and it took me days to "get right", but it was definitely worth it.  Oh yeah, did I mention we ate?  Well, we ate and we ate good.  Here are a few pics:








Tulsa was our destination for Christmas.  We were so excited to get back home and I can assure you, the trip didn't disappoint.  (Monroe and I flew up early and Mark drove down a few days later.  We made the long drive back all together.)  We loved seeing family and friends and eating amazing food.  My parents went a little nuts on presents for Monroe, but she definitely enjoyed every second of it.  It was terribly hard to leave.  I still get teary-eyed just thinking about it:(  

 Bathing Beauties
 My wonderful parents making Christmas treats!
 Michelle and Rosie reading after opening gifts
 Me and my love ready for bed.
 Monroe pretty exhausted after opening her gifts.  
 Such a tiny little person and such a huge tree.
Some of her loot:) 

In other news, my sister-in-law, Michelle, has FINALLY started a cooking blog.  We have been trying to get her to do it for awhile now, and am so excited that she decided to take the plunge.  Here is a link to her blog.  I can't wait to try her bread recipe.  She has a knack for finding/creating the best recipes that are easy to accomplish.  I never thought I would ever make homemade apple sauce, until Michelle gave me her recipe.  I made it on Sunday and it was SO yummy, SO easy and SOOOO healthy.  

This is pretty random, (but when is this blog not?) but have you ever been to one of the theaters where you are served food during the movie?  I had never been to one, but Mark and Mike took Melissa and I the other night.  When we got there, every movie we had wanted to see was sold out, so we ended up seeing "Little Fockers".  It was pretty cute and believe it or not, the food was pretty good.

So we all know that Monroe is on her own time schedule.  She decides when she wants to do things and it is usually extremely late or extremely early.  She started taking steps a few weeks after her first birthday and we were so excited, because for once, she was doing something around the norm.  Well, she continued to take steps when she pleased for the next three months!  She is such an efficient crawler that it seemed she really didn't see the point of walking. When we arrived at home in Tulsa, everything changed.  The first night, she stood up in the middle of the living room and walked across the room.  She's been walking pretty consistently since.  I really think part of the delay came from the fact that she hates hard wood floors.  We have them throughout the house.  My parents just put in the most amazing carpet ever and I think it helped with the process.  She didn't seem as nervous to fall.

Here is a video of her walking after we got home.  


So this has gotten a bit long.  I am going to wrap it up for now, but I will continue later.  

  

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