Christmas Decorating and a few extras

This weekend we FINALLY finished decorating our house for Christmas!  Decorating our tree was filled with lots of smiles, "oh wows" from Shiloh and laughter from Marc and me!!  I think that my favorite moment was when Shiloh first saw the tree!  She was napping when we put the tree up and put lights on it, so when she saw it, the tree was already lit up with a few ornaments on it.  Right when she saw the tree she got a huge grin on her face and said "treeeeee!"  This was adorable to me for two reasons; one because Shiloh knows the word tree and secondly because  she was so excited about the tree being in our house!

I was very thankful that we have many plastic ornaments because Shiloh had a really good time playing with them and putting them in the tree. I love that we have many round ornaments because Shiloh thinks they are all balls to play with.  Just about everytime she looked at the tree she would say "ball" and get really excited about it!

Shortly after discovering the balls, or ornaments, Shiloh looked at the ground and said "uh, oh."  She knelt down and begin trying to clean up the pine needles that had fallen.  I just started laughing and taking pictures, of course!!

Shiloh is trying to clean up the fallen pine needles!

Shiloh is excitedly playing with the ornaments!

This past weekend Shiloh, Marc and I went to Waco to celebrate Mason's THIRD BIRTHDAY!!  We stopped by Baylor's campus and took a few pictures on Judge Baylor's lap!!!  Here they are!!!

I would like to end this blog entry by praising the Lord for such a beautiful day today!!!  75 degrees in December was AMAZING!!  I decided to go to the Dallas Arboretum with Shiloh, Sara and Rylie!!  Here are a few pictures!

I love this picture because the leaves in Sara's hands are almost the same size as Baby Rylie!

Shiloh wasn't really wanting to take pictures with me, so this is one of the best I got!

Pictures!

These pictures tell what else we've been up to lately!

Here's one of Shiloh's cute Christmas outfits!  She was playing outside while dad and I were finishing up cleaning out the garage and decorating our house for Chrismas!

 All bundled up!

 She decided that she wanted to help sweep our back porch

Grandma (Juno) and Shiloh on Thanksgiving!!  Shiloh and Juno were cooking!

Mommy and daughter!

Marc and I got to go to the Stars game with our good friends, the Marvins!!  Our seats were on the glass!!

My friends and I went to the midnight showing of Harry Potter!!!

In November Shiloh had her first trip to the hospital. That little spot on her shirt is blood :(

 Playing at the park!

Daddy reading to Shiloh

 Walking down the sidewalk!

 Our little chef made homemade blackberry jam . . . on her face!



Shoes!

Thanksgiving just flew by and now here we are ready for Christmas!!  My last post was just after Halloween, so I'll fill you in before jumping into our more recent stuff!  November was quite the busy month for us as we celebrated Thanksgiving for about 10 days!  We started celebrating the weekend before (November 19-21), continued to celebrate on Thanksgiving Day, the Friday after and the Saturday after that!  On that Sunday, we partied with Mike and Amanda for their joint birthday party!!  Happy birthday to my wonderful sister in law and brother in law!

The Friday after Thanksgiving was our 3rd annual Friend Thanksgiving!!  This year we invited all of our church friends over and cooked a big Thanksgiving meal!  It is really special to because we get to spend some wonderful quality time with each other and we are all learning how to make the typical Thanksgiving food!  I'm proud to announce that this was my first year to cook a turkey by myself and I think it turned out GREAT!!  The past two years I've had some friends help me, but this year I flew solo!!

The week after Thanksgiving Marc and I wanted to rest, BUT CHRISTMAS TIME IS HERE!!  We began taking out our Christmas lights and decorations, which as it turns out are pretty scarce.  I thought we had more decorative stuff, but the only things that survived were lights and stockings.  We had some candles and a few other things, but the candles melted and ruined a few small things we had.  We're going to start adding to our Christmas decorating as the years go on.  I guess that's the beauty of time you can also improve with it!

In the traditional Marc and Reci style, we got extremely distracted as we began putting lights up on our bushes.  It was a beautiful 75 degree day, and Marc and I were enjoying the outdoors!  We started testing the lights and laying them out on the grass.  As we did this, we noticed that our garage was in desperate need of reorganizing.  We paused our Christmas decorating and began reorganizing our garage.  Excitedly, we can now fit TWO cars in our two car garage, and this is a first since we've lived in our house!!  On the other hand, our bushes just barely got Christmas lights on them when Shiloh woke up from her nap and stopped us from working!

How can I mention Shiloh without talking about how much she's changed!!!  Shiloh has mastered walking and has moved onto running!!  Just recently she's tried to hop, and it's really cute because she cannot quite figure it out.  She'll jump up onto her toes and then lose her balance.  This is usually followed by a huge grin and a few giggles!  I love it! 

Shiloh has also started to grasp talking!!  It's been really exciting for Marc and I as we've seen Shiloh begin to understand that objects have names.  For example, being the girl that she is, she's learned the word "Shoes." 

Funny story about shoes:  When Shiloh was about 7 months old and teething, she would pick up our shoes and try to bite them ... eeewwwww.  We thought this was gross and began putting out shoes away and out of Shiloh's grasp.  Anytime she ever saw a shoe, we'd run and put it away.  Apparently, she has learned that shoes do not go in random places on the floor.  When she sees shoes that are not put away, she'll repeat the word "shoes" over and over.  She'll then pick them up and hand them to Marc and I so that we will put them away!!  I guess that Shiloh is taking her cleaning to a new level, and that's okay with me!

Here are some pictures from Thanksgiving and some time with family!

Marc and I were riding with Shiloh on the paddle boat!! 

This is Marc's model picture! I cannot show pictures of our Thanksgiving at the lake without mentioning  our exciting motor cycle riding.  Marc and I both drove a motorcycle for the first time this weekend.  Marc turned out to be pretty good, and I almost died!

My dad and Marc walkingon the dock with Shiloh!

Shiloh running around

Daddy and daughter playing peek a boo with Mommy!

                                                                          Uncle CJ

 Everyone at the lake

It's been almost 3 weeks since Shiloh's first birthday, and I feel like I have so much to report!

I'm going to start this blog with pictures from our church's kids carnival for Halloween! Becuase I'm a beginning sewer, you can tell that Shiloh's costume is homemade. Overall, I was pretty happy with her costume though!

Prepare yourself because the rest of this blog post is full of silly Shiloh-isms and fun facts about her!

SHILOH FINALLY SLEPT THROUGH THE NIGHT!!!! Last night, I put her down at 7 and she didn't wake up until 5am! Of course, we are going to work on turning that 5 am to 7-8, but still it's a huge improvement! I'm trying not to get my hopes up too much because she's only slept through the night one time so far. I am currently praying that it wasn't a case of exhaustion, but that it's a new habit!! Either case though, it's a step in the right direction!

On another fun note, Shiloh has developed a new hobby! When she was a few months younger I turned her hobby of pulling things out of drawers into a useful chore. That is how I get her to help me with the laundry. Well . . . she's developed another cleaning hobby, only this time she's actually somewhat aware of what she's doing!

The other week, she picked up a paper towel and started scrubbing the floor. She then wiped off the walls and continued trying to clean with it! I laughed so hard that she started giggling. I think my laughter has encouraged this clean behavior because she continues to LOVE trying to clean the house! Of course, I love it too!! Here's a video of her cleaning the floor! I think my favorite part of this video is the fact that she picks up a piece of dirt and places it in the paper towel, just like mom!

Shiloh now looks like a toddler as she toddles around the house! It's adorable! She also had her first pony tail the other day, which makes her look even more grown up!! Here's a picture!

Shiloh's walking is starting to turn into running. I knew when she started walking that it would only be a matter of time, but she's getting fast enough to make me pick up my pace a little! Here's a video of Shiloh playing with Daddy! She's having so much fun that she falls over :)

Shiloh loves to pretend to talk on the phone! Here's a short video of her pretending to talk on my phone! I would also like to add that at one years old, Shiloh can unlock an iphone and play songs on itunes.

Shiloh's always been so energetic that she's never really been a cuddler, which is why Marc and I love that she's learned how to hug! Her hugs are very special to us! Here's a video of Shiloh hugging Daddy!

Shiloh is 1 Today!!!

At 4:29 pm one year ago today, Marc and I were celebrating the birth of our beautiful daughter!! We waited for several months to meet Shiloh, and here it is one year later . . . her first birthday!! What a great time for reflection. I think that's why I'm reminded of the first time I ever held Shiloh. It was beautiful, sweet, and a relief after such a long day. Here is a picture of me holding Shiloh for the first time!

I am so thankful for this past year with our precious little girl! The Lord has truly blessed Marc and I! Looking back, I cannot even say my favorite memory because Shiloh has developed so much! I've watched her learn to smile, laugh, eat, speak, roll over, crawl, and now walk. Wow! I love watching her grow and change, but I feel like she's growing so quickly that I can't even keep up.

Just yesterday our little lady decided that she didn't want to crawl anymore, she prefers walking! In the morning, she put on a little purse and walked out of her playroom!! It was so cute that I took a picture!

Being her first day of walking, of course, I took some videos of her!! Here is a video of Shiloh walking down the sidewalk!

Here are some pictures of her outside yesterday!

AND we can't forget today!! To celebrate Shiloh's birthday, we went to a little kids play area at Firewheel Mall! Since she only decided to walk yesterday, it's been so much fun watching her!! Here are some pictures from that!