Almost there.

Rebecah is 11 months old today. This picture was taken two weeks ago, but she looks the same to me. She is still about 17 lbs and is always on the go. I noticed for the first time today that she is finally up on her hands and knees crawling. For the past 6 weeks or so she has just been going around like an inchworm on her belly. She sprouted her 8th tooth so we'll see how long our break is before she starts shooting out molars. I can't believe we'll be celebrating her birthday in a month!

She and Kimball have been having a lot of fun playing together and I'm surprised how rough she lets Kimball be before she has enough.

Thanksgiving Visit

This year for Thanksgiving we decided to spend the week in St. Louis with our family. We started our vacation with a trip to Memphis to attend the temple. While at the temple we saw Annette's sister, Sharon, and her family. It was good to see the Leighs because it had been a year and a half since we last saw them.



After Memphis it was on to St. Louis. We spent the first 3 days of our trip with my family and we had a lot of cousin time. My sister, Kristin, and her family are currently living with my mom so we were excited to see our boy cousins for a third time this year. Kimball loved having the boy playmates.



We had my sister step out of the kitchen, her favorite place to be, so she could snap some family pictures for us. Joseph was also able to get some really cute pictures of Cita as well.


On Tuesday we had Thanksgiving dinner with my family and the food was delish. We had all the usual Thanksgiving foods and 3 pies. We enjoyed seeing Laura and her family while we were there too. They say baby Amy shreaks, but I am still waiting to hear her in action.




Wednesday morning we headed up to the Coffey house to spend the last three days of our trip. We saw more family and had a great time and good food. Grandma kindly bought a new car toy for Kimball to play with and it was an instant hit. He wants one for our house now too.

After a tasty dinner on Thanksgiving Joseph and I went with Mandy and Jonathan to see Despicable Me. I had never heard of it but it had a really cute ending. My sister, Heather, worked at a movie theater when she was a teenager and I always thought it was strange when she said people would come to the movies on Thanksgiving and Christmas. I guess I'm now in the strange category since we went to the movies on Thanksgiving. It was kind of nice though to go watch a movie and then come home for pie.

While with the Coffeys we also took a tour of the Cathedral Basilica in downtown St. Louis. It was beautiful. It is well know for its mosaics and I now know why. We also went to the Mills Mall...for some fun. We planned on ice skating, but the free skating was almost over so we did some other fun rides instead. Here are some pictures of Kimball sitting in various cars that we saw throughout the mall.



Here are some pictures of us on a car ride. The pictures are a little fuzzy because the cars whipped around the curve of the track so quickly. Kimball was a little alarmed to be thrown around each corner...I was too for that matter!



My one regret about the visit with the Coffeys is that we didn't get more pictures. It never seemed to be a good time or baby Jo was sleeping or not feeling well. Next visit we'll have to get more pictures.

We had a great time but it is also nice to be back home and in our own beds again.

Wicked

Over the weekend Joseph and I went to Little Rock to see a performance of Wicked. I was so disappointed because I forgot our camera. I wanted a picture outside in front of the huge Wicked poster.

I was really excited to see Wicked because I have loved the music ever since I was introduced to it 6 1/2 years ago. The show was fabulous and I loved the excitement that came from the crowd and the atmosphere.

Seeing Wicked has resparked Joseph's excitement for Broadway type performances and he is looking into other shows that will be coming our way.

Kimball was very sad he couldn't go with us to see the Wicked Witch but we brought him back the playbill from the show and he was thrilled.

10 Months

Rebecah turned 10 months old last Sunday. It's hard to believe she is so old. She weighs almost 17 pounds, got three new teeth and learned how to army crawl this month. She is perfectly content to scoot around on her tummy and has no interest when we put her up on her knees. She just rolls back into a sitting position. She is a happy girl as long as I'm holding her or not going too far. She struggled with the time change but is slowly settling in to the new time.

A lot of people comment how much she looks like Kimball and people frequently mistake her for a boy even when she is wearing pink. Poor girl.

Showing off 5 of her 6 teeth.


Sitting on Kimball's bed. They play on his bed after his nap just about every day.


Ready for some action.

Fall Tree

I was bemoaning the fact that we will be gone over Thanksgiving and won't be able to set up the Christmas tree the day after Thanksgiving when Joseph decided to come up with a great solution...a Fall tree.

We set up the Christmas tree and then went shopping for decorations. We found some Christmas ornaments 50% off that were a perfect brown color. I personally would never use them for Christmas because for some reason brown does not say "Christmas" to me. Anyway, we also got some silk leaves in fall colors and a few other decorations.

Kimball had a blast decorating the tree and Kimball happily clustered the decorations at the bottom where he could reach.

I think the end product turned out well. The leaves really help to add color to the tree.


Kimball with his tree.



Kimball and Rebecah with the tree. Rebecah had been crying so that's why her face is red. I had put her down so I could take the pictures, shame on me! Gotta love that separation stage.

Family Hike

As part of our Halloween festivities we went on a family hike at Petit Jean State Park. Our trail was only 1/4 of a mile but we had a nice time. There were big rocks to climb on and a little cave area to look around in. Here are some pictures from our fun day.

Halloween

We had a fun Halloween this year. Kimball was really excited to dress up this year. We were going to be the Berenstain Bear family, but I couldn't find clothes for us so I was off the hook on dressing up. Since we weren't the bear Kimball said he wanted to be Tin Man. I borrowed a Tin Man costume from a friend so that was pretty easy. Rebecah dressed as a lion so she could be the Cowardly Lion and keep with the Wizard of Oz theme.

Tin Man Kimball


Cowardly Lion


Ready to Pounce


Together


Tin Man, Cowardly Lion and Annette


Wednesday evening we went to our Church social. There were Halloween games to play followed by a trunk or treat. Rebecah hadn't slept much that day so she zonked out pretty quickly once the action started. Kimball had a blast playing the games and getting candy and little action figures. The funny thing about little kids...they don't know the good candy from the "junk" candy. Kimball has happily picked out the Smarties, candy sticks or other yucky candy to eat first.

Cita sleeping through the party.


On Thursday the library had a special Halloween Storytime so Kimball dressed up again and Joseph took him and Rebecah to story time. Kimball enjoyed listening to the Halloween stories, singing songs and doing little crafts.

Our City Council decided to have trick or treating on Saturday instead of Sunday. I decided that I didn't want to have to answer the door so we left our light off and watched The Wizard of Oz to celebrate. Kimball sat through the entire movie and loved it.

I'm so glad Kimball doesn't really understand the whole trick or treating door to door thing because I'm dreading the year we actually have to take him around.