Thanksgivings

We had 3 wonderful Thanksgivings!

We had the first at Tim's parents house on Thanksgiving Day.

She loves her schoolhouse and plays with this thing all of the time. I think she is going to be a teacher like her mommy!

She also loves books.

Hahaha! You are so funny mommy!

Dinner with the Hodgson family.

On Saturday, we went to my brothers house and celebrated with the Crouches.

She was so happy to be up there with the kitty.

Allison spent most of the day being a kitty. She even had a tail.

For the 5 minutes he was away from his PSP, Nathan decided to be a snail.

Yes, their dog is that big. Rachel wasn't afraid of her at all and really wanted to help her eat.

June decided to give Rachel blue icee and let her run around the house with it. It was dripping everywhere and was killing me.

But she loved it! I think more of it got on her than in her.

Then on Sunday, we celebrated Thanksgiving with the Pearsons, Hunters, Bellavances, and Crouches.

Dinner time!

My mom and David got a new quad and Rachel loved just sitting and bouncing on it. Just wait until she gets a real ride on it. I bet she will love it.

I was trying so hard to get a picture of Rachel in front of the Christmas tree. This was the best I could do. She wouldn't stay still for anything.

David had this doll house in his family for many years. Rachel spent about an hour playing with it. She had so much fun with it.

Thank you everyone for hosting such great Thankgivings! It was good to see all of my family!

Tim's Birthdays

Yes, I said Birthdays! He sure knows how to milk it. Since he was born in New Zealand and they are 20 hours ahead of us, he celebrates his New Zealand Birthday and then his American birthday every year. So we celebrated his New Zealand birthday on Sunday at his parents with his family.

He was doing a little dance while we were singing "Happy Birthday" to him.

Happy Birthday Daddy!

Mmm, whipped cream!

Tim's parents and I got him the XBOX 360 with Kinect for his birthday. He was very happy!

We celebrated his American birthday on Monday at Urge GastroPub in Rancho Bernardo.

This time his family and friends were there.

We had the private room all to ourselves which had a door that closed and locked Rachel in. She ran in circles around the table, but her favorite part was blowing on the candles with her Papa. She was laughing so hard at him and was so entertained by the candles.

By the end of the night, I sat on the couch, put my feet up, and watched the Chargers kick the Broncos butts.

New Playset

Tim's parents had a playset at their house that was about 20 years old.

Here is a picture of it after Bryce disassembled it.

(I didn't get a picture of what it looked like before.)

They had a swing that they bought Rachel that was on it and when Rachel saw it on the ground, she wanted to swing in it.

Here is the space for the playset.

Last weekend, Tim, his dad, and David went and picked up the new one from one of my old soccer teammates who gave it to us because her kids had outgrown it. Here it is, ready to be set up.

Hard at work today.

There were 5 men working on putting it together.

Tim, David, Bryce, Sam, and Adrian (Sam's friend)

They worked on it for about 6 hours today.

Rachel was looking for ways to stay busy while they worked on her new playset.

Here it is! It still needs the tarp that my mom is working on and a couple more screws that are missing.

It is so great!

Rachel was saying wee over and over while she was on the swing.

Her favorite part is the slide. I helped her climb the ladder and she would go straight to the slide and go down. She did it over and over again.

As you can see, she loooooves her new slide.

Halloween

Our little girl was a ladybug for Halloween.

A very cute ladybug, if I do say so myself.

Rachel and I stopped by Tim's parents before we went Trick-or-Treating.

She was not happy to wear the headpiece. This was the only time I could get a picture with it on.

We went to our friend Marie's house for Trick-or-Treating. Rachel loved playing with Emma's toys.

In fact, all of the kids loved playing with Emma's toys.

We tried to get a group picture of the kiddos, but they were all taking off in different directions. This was the best that I was able to get.

This was "Batman's" Batmobile. Every time he got off of it, Rachel hopped on. She got very upset with me when I had to take her off of it. She may need a Batmobile of her own for Christmas.

The "crew" walking up to a house.

To keep her out of the rest of the candy, I gave her a sour straw to chew on (with the wrapper on) and she chewed on it the entire time. She tried to push her way into every house, and wanted in even more if there were puppies inside. She had a good time.

Thanks for having us over Marie, Doug, and Emma!

19 Months

Rachel turned 19 months on Saturday. I think her vocabulary is going to just take off any day now. She has so much to say, but a lot of it doesn't make sense yet.

She is so much fun and is very active these days. She is really keeping us on our toes.

She has yet ANOTHER cold. She was helping me out on Saturday by wiping her own nose.

Swimming Lessons

Rachel has been attending swimming lessons for the past month or so with Tim's parents.

They have been taking video for me so that I can see how she is doing. She is doing so well. The swim teacher will push her on her way to the steps and Rachel will kick her way the rest of the way there. You will also see her put Rachel straight down and Rachel kicks her way to the surface. She has made such great strides in the past few weeks. She really seems to enjoy herself too. I have a day off in two weeks and can't wait to see all of this in person!

Bates Nut Farm

We went to Bates Nut Farm last Thursday. Rachel had a great time and we had some great photo opportunities.

Rachel is making Daddy so proud doing the "Captain" pose.

She was running through the fields trying to get from one place to another.

She didn't always stay on her feet.

She even had some obstacles to run around.

She was playing the pumpkins like they were drums. At the beginning she had to run up and smack every single pumpkin that she passed.

I think that she wants this one.

It sure made a great seat.

We even were able to get a few family pictures, although it was difficult to get Rachel to pose for these.

She absolutely loved the animals.

She was petting the goat and didn't want to leave. She actually started to cry when we had to leave Bates.

Eventually, we made our way to the chickens and she started imitating them.

She saw them scratching in the dirt and then squatted down and started scratching in the dirt as well. It was really funny to watch.