6 Months and 1 week old!

Dear Daniel,

Goodness! I can hardly believe you are already 6 months old! Time passes so fast. It seems like I was just writing you a letter on your 5 month 'birthday'... I can't believe it's already been over a month since then! You are half of a year old, and at the rate time is passing now, I know that it won't seem very long at all until you are celebrating your 1st year birthday! But, I am not going to think about that right now because I hope it goes very slow. Daddy and I want to enjoy every little minute we have with you right now!

You are at such an adorable, fun stage right now! Not that the other stages were not so... :o) But, six months is extra cute, I think! You have figured out how to sit up without anyone holding you this month, and it is your favorite way to play with any toy and to look at the world around you! You are enjoying tummy time a bit more than before, which is good, and you are working so hard at getting up on your knees to crawl! You lift your chest and tummy up all the time by your strong arms... I'm sure by 7 months you'll be crawling! :o) You still don't like to roll over all that much, but you surprise me occasionally by rolling over several times in a row. I think you just want to show me that you really can do it... you just don't like to much. :o) Oh, well. Maybe you'll just be more of a crawling baby than a roller. That's fine with me!

We just moved into our new house a week ago, and you are getting used to it a little at a time. You sleep amazing in your new room, which Mommy and Daddy were very excited about, and you love your bright blue and cream colored walls that we painted for you! AND, your curtains from our apartment still fit in your window, so you are also very excited about that. I just got your pictures up yesterday and you love staring at them on your new walls. Just last week you began playing with your Noah's ark and animals, and you think that that is the coolest toy ever! Mommy is getting super excited to give you your Christmas toys, but even though I want to give them to you now, I will wait like Daddy said to. :o)

We have not given you any food yet, but Mommy is planning on going out and buying some avacados, sweet potatoes, and bananas today or tomorrow so you can hopefully try your first food on Sunday! :o) I think you are definitely ready for it, and you have been practicing 'eating' with your spoon and plate lately in your high chair as we eat dinner in our new house. I'll video tape as Daddy feeds you your first time so you can watch it one day. :o) I'm excited to see how you do!

We love you SO much, little Daniel! You are an amazing boy, and are getting so big and tall! Just yesterday I was holding you and thinking back to when you were a tiny little baby. You are so long now... I already feel like I'm holding a big boy! Your six month Dr. appointment is on Monday, so I will have to come back and add how much you weigh and how tall you are now. I'm very curious to see! :o)

Love,
Mommy

Fall in Fruita!

Hi everyone! It's so crazy that it has been just over a week since I last posted something on here and SO much has happened! Gee whiz, I have lots to catch up on! :o) First of all, I want to tell you all about our trip to the pumpkin patch / corn maze with my sister, Amanda, and niece, Vienna! It was a lot of fun for us all, and Daniel had a wonderful time outside in the amazing fall weather, seeing all the pumpkins and watching his very funny cousin goof off. Lol. He is so cute when she is around because she makes him laugh and laugh! We went out to a nearby one and took over a hundred pictures of Vienna and Daniel petting the animals in the petting zoo, riding in the yellow wagon as we pulled them around until they found 'their' pumpkins., and going through the big corn maze in the shape of a dinosaur!

As you can see, we got some super cute pictures of the two of them, and Amanda took some good ones of our family, also. Vienna picked out a gigantic pumpkin from the patch, and Daniel got a little one more his size, that he still needs to decorate. (I'm going to let him play with paint for the first time and paint a 'picture' on it before Halloween hopefully.)


Just before the sun went completely down we started going through their corn maze, and Vienna had a lot of fun 'leading' everyone through it, as Amanda and Scott kept track of where we were on the little map. It was such a fun time, and a great evening in the middle of a busy, busy week of doing stuff at our new place before moving in!



Wednesday and Thursday they put the new carpet in the house and we got a new furnace and hot water heater by Friday, too. The new carpet is amazing! SUPER soft and definitely helps to brighten up the entire house! :o) I will definitely post some pictures on here once I finish unpacking... We got the new sidearm hot water heater / furnace, too, which I guess is more economical, and saves a lot of money over time. It works much better than the old ones, so that's what I care about right now! :o) I spent most of the days getting the last things packed up at the apartment, trying to get everything ready for people to help us move out on Saturday.

Saturday morning, Bryan and my mother-in-law came over and helped us with the last minute things before she took Daniel to their place so I could help my dad, sisters, Tyler, David, Jessica, Bryan, and Scott load things up in the cars and moving truck. We began everything around 9:30 and were finished and headed over to the new house by noon, which was amazing timing! I'm sure the homemade cinnamon rolls that Scott's mom made us helped give us that extra burst of energy needed! We got over to our new house in time to have homemade pizza also made by Evelyn, and then got everything unloaded and most put where they were supposed to go by 1:30. We were MOVED! :o) Daniel took a good, long nap in his new room that afternoon while I began working on unloading the kitchen boxes with Evelyn. We ended up getting about half done, which definitely felt good, and then I took the rest of the evening off. We were exhausted!

Sunday, after church, we went over and ordered our new washer and dryer from Sears and Scott got a new grill and saw thing for his garage. :o) The washer and dryer should be here on Saturday, which I'm so excited about! It's going to be amazing to have a washer and dryer here... right off the kitchen, even... so I can do laundry whenever I wish! :o) Just one amazing thing about our new home! Sunday night we had some friends over and were able to show off our new house and spend some time carving pumpkins in the backyard. I can't wait to have even more people over... I LOVE having the room to entertain again! So thankful for this place!

This week I have been staying busy unpacking, decorating, and organizing! Daniel's room is just about complete... just have one more box to unpack. The dining room and kitchen are about done, too. It looks so nice! :o) I was planning on getting our room done today, and the rest of the living room decorated, but I'm needing some advice from Scott as to where to put pictures, so instead I am updating my blog. :o) I love this new house! The kitchen and dining room are amazing, and really look awesome with all my pictures up and our table and bookshelf where they go. I went and bought some fall decorations at Ross and Michaels two days ago, so those beautiful reds, greens, yellows, and oranges add a lot to the living room and dining room, too. I love those colors! I could keep them up all year around and that would be fine by me! :o)

Daniel has been adjusting really well to our new place, too. He sleeps amazing at night and loves, loves, loves his closet mirror! :o) Today he has been extremely tired, for some reason, so he is down for his third LONG nap of the day, after being really grumpy while awake. Poor guy. He's probably going through another growth spurt. Hopefully it'll happen fast and then he'll be our happy little one again!

This weekend we have Halloween party after Halloween party! Tomorrow night is one with some friends from church. Poor little Daniel can't go, though, so we are planning on just putting him down and then going while Scott's parents stay here at our house to watch him in case he wakes up... Then, on Saturday we have a work party which he gets to dress up for and go with us, and then Sunday is a party at my sister, Amanda's, which Daniel also gets to go to. He is going to be a monkey and super de duper cute! :o) When I tried on the costume the other day he didn't like the ears / head part, though, so hopefully he won't mind it as much this weekend.

Breckenridge Trip and Preparations to Move...

Wow! So much has been going on! It's definitely been a crazy, crazy few weeks! Two weeks ago today, I'm pretty sure Daniel came down with some kind of sickiness which I ended up getting and we had a LONG week with a fussy little guy who didn't want to sleep much. We thought he was teething at first, which might be part of it, but no tooth yet, so we'll see about that! Of course it happened to be through our weekend in Breckenridge, which was a little hard on us, but overall our trip was still awesome! :o) It was so nice to close on our house on Friday the 8th and then leave shortly after that for the mountains for three days with my family.

We had a great time up in the beautiful mountains of CO! I just love that we live in this state and are so close to all the amazing places around here! We stayed in this really nice condo like place with my parents, sisters, Amanda's boyfriend, and my brother-in-law. They were all amazing and gave Scott, Daniel, and I the big Master bedroom suite so that was wonderful although little guy woke up at least twice a night all weekend! We spent the days watching the TX Ranger games (COME ON RANGERS!), shopping downtown, hot-tubbing, walking around the area, eating, and playing games. It was perfect fall weather up there, which was so nice, and it even snowed from time to time... not ever really sticking, though. We had bought Daniel a cute little bear suit to keep warm in while he was out in the chilly weather, so he was extra cute in that each time we went out. He felt his first snow coming down from the sky and I think he liked it. :o) I'm so glad we had that time away before we headed back home and entered into the chaotic craziness of moving!!!









I headed out to our new house this last Wed. to clean all day while my mom watched Daniel here at the apartment. I got lots done, although it took me much longer than I had first thought it would. But, it was so nice to actually be able to see all the corners after getting the spider webs and bugs vacuumed up... Buying a foreclosure where they don't clean it before we buy it and having it empty for the entire summer definitely meant we didn't have the most perfect looking place before I got in there. It looked much better by the time I got home. We went out there almost every day last week to work on different things at the house, and ended up beginning the painting process Friday night while Daniel was with Scott's parents. Scott and I were able to to the two rooms we wanted painted almost done - just the first coat - by the time we left that morning... (Well, I left at 8:30 and he left at 12:30... he did a bit more than me!) We painted our front room a beautiful green - it looks so nice - and ended up painting Daniel's room a sky blue on two walls and a really light blueish/creamish color on the others. I will have to post pics for sure. Saturday my dad, Scott, and Bryan ripped up the wood floor in the living room which took forever since it was all glued on and Mom and I finished painting. We get carpet in tomorrow and Thurs. and a new furnace and hot water heater on Thurs. too.

Yesterday, Amanda and my friend, Christine, came over to help me pack and we got so much done! It was amazing!! :o) I am now surrounded by boxes and mom is coming over in a few hours to help pack some more. I am so ready to move! I can hardly wait for Saturday! :o)

Closing on Our New House!

I'm so excited! We just found out this morning that we will be closing on our house Friday at 1 pm! I can't believe we will actually be house-owners for the first time in just a few days! :o) Goodness this has been quite a big year for us! Right now, though, I sort of just want to have everything all packed up and ready to move because I know it will be quite a long couple of weeks for us getting everything ready. Our plan as of now is to move on the 23rd which will give us time to pack, clean both places, pull up Pergo in the house now, get carpet installed and fix the dining room Pergo, paint, and everything else we have to accomplish. But, then we'll be all moved in that weekend and we'll have a week to clean our apartment before the end of the month. It will be so nice actually being in our new house in just 2 1/2 weeks! Then, my goal is to unpack as quickly as I can so I can decorate and make things look like home before our little boy begins his next stage of crawling and eating! Big changes ahead for little Danny boy. :o) I think I'm just going to wait to feed him any solid food until we get to our new place, considering he will be 6 months on the 22nd and that is how old he needs to be before I start feeding him anyway. I've been working on reading through "Super Baby Food", which has been exciting and a lot to think through at the same time. I can't believe my little boy is almost old enough to begin eating 'solid' foods! It's going so fast!

Once Scott gets home from work tonight I have to run to Wal-Mart to shop for groceries for this weekend's trip to Breckenridge with my family. Daniel and I went to the store earlier, but poor little guy has been having a rough couple of days... I'm pretty sure he is officially starting his teething because yesterday morning he was crying almost non-stop, screaming randomly, nose was dripping up a storm, and he was drooling like crazy! :o( I felt so bad for him and ended up holding him most of the day yesterday, because he would only be quieter if I was holding him and rocking him to sleep. Anyway, this morning he seemed like he was doing better until we went to Wal-mart and he started crying again... Of course I forgot to bring his teething gel, so we had to rush back home so I would not have to go all around Wal-mart grocery shopping with a fussy baby. Since then he has slept most of the day, except for about an hour that he was up earlier to eat and hang out with my mom who came over to visit for awhile. So, anyway, all that to say he hasn't been doing very well, so I am going to run by myself to shop this evening before Scott and I work on packing, packing, packing! I'm hoping we can fill up all ten or eleven of the boxes we have right now with stuff from our living room so we can at least make some kind of dent in the work to do. :o)

Lots more I want to talk about, but I should get going. I think Daniel is waking up... at least I just heard something, so gonna go check on him. :o)

Girl Weekend (and Daniel)! :o)

Scott left for the men's retreat with church yesterday evening after work, leaving me with Daniel for the weekend. Even though we really miss him already, we have been staying busy having fun with Andrea, and a few other girls! :o) It's been fun, although I'm so excited to see Scott again tomorrow afternoon!

Last night Andrea came over and we headed to Ross to look for clothes. I tried on a few different shirts, but did not like any of them and ended up leaving with a big, framed picture for our new dining room! :o) Ross is definitely the place to get pictures... so much cheaper than anywhere else! But, is it ever big! It hardly fit in my car... I didn't realize that it was quite so big, but is matches my other 'small main street' pictures in our dining room now, so it'll look awesome! After leaving Ross, we headed to the mall where we ate some burritos and walked around a little bit before Daniel began getting really tired and we headed back home. After putting him to bed, I watched "Letters to Juliet" and made brownies! Even though it would have been more fun with other girls, too, I enjoyed not doing anything except for watching a movie and eating chocolate. It's been a long time since I've done that. :o)

This morning Daniel and went to the little City Market nearby where I picked up a lot of boxes to pack in and fruit salad ingredients. Then, while he was taking his first nap of the day, I made fruit salad, cleaned up around the house, did dishes, and cleared off everything for some girls to come over and scrapbook! Our friend, Jasmine, from small group and Andrea came over around noon and after having sandwiches and snacks for lunch, we hung out, scrapbooking and making cards and talking for the rest of the afternoon. Katie, also from church, came over later on in the afternoon and joined us. It was a lot of fun just hanging out and getting scrapbooking accomplished! I got really tired after a little while, though (probably ate a few too many brownies...), so then I just rested until Katie ended up leaving and Andrea and I headed over to Applebee's to see Anna on her last night of work there! :o)

Daniel did great all day! He had lots of fun with everyone here... I think he thinks everyone was here to just see him! Lol. He had big smiles for all the girls, that's for sure! ;o) He just fell asleep and I put him to bed... definitely all tuckered out from his busy day! He'll be happy when Daddy is home so he won't have these late nights shopping and having girl time! Poor buddy needs some guy time. :o(

Tomorrow we have church and then hopefully we'll just hang out and rest until Daddy gets home! :o) So excited to see him! Goodnight!

Beautiful Fall Weekend

This past weekend was so much fun! We were able to see most of our family and many of our friends and I was still able to have Sunday afternoon with just my Scott and Daniel, so that was nice, too. :o) Friday night we had a going-away party for one of Scott's co-workers who is moving up to ND. It was more fun than I had first thought it would be, considering I only knew four people out of the entire group going! Plus it was nice getting to know the other employees and their wives/husbands, so that I now have faces to go with everyone's names. They definitely seem like a great group of people and I know we'll enjoy Scott working in this office. It was also nice to talk to some of the wives about the various places they have moved since being with Marathon and how all the moves were... I'm excited for when we'll be able to move one day, but sometimes I worry about what it will be like moving from place to place so much. One of the families has lived in TX, WY, Alaska, and now GJ and had a kid in each place except for here! Now that is amazing! :o) I enjoyed talking to her and hearing what she liked about each place. So far GJ is almost everyone's favorite! That will probably be the same for us, but maybe we will find another place someday that we'll love just as much as here. :o)

Saturday we woke up late (even Daniel slept in until 9, which was amazing) and headed to Fruita once we got up and ready. We went by one of our friend's yard sale and then dropped by Scott's parents' to see if they would like to go down to the Fruita Fall Festival with us. His mom ended up walking with us, so we put lots of sunscreen all over little guy, strapped him in his stroller, and headed downtown. I am SO excited to live in such a small town again where you can walk almost everywhere! They took us on this little trail that I had never been on before, which was shady and very pretty. We got downtown and walked up and down the streets, looking at all the vendors and seeing what there was to see. We mainly just go to get out and walk as a family, so we didn't buy anything from the actual festival, just from a new thrift store in town owned by some friends. I wish we could have listened to more of the music because it sounded really good, but by the time we had been there an hour and a half it was getting super hot and we were ready to head back and eat a late lunch and cool off. Plus, little Daniel was quite tired and ready for a good, long nap! So, we walked back to their house and had delicious sandwiches, chips, and ice water, and then hung out for awhile before coming back home and cleaning. :o)

That night Amanda and Lelia, my sisters, and Wayne, my brother-in-law, came over for pizza and games. It was fun to hang out with them again! We hardly ever seen Lelia and Wayne because of their super busy evenings/weekends schedule, so this was fun to catch up with everything going on in their lives. Amanda joined us for the games and eventually Mom and Dad stopped by for a little while after church. Daniel had lots of fun with everyone and then surprised us by going down early and staying asleep even with some VERY loud people in the other room! (That would be us... :o) ) They all played Life while I hung out with Daniel and fed him, but it was still fun hanging out with everyone.

Sunday, we went to church in the morning and right afterwards we headed up to the Mesa to see all the colors! It was Color Sunday which was actually the first time in MANY years that I had been up there on that day! There are so many people all over the place, but at least that meant we were able to get a family picture taken by someone else! :o) We drove up Lands' End road and then back down through the town of Mesa, past Powderhorn, stopping at various beautiful places on the way. I LOVE the fall, and the fall colors are a big reason why I do, so it was so nice going up there and enjoying the beautiful creation God has made! :o) It did make us really want to go fishing/hiking, though, so we're hoping it will be really nice in Breckenridge (have no idea how to spell that) when we go in two weeks, so that we can go hiking! We took lots of pictures (imagine that!) of Daniel and the scenery, so I will post some on here. We took a lot of the pretty colors, because I really want to blow some up to put in our new house to keep part of fall there all the time!



















Sunday night we had dinner with some friends, which was nice, and that ended our amazing weekend! :o)

5 Months Old!

My little boy is already 5 months old today! So many of my friends have been having babies in the past few weeks... Each time one does it makes me think back to that time that seems like ages ago when Scott and I went to the hospital to have our little one, not knowing if it was a boy or a girl. Gee whiz! It seriously seems like forever ago! I can hardly remember not knowing our little Daniel; not hugging him in my arms or getting big, slobbery kisses from him; not taking a diaper bag and baby everywhere we go; or having the opportunity to not be quite as responsible as we are now. :o) For every moment I've had with him I have been thankful for... I really don't know what we would have done without our little boy! He is amazing and definitely the joy of our lives!

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Little Daniel, you are getting to be quite the big boy! Physically, you are getting taller and heavier, for sure, but I'm not positive how much so because you won't have your next appointment until six months. I just know that over the past week or so you have been sleeping a lot more and even I can tell that you are getting much bigger all around! Sometimes I think about how you will be in a few months - crawling all over the place and working on walking later on. I can't believe how fast you grow! There are many things you love to do now... much more so than at any other point of your young life. Your days usually consist of waking up between 7 and 8 after a good 10-12 hours of sleep (Mommy loves you for this, for sure!), and after a yummy breakfast of Mommy's milk you are usually good to 'cuddle' with Mommy a little while (I need my kisses and hugs from you after that long night apart) and then you have some play time on your mat and sometimes some tummy time. We are working on getting you to actually roll over again, which does not seem to interest you so much right now. We're also trying to work on building your arm muscles to get you ready to begin crawling, so I have been putting your whale pillow under your chest so you can have a jumpstart on bringing your chest up high with your arms. You loved your time on it today... trying to read your little cloth book and eating your little blue blankie. You are usually up for an hour before heading to your swing for your first nap of the day. Yep, you are still napping in your swing! Even after being gone in Denver for the entire last week without your swing, you still much prefer that over napping in your crib. I'm not exactly sure why, considering night time is okay in your crib, but that's okay... Mommy is realizing that you might just need that extra soothing motion that the swing gives you, at least for now. The rest of the day consists of three to four naps with usually up to 2 hours of eating/play time in between them. You are loving your 'jumper' from Maw-Maw and Pappy, your play mat as always, watching "Your Baby Can Read" DVDs on TV (you LOVE watching little kids talk to you!), being read to (especially your favorite "pigeon" books), playing airplane on Mommy, cuddling, walks in your stroller, car rides, or almost any type of time with Daddy. You love your cousin Vienna, too, who makes you burst out laughing most of the time! :o) It's so cute! She loves you, too. :o) I love going on walks with you because you are always so happy and smile at everyone we pass. You love being out and about and just want to take everything in and learn, learn, learn! You have also been trying to 'talk' a lot to us lately because you babble on and on sometimes. The cutest is when I put a book in front of you and you try to 'read' it to me. I think you are so used to us reading books to you that you are realizing when we have a book you are to speak. :o)

There is so much more I could say to you, my little boy, but these are just some of the highlights from this month! You are looking very forward to turning six months already because you are super excited about eating some 'real' food! You love sitting with us while we eat already and have tried many times to take our food off of our plates. Silly boy! :o) One day I know I'll not be looking for a second and you will end up putting some type of food in your mouth... Just wait a little bit longer and then you can find out the excitement of eating avacados, sweet potatoes, and other yummy veggies that we'll be starting you on! Yumm! Doesn't that sound delicious?! :o)

I love you SOOOO much, Daniel! God has blessed your daddy and I immensely by giving us you! We're so excited to see you grow even more in many ways this next month!

Love,
Your Mommy