Fa La La La la!

The holidays have officially started!!! Yay!!!! We had a great Thanksgiving and ate waaaaay to much food. We spent a few hours at Jim and Gina's house with their side of the family and had a great lunch and then had our own dinner at our house with my mom and brother, Pam, Eddie, Jennifer, Charlie, and my pharmacy manager, Alexes, and her husband, Ryan. We ate so much great food and had a great time! Tori LOVED the turkey and fixins.

We spent the rest of the weekend starting our Christmas celebration! We went to the festival of trees to start it off right. Brian Jeff and Tori with the butterfly tree.A close-up of Brian's favorite, The Golf Tree.My favorite tree-The Wine Tree!Tori loved the winter wonderland!Ginger bread cookies!!Time to pick out our own Christmas tree! We always get a live tree, we just love the smell of a real pine tree and the excitement of trying to find the perfect one. "Mommy, I like this one!"A few hours later! Tada!!The outside of the house! The 7 foot santa was a new addition this year.Making Christmas cookies :)I think we wore poor Tori out! Hehe. She fell asleep with her coat on and her hand still in her snack-trap :) I cant wait to make plans for next weekend and to take Tori to visit Santa!

16 Months

We found out a couple of weeks ago that Tori needed tubes due to recurrent ear infections and persistent fluid in her ears. Her surgery was yesterday and she did great! She was a little crabby from the anesthesia but came right home and started playing. The doctor said that she developed another bad double ear infection since her last visit so just 24 hours after surgery she seems to already be in less pain. She slept for 12 hours last night and check out the video of what she did today. We were shopping for Christmas decorations and she found a singing Woody doll and apparently loved it. :)

Tori has been picking up a few words here a there this past month. She now says "Bite" whenever she wants what you're eating (or drinking) and she loves to say "baby!" repeatedly when she sees a little one or herself in the mirror. My favorite is that she now answers questions!! I can ask her if she wants to sit on the potty and she'll say "no" or "yeah" or if you take something away that she wants you hear "nanananananana." She sits on the potty a couple of times a day but doesn't quite know what she's supposed to do on it yet. She still loves to cuddle, especially when she's tired. Winter coat! She is not a big fan of the hood except to play peek-a-boo with it :)

Fall Photo Shoot

We headed out to the park over the weekend to take some fall pictures~ here are my favorite edits. Fall is my favorite time to photograph but I hate that it's getting so cold already. I had to go buy Tori's winter coat already because her fall jacket doesn't seem warm enough. On a happy note though, Thanksgiving is in a few weeks and Christmas isn't far away!! I LOVE the holidays, let the Christmas music start!

Happy Halloween!!

The Lego FamilyWe painted pumkins on Saturday instead of carving so Tori could decorate her own. My artists :) Good thing we used washable paint for Tori's pumpkin! She knew just what to do so soon as we put the paint in front of her!Grandma Pam with her super cute Mickey Mouse pumpkin (the ears are little pumpkins!)All the finished pumpkins. Brian made the Rams Symbol this year and I made a scare crow.Saturday evening Gpa Jim and Gma Gina stopped by with the kids in their costumes. Getting three kids to stand still with costumes on was much more of a challenge than we anticipated!Sunday afternoon we went to the Illinois state museum for their halloween event. We explored a bat cave, touched a bug, and got lots of stickers and pencils! Tori also made a pet spider!We ended the weekend with a little trick-or-treating at the neighbor's houses! What a great weekend!

15 Months

Tori had her 15-month appointment a couple of weeks ago, complete with 4 shots that she was not happy about. She is 20 pounds 12 ounces and 31 inches tall (18Th percentile for weight and 69Th percentile for height) and doing very well with words and motor skills. She loves to run up and down the hallways in our house, can point to her nose and belly and has 8 words that she says consistently. We were surprised to find out that she had another double ear infection since she was showing no symptoms. She has not gone more than three months without an ear infection since she was born so her pediatrician is pushing for her to get tubes. We opted for a recheck to see if there is still fluid in her ears after the infection is resolved before we make an appointment with an ENT. She is a happy little toddler, very curious and always getting into things. She loves her music class to we go to every Thursday, she wonders around and dances and sings. Her favorite part is at the end of class when they play with scarfs.My little helper's new thing is helping me unload the dishwasher. She will go back and forth from the dishwasher to the silver ware drawer and put every single piece in (its quite a reach and mommy has to straighten up afterwards). She is doing really well with the "lets put everything away" game with her toys also. Playing some ball in the back yard.

Poor, sweet Jordan, she lets Tori do anything to her. This is after Tori "put her to bed" like she does with her doll. hehe.

Tori playing with her friend Mason, "reading" him a book :)

Before bed :)

Little Pumpkin

We went to the apple barn last weekend and picked our pumpkins. I looked back at our pictures from last year and couldn't believe how much our little pumpkin has grown in just a year! 2009

2010

We just couldn't leave without some snacks. Tori drank most of her nana's apple cider slush and split a caramel apple with mom :)

Then the next day we met Shelly, her sister Melanie, and baby Olivia at a pumpkin patch in town to shop for some more pumpkins. I think Tori and Olivia enjoyed the bumpy ride in the wagon.