Noah's Birthday & Family Visit

We had a terrific time last week spending time with Katie's parents. And Bryan, Ashley and Emma were able to come up and help us celebrate Noah's birthday, too!

We had a big Thomas-themed party and Noah loved it. He was so distracted at dinner by the table with all the presents on it. He kept running over to the presents and yelling, "I don't know what's in this box!" I'm not sure he ate any pizza with the anticipation of all the presents he was about to open.

With the great help of Nana and Poppy, we had a really productive week. We were able to clean the house up, get to storytime at the library, work on some Christmas shopping, and have a great time together. Thank you Nana and Poppy!

Life's Simple Pleasures

Today we were able to get out and go for a nice long walk. One of Noah's favorite things to do outside these last few weeks has been to run through fallen, "crunchy" leaves. So as we're out and about, when we come upon a bunch of great leaves, he gets out of the stroller and runs like crazy kicking up all the leaves and it's even better if he can find a stick and use it to stir up even more leaves.

So far, his favorite place is our friend Beth's house because we actually let him go into the yard and run around in the leaves. Here we are at her house today on our walk...






We also stumbled onto another find on today's walk. Someone has a ceramic or cement alligator in their yard, near the street. Noah thought it was great and didn't want to leave it!

Elena Sophia Sylvester

The long wait is finally over! Elena Sophia Sylvester joined us last week and weighed 8 lbs 3 oz. We are all doing well and adjusting to our new family of four. Noah adores her and loves to kiss her, hug on her and hold her. He also likes to check her out with his goggles on (picture below) and hold her hand while she gets her diaper changed. She has such a great disposition and so far, really loves her sleep! Here are a few pictures from these first few days...

Halloween

We had quite a dilemma this Halloween on what Noah was going to dress up as. We had planned to go to our church's fall festival and also do a little trick-or-treating in a nearby neighborhood. It was the first year he really had some input on his costume and once he has his mind set on something it's hard to change it!

At first, he wanted to be a flamingo and then it was a wolf. We had a hard time finding any outfit in his size that he was excited about, but we finally found a lion costume that he liked. However, he made it perfectly clear to us that even though he'd be dressed as a lion, he was not going to roar for anyone. Not sure where that came from, but he stuck with it and we didn't hear a roar from him at all!

When we first got to the fall festival, he didn't want to wear the head-piece of the costume, so he wore his winter hat. But he finally came around and wore it for a little bit. On Halloween, he surprised me how much he actually liked trick-or-treating. He was shy with the neighbors, but really, really excited about the candy!