Luke is Eleventh Months Old

   Luke turned eleven months on Tuesday.  My baby is growing up fast as they always do.  He is such a happy guy, and just a delight.  The girls love him so much.  Avery especially likes to play with him.  The other night I put him in the tub with Emery and she kept washing his back repeatedly.  It was super cute, and of course she wouldn't do it when I tried to take a picture.  Luke loves eating still.  He had his first peanut butter and jelly sandwich, and fell hard for that wonder of a sandwich.  He says ma ma ma a lot.  Sometimes he indulges Daryl and says da da da.  He can stand up by himself for very short periods of time, and will walker with his walker for a couple steps.  Like I said, we love this guy, and I can't wait to see how he eats his birthday cake in a short month.

I had a really hard time getting him to hold still for the monkey shot, so this what I ended up getting.

He found a plate with some ketchup on it, and was in heaven.

My original attempt to get a monkey picture.

Luke likes to use the walker backwards.

He loves to open and shut the princess palace doors because music plays when you do.

I about died from the cuteness of him doing downward dog.

The Weekend

  The last coat of stain was put on our wood floors this weekend, and since we couldn't step on them for 48 hours we decided to just stay at my parent's house rather than all stay in our basement together. It so happened that DeAnna and Brad were up this weekend to watching Logan while Adam and Angie were out of town.  The kids were excited to see DeAnna, Brad, and Logan.  Emery actually gave Logan several kisses without any prompting.  It was pretty cute.  

Emery and Harper making faces together.

Emery is usually happy to give me her biggest smile.

Avery is a natural photo bomber.

Logan looking at Avery.  

Emery and Harper playing a song that Avery wrote called, "Who is Love?"

Harper and Emery on the piano again with a better view of Avery's music.

Luke and Logan hanging out together.

Harper and Brad playing.

House Update #6

     Hopefully this is the last update I do of the house's progress.  It's going to be a nail biter.  The kitchen is practically done. The counter tops were installed, and they are beautiful except they are all covered up right now.  The appliances need to be installed and the back splash needs to be finished.  We've only had five doors up in the house the entire time we've been living here because we painted them all, and this last week all the closet doors were put up.  The hardware on the doors has also been changed.  Both fireplaces are tiled.  The built-ins were painted and so was the office, so everything is white upstairs now.  The tile work in the master bathroom is done too.  

Closet doors.  How novel.

Avery was sad that our glorious gold curlicue handles were replaced with these better designed handles. 

Here's the kitchen with the counter tops and most of the back splash in.

Here's a close up of our back splash.

This is the living room fireplace.

This is the office with all the trim painted white now, and the boxes are some of the kitchen appliances.

The built-ins in the family room look a million times better.

Our master bedroom is still home to doors.

Here's the master shower.

A close up of the shower.

Here's the vanity with the counter top on.

Harper's First Day of Preschool

  This week Harper finally had her long awaited first day of preschool.  She was very excited, and she is ridiculously excited just looking at this picture.  Harper attends the developmental preschool at Avery's elementary school as a peer model.  She loves it.  Both the girls like going to the same school, and I like that Harper is going to the same place she will attend Kindergarten.  Harper's one disappointment about preschool is she doesn't like getting out before Avery does.  She thought she would be in school all day.

Luke is Ten Months

  Luke turned ten months old on Sunday, and is just a delightful baby soul.  He loves to eat real food.  Luke enjoys eating peaches, mandarin oranges, grapes, bananas, salmon, brisket, pulled pork, chicken, broccoli, peppers, carrots, and zucchini.  He stands up a lot and cruises around the furniture a bit, but he isn't really trying to walk when we try to walk him around.  He has two bottom teeth.  One of Luke's favorite things is when you throw a toy or ball up in the air repeatedly for him.  He starts to crack up. Kissing his tummy also elicits a mother load of giggles. The other day he got to use the swing for the first time, and this too caused much laughter.  We love our little guy.

This is the best picture I could get of his teeth.

Eating some veggies.

Luke hanging out with his cousin Logan.  I love these two together.

Luke and Logan again.

Here's your monkey picture.

Avery's First Day of School

                 Here's Avery on her first day of first grade.  She was very excited, and happily hopped onto the bus this morning while the rain poured down buckets.  Avery practically bounced into her seat and waved happily to us.  Fortunately it wasn't raining when we waited for her bus to bring her home because it was very late.  Harper was a bit bummed that she was starting school today, and repeatedly asked when she would go to school.  Next week seems like a long time to her.

The End of Summer

  Summer finally came to an end today.  Avery starts school tomorrow, and I think we are all ready.  August was a crazy month.  We moved into our half finished home, we went to Disneyland, then Daryl and I were sick for about two weeks, we spoke in our new ward, and Daryl got to the half way point of school.  Here are some of the outtakes from the month that haven't made it onto the blog yet.  Also you can see how Sisko and Dax are doing.  They adjusted to the new home amazingly well, and are eager to explore the rest of the house.  We often find them waiting at the top of the basement stairs now hoping they can escape.

Sisko hanging out on top of some mac and cheese.  Dax also enjoys stuffing herself in our cupboards.  Fox is much too sensible for such tomfoolery.

Dax and Sisko are grateful that we procured a giant cat bed for them.

Yay! Dax likes the expensive cat furniture we purchased.  It wasn't a waste of money and space.

Oh look at what Luke can do now.  Now we have a baby gate at the bottom of the stairs.  The end.

Avery put together a puzzle on the iPad and thought it warranted a picture.  Harper thought she needed to be in it too.

Luke trying to snag my phone from Emery.  Emery's hair gets wilder and wilder it seems.

So Harper drew a smiley guy on Daryl during Sacrament meeting at Church.  Somehow Daryl didn't notice while it was happening.  We have a nice discussion about how we don't draw on clothes after Church.