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We barely made it to the Fall Fest at church after driving in from Austin. Katherine and mom were dressed in matching poodle skirts.

Katherine is too cool!

On October 26th my Uncle Kent went home to be with the Lord. He had been fighting a battle with cancer. He was a strong believer, heading to Israel as a missionary with his wife, my Aunt Beverly this month. Our family is comforted in knowing that he is in heaven and that our sadness is for our loss, not his.

Please be praying for my mom, my aunt and my cousins and their family.

 The picture is is Katherine and her Uncle Will who was able to make it to Austin for the funeral. I was the unofficial photographer for the family and have a lot of pictures of the entire ceremony but figured that most of you would not expect to see a casket on our blog so I opted for the lighter photo of the weekend.

We had a small Halloween celebration with all of the cousins the weekend before Halloween. It is very hard to get 5 kids in their costumes, posing and smiling. In case you can’t tell what they all are, Emily is a fairy, Nathan is a brown bear, Ty is a panda bear, Katherine is a 50’s girl in a poodle skirt and Hannah is a flower.

The Class of '91

I cannot believe that it has been 15 years since I graduated from high school. That will sure make you feel old. We had a reunion. It was thrown together last minute so it was not very well attended but we had fun anyway. I graduated with a class of 68 and of that we had 13 show up. I think all of lived in town.

Reunions are weird. I think we all look pretty much the same, maybe a few pounds heavier but basically the same. I am sure if we pulled out the yearbook we would realize just how much we have really changed, but I like to think we still look 18. Some of my classmates have kids who are in 4th or 5th grade. That really makes me feel like I got a late start since Katherine is only 8 months old. I could not imagine having to work on home work and driving her to dance class. That is such a different world.

It was fun to catch up with those who came, but I sure wish more had been there. Most of the people I actually hung out with in high school were not there. Maybe in 5 years they will come to the 20th.

This looks yummy.

Now that Katherine is crawling, she is exploring and curious about everything. Well, Hooligan was eating her food and Katherine was curious about it so she crawled over to check it out. It was one of those times as a mom where I was telling her no as I was getting out the camera to take some pictures. Don’t worry, none of the dog food kibbles made it to her mouth and Hooligan patiently looked on.

We have tried to move Hooligan’s food and water into the laundry room where she stays a lot when we leave the house. Dogs are funny though. Hooligan will NOT go in the laundry room to eat. She will bark at you until the food it moved back into the kitchen. I think she is scared that if she goes into the laundry room to eat we will shut the door on her.

Today we had a small playgroup but the kids dressed up in their costumes. Katherine is a 50’s girl in a poodle skirt that matches mine. Halloween we will all be a family from the 50’s. Both JG and Quade are giraffes.

With the Elephants

Today we went to the Zoo with Shannon and the kids. It was Katherine’s first trip there. It was cold when we arrived (in the 40’s) but it turned into a beautiful day.

From Fun Pictures

We had a great time walking around and seeing the animals. We started in the kids area where Katherine was able to pet a rabbit. Then we saw the monkeys, rhinos, and jaguars. Shannon and I took a break to nurse our babies when Emily said, “Mommy, I need to go to the bathroom and I already started.” Yikes, well, Katherine was done eating so I popped her back into the sling and took Emily for a quick trip all the way back to the kids area and luckily we made it in time.

From Fun Pictures

Then we went to see the lions (which the zookeeper got to roar), the elephants, the giraffes and the snake and bird house. Katherine had a fun day, but she has a fun day no matter where she is. I thoroughly enjoyed my day with Shannon, Emily, Nathan and Hannah. 

From Fun Pictures

From Fun Pictures

Katherine,

I cannot believe you are 8 months old today. You are such a big girl. Actually, you are still small, you only weighed 15 pounds last week, but you are growing up. You continue to be more fun each month. It is amazing how much you change.

From Fun Pictures

From Fun Pictures

This month you have become fully mobile. You were barely crawling and scooting at 7 months, but now you will follow me around the house. Sometimes you get frustrated if you can’t go fast enough, but you can go pretty much anywhere you want. Your favorite is to crawl into your bathroom and pull up on the tub to touch the chenille animals on your shower curtain. I have to be right with you at all times because you don’t realize that is kind of dangerous and you could fall over and bonk your head.

From Fun Pictures

You are also pulling up on everything. I am amazed at how good at it you are. You pull up on the furniture, on my leg, on the fireplace, pretty much anything that will support your weight. A lot of people say that they would not be surprised if you started to walk early. I am not sure that I am ready for walking yet.

You are getting much better at eating solid foods. You have now tried rice cereal, oatmeal, sweet potatoes, avacado, carrots, peas, apples, bananas, pears and prunes. We still don’t have a consistant eating schedule, but you will eat up to three meals a day with some success. You still love to nurse though and will not take a bottle. We are working on learning to drink out of a sippy cup but you don’t quite have it down yet.

Your favorite toys are your activity table and your stuffed dinosaurs. You love to chew on them. You also love to be in your exersaucer which is good for when mommy is trying to cook dinner.

You have really learned to love bath time even more.  Now you start to splash as soon as you hit the water. You also love to smile at the baby in the mirror. Even though you could take a bath in the big tub, I still use your baby tub on the counter so that I don’t have to lean over and kill my back. This means that when you splash it gets all over the mirror, counter and floor.

Changing your diaper has really become a struggle. You are just so curious that when I put you on the changing table you immediately flip over to your tummy and start to try to crawl around or grab all the things in the basket. You get so mad when I flip you back over so I can fasten your diaper. I think you would prefer to just be naked if I would let you.

You continue to stay really busy. This month we finished sign language class. You have not really started to sign back yet unless you count the time that you happened to stick out your tongue while we were in the bathroom with all the frogs. I think you were just exploring your tongue and not signing “frog”, but maybe you are just a prodigy. That would be a pretty random first sign though. We have gone shopping with Nana a few times and you are so curious about all the clothes hanging on the racks. You try to grab them as we go by in your stroller. You also love the arboretum. I think we have been there 5 times this month. I am glad we bought that membership.

From Fun Pictures

You talk all the time. You are not saying anything purposeful yet, but if I listen really carefully I think I hear you say “mom”. It is so fun to hear you babble while we are in the car. I think you are talking to your bugs hanging in the car seat bar.

This month you have not been sleeping as well. You were a little sick with a cold and we traveled and it took you awhile to recover from all of that. I hope that you will get back on your schedule from before. Mommy could sure use more sleep.

I really love the way you love to cuddle. It seems that your favorite place to be is in my lap. Sometimes I get frustrated because when you are in my lap it is hard to get anything else done, but I sure try to enjoy it because I know you will not always want to climb up into mommy’s lap.

From Fun Pictures

Katherine, you are such a sweet girl. I can’t wait to see what the next month holds for us.

From Fun Pictures

Chewing on the crib - still no teeth

Teeth count - still zero. We keep thinking that Katherine is teething because she has been drooling and chewing on everything for months now. Still no teeth though. I guess I am not too upset I guess since nursing will not be as much fun for me when she has teeth.