Faces

Miriel has been adding a few new facial expressions to her repertoire lately. This one: "The Furrowed Brow"

Playing

We've been busy getting our house on the market (see it here) and haven't taken the time to blog.

I took a few photos while Gavin and Miriel were playing outside in Gavin's mustang today and in the bath tonight. They are enjoying playing together more and more and love each other so much. It makes my heart glad! Enjoy!

Oh, and the basic new things to blog about are that Gavin is reading very well - he 's read all of One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish (by Dr. Seuss) all by himself several times and pretty much reads whatever he sees. And Miriel is walking - she started about a week or maybe a week and a few days ago and is really good at it. Hopefully more on those later...

Happy Birthday Miriel!

A year ago today my sweet baby girl was born. I can truly say it has been a delightful year of enjoying her easy, smiling disposition and watching her grow into the fun and curious little girl she is. Parenting two children rather than one has certainly had its challenging moments, but the change has come so much more easily for us than when Gavin was born.

We celebrated today with a little cake, a few gifts and some decorations. Balloons are Miriel's very favorite thing right now, so we made sure to get a few. Without further ado, the sequence of birthday events:

Happy Noises

Yesterday I was making dinner, and since I was hearing happy baby noises somewhere in the house, I didn't think much of what Miriel might be doing. Chad decided to check on her and discovered this little mischievous girl having a grand old time in the bathroom. We all laughed and now we shut the bathroom door, or at least put the toilet paper roll up on the counter when it's not in use!

the dog and the cat

Gavin and Miriel were a dog and cat for Halloween. We took a few photos and visited a few neighbors but didn't spend much time on Halloween other than that. They were super cute, though, and Gavin was excited about being a dog and knocking on doors to get candy. We'll see if he asks tomorrow if he can do it again... (he did last year!). We also saw our friends the Laceys and the Austins and took some photos of all our kids in their costumes together (Ella, Charlie, Miriel and Gavin). Unfortunately I didn't have my camera with me, so hopefully I can snag a photo of theirs in the near future!

Pumpkins

We went to Kreuger's Farm a couple weekends ago and enjoyed picking out some pumpkins, the corn maze, some tasty treats and the tractor ride (thanks to a gift from our sweet friends the Closners!). Everyone had a fun time and we enjoyed the beautiful, sunny day. I don't really have much else to say about it but I do have a couple photos.

In other news, Miriel is now CRAWLING! She's been at it for about a week and seems to get better (and faster!) by the hour. And here's a funny video of her "dancing" to Gavin's backhoe music.

Snapshots, for Real

I took these today, so they are real snapshots of life right now. Enjoy!