Visit to Grandpa's

We made it back from our trip to Kansas City, all of my pics from that trip are on our laptop....in Arizona with Derek. So my Christmas blog will come later...but I thought this picture below of Ryan and Lexi on the airplane back to Seattle was just precious. Ryan was an AMAZING help on the airplane and Lexi did awesome, sleeping for at least 1/2 the trip. You know it is a good airplane trip with a baby when the people around you say "bye smiley" when you get off the plane. Yeah!

While Derek is in Arizona for the "Cactus Jam" Basketball tournament, Auntie Katie and Grandma have been on Lexi duty so she doesn't have to be in Daycare for 12 hours while I am at work. Yesterday Auntie took Lexi on a field trip to Grandpa Roger's house. Here are the great "good humor Lexi" pictures. She is starting to get better with the confused look....at least she smiles through it now. :)

Lexi is now crawling backwards, waving backwards and clapping. She is generally in a good mood, smiling a lot! When giving instructions for Katie and Mom it went kinda like this: If she is fussy and rubbing her eyes, she is tired. If she is fussy and not rubbing her eyes she is hungry. Otherwise she is pretty happy and you can just play with her.....we have such a good kid.
Grandpa and Lexi....ummmm please disregard the HUGE AX in the background...not sure what that is all about. My Uncle Robbie might know though.... ha ha ha ha!

Videos

I know at times the theme of my blog is "technical difficulties", I know that 99% of the time these are not actually "technical difficulties", but are user error instead. When we got our new laptop, I haven't been able to upload videos from my camera to the computer...so I took the opportunity today (at work...shhh don't tell!) to upload the ones I have on my camera. Some are older than others, but enjoy these videos of Lexi, I think they are a lot of fun.

Video #1...Lexi in the Tub. She seems to really like baths, she doesn't smile or laugh...but as you can see, she is going to be a swimmer!

Video #2....this is Lexi trying to crawl...she is so close!

Video #3...this might be my favorite, Uncle Chad put Lexi on his shoulders and bounced her around and she just laughed and laughed. By the time I started taking the video, this had already been going on for several minutes...she loved it!

I have a few more, but they will have to wait until tomorrow...ran out of time!

Christmas Tree Hunting

One of my favorite family traditions is going to get the Christmas tree the day after Thanksgiving. Thankfully, my husband does the same thing! Yeah! I have many memories of Dad packing my Grandpa, sister, dog Charlie and I into Big Red to go get our tree. Living in Monroe, it is not such a hike to get to the U-Cut lot.

We found a beautiful tree, and Derek got to work sawing it down...

Then Ryan wanted his turn...
Victory! How manly are my boys?

Us girls were there too! We worked hard observing, taking pictures and sucking on our fingers....

After hunting down the tree, Clark (I mean Derek) went to work putting the lights on the house...which look fabulous.

More Thanksgiving...

We had a wonderful Thanksgiving at the Witt house, Ryan was with his Mom this year so he can go to Kansas City for Christmas, but Mom and Dad came over and we had a lovely day.

Lexi all dressed up in her Thanksgiving best. I actually got this dress from a client when I was pregnant...so cute.

Grandma Cass & Lexi
Grandpa Roger & Lexi. Dad and I were talking the other day about how happy and smiley Lexi is...yet you never see it in the pictures because of her obsession with the darn red light.

The Witt family, just need Ry guy and we are complete.

My First Thanksgiving dinner

When we moved to our new house in Monroe, it was the first time in about 4 years that I have lived in a place with a full sized oven...the other ones have been 3/4 sized...it drove my Mom crazy! So for some reason...still not sure why, I volunteered...yes VOLUNTEERED to cook Thanksgiving dinner. Needless to say, a week before turkey day I was questioning my decision. :) I really wanted to do this on my own, I didn't want it to be a scenario where my Mom ended up cooking everything and bringing it to my house. So...here goes nothing....

The bird...my Dad tried to make it extra difficult and got a 20lb turkey for the 4 of us eating. Handling the raw turkey was my least favorite part, it was disgusting. Below is the turkey in the brine.

Ready to go in the oven....isn't it pretty??

Me putting the turkey in the oven..don't I look cute?? lol

The turkey's home for 3 hours (ish)

While the turkey was cooking, we set the table...

And I frosted the red velvet bundt cake that I made from SCRATCH!!

Then finally...the turkey was ready! I thought it looked great, and thankfully it tasted pretty good too! (If I do say so myself!) We made good work of the turkey....and had LOTS of leftovers.

Not everyone got to have turkey...here is little Lexi polishing off her Thanksgiving dinner...sleepy eyes and all. :)

Miscellaneous pics...

Here are some fun pics that were being held hostage in my camera.

The kids...I think they really look alike in this pic.

Big brother showing off his sister in her pretty party dress.
This picture is for my mom's friend Carol...thanks for the adorable sweater!
(confused look picture #974)

About a month ago, we went to Dad's to watch a husky football game...here is Grandpa and Lexi.

Derek dressed Lexi in her purple "husky outfit" before we went to Dad's, when I changed her diaper before we left the house....I also changed her onesie. He he he he.

You all are in for blog mania....

Yeah!! I found the cord!! (wait...scratch that....DEREK found the cord!!) Woo Hoo! I have many pictures to share with you, so bare with me. :)

Bath time with Lexi....I have to have some amo for later in life.

Santa Preview

So I know this is kind of Ghetto, but I took a picture of the Santa picture of Ryan and Lexi, I think it is super cute! Lexi had a really weird look on her face in the pictures where Ryan was smiling at the camera, and this was a close as she got to smiling. We let Ryan pick his favorite and he liked this one. Grandparents and Aunt Katie & Uncle Chad...don't worry, you have non-ghetto copies coming your way....along with LONG overdue school pictures (totally my fault).

More Cuteness

Yes, once again I have been a slacker on the blog...thanks for pointing it out Katie. :) I have a BUNCH of pictures on the camera, but I seem to always have technical difficulty. By technical difficulty I mean that I can't find the damn cord. I am sure it is in our house somewhere...lord only knows where. You will all have to make due with some text pictures.

This one might be my "new favorite" (I have a new favorite every other day, so take that for what it is...)

Smiling and rolling...her two favorite activities! We have not had an official crawl yet, though it is not far away. There was a "mini-scooch" backwards, but not a crawl.
Since she has started on solid foods, she is packing on the pounds! She is so much more "sturdy" than she was. Can you see the mini faux-hawk in the picture below? This is what entertains me while feeding her. Her favorite foods are (in this order) Oatmeal, Sweet Potatoes (Yams actually) and applesauce. Food on the bad list....carrorts and green beans. She has spit green beans out at both Grandma and Ryan.

Sleeping in the carseat at Costco...notice her holding her blanket...cute!

Here's your update....I will scour the house for the cord...I just need to put my mind to it. For those of you counting....10 DAYS UNTIL KANSAS CITY!!! We are ALL very excited to see the Witt/Gibson family.

A couple of cute pics

Derek sent these to my phone yesterday when I was at work, I thought they were really cute so I thought I would share with you. Lexi was rolling around the living room...watch out people...mobility is not far away!

She looks like she is going to take off crawling at any time....you can tell by the look in her eye!!

Warm and Fuzzy

When I was pregnant with Lexi and learning about having a baby, there was a lot of information about cord blood storage. Stem cells from the cord blood is used to treat Leukemia, Lymphoma and other life threatening illnesses. Either you could pay thousands of dollars to have your cord blood stored in case later in life you or your child come down with a life threatening illness or you can donate at no cost your cord blood so that others can benefit from the stem cells in the blood. Derek and I chose to donate the cord blood. When I gave birth, there were probably 10 ish (I really don't remember...mom or derek?) people in the room, one of those people (probably as I was wolfing down my subway sandwich) whisked away the cord blood and it went to the Puget Sound Cord Blood Bank. The following day two people came and took several (again, it's blurry) tubes of blood for testing. Well, a few days after I got home from the hospital I got a call from PSBB and they were missing a couple of the questionairre forms that I was supposed to fill out in the hospital....had I not been a registered Blood Donor, the cord blood would have been thrown away. I answered their questions and the blood was then "eligible" for donation.

Where am I going with this? I got a call today from the Blood Center, they called to let me know that mine and Lexi's blood was matched with a 62 year old man who is suffering from Non-Hodgkin's Lymphoma. He told me that there was a high amount of stem cells in it, enough for him to have the treatment. He said that they are not sure the patient is going to have the treatment, but our blood is on hold in case he does. If he doesn't it will go back into inventory for the next patient.

I was very touched by the phone call, my Auntie Celaine has been battling this disease for quite some time now, so it is nice to be able to help someone that is going through what she was/is going through. I always wondered where the blood you donate goes, I know they don't call everyone that donates, but I thought it was a great call to get. Any pregnant ladies out there...donate that cord blood!!

Baby Food

At 5 months, we started giving Lexi some rice cereal in anticipation of her starting to eat solid foods. She has done really well with the rice cereal and seems to like it. We have been feeding it to her both by the spoon and putting some of it in her bottle....depending on how much time we have at night. The rice cereal has really helped her sleeping and she is getting back to sleeping through the night...though not reliably. This week is her 6 month birthday...can you believe it?? I sure can't! When she got sick this week, we combined her emergency trip to the pediatrician with her 6 month check up. Here are her stats:

Heighth: 25 1/2 inches - 50th Percentile

Weight: 15 pounds 13 ounces - 50th percentile

So...she is basically right where she was at her 4 month check up. Good stuff.

So on to baby food...we will start giving her some "real" food next week....we are not sure what to start with, so any suggestions are appreciated. Lexi has been on breastmilk this whole time until the rice cereal, she has only had formula twice! Before starting nursing if you told me that 6 months into it she would have had maybe 6 ounces TOTAL of formula, I would have thought you were crazy. But, we seem to have gotten in the grove, and pumping at work has worked out well, though as I get busier at work, taking time to pump 3 times during the day is getting more and more difficult! A couple of weekends ago, I got a wild hair to make my own baby food. My main motivation for this is cost savings...those little bottles of pureed baby food can really add up. I also had a coworker that gave me some good suggestions on how to cook it in large batches and put it in ice cube trays and freeze. So check it out! My carrots and green beans seemed to turn out well, I operated the food processor all by myself and everything...Mom aren't you proud?? Actually, you are probably proud that I own a food processor...yes, it was a gift. :)

The final product....

Here are some pictures from feeding Lexi the rice cereal, again with the confused camera face, but cute nonetheless!
Messy face!

Ryan loves feeding Lexi, he has been a great help.

Halloween 2009

Happy Halloween

It was soooo nice this year to be out in Monroe! The past 3 years Derek and I have had to haul ass to get out to Monroe in time to trick or treat with Ryan. This year, as many of you know, we have been stricken with the Swine Flu. Ryan was out of school all week and even had to miss the Halloween party at school on Friday (trauma for a 4th grader). We were happy to sit at home and hand out candy to all 143 trick or treaters that came to our door!

Here are Derek and Ryan's jack o lanterns, we put them up on our car, they welcomed everyone to our house.

Ryan was a knight and Lexi was a lady bug...this picture turned out sooo cute!

Ryan the knight....he was with his mom that night, so sorry that there aren't more pics of him....he just stopped by quickly for a photo op and then went to get his candy.

I uploaded this picture out of order...and couldn't get it to the end of the blog, but this is the result of a full swine flu halloween.

Playing with Grandma Cass

Lexi sits up all on her own these days.

Everytime we take Lexi's picture, she gets mesmerized by the red light before the flash...so we get the same, confused look every time we take pictures. Right before this, she was happy and smiling...can ya tell??

More confusion...

This was a sneak attack picture before the confused look....she was playing patty cake with Grandma.

Overall, we had a great halloween, we would have liked to feel better, but we are on the mend now and will hopefully be back to full strength next week.