Walking in a Winter Wonderland...

So Savannah has pretty much spent the last 2 months inside, looking out at the snow. She's been sledding once or twice, and she knows that snow melts and we clean it off the floor (she loves to wipe up snow puddles that people leave on the floor!), but she hasn't spent too much time IN the snow. So today I finally decided it was time.

I took her out for a walk to Fareway (a looong 2 blocks away) and along the way she played and ran, and had a great time! I probably wont do it again anytime real soon though. Is anyone else totally over winter?

When we got home we played some more. Had to warm up those fingers and toes and cheeks somehow! :)

The biggest thing

I've been thinking a lot lately about what God's done for me. We have such a great and good God! He has given me so much! Let's just start with the obvious: An awesome family (that loves and trusts God), an amazing church, a home, some food, a job doing something I love, lots of things I want, and everything I need. All those things are soo good! Even great! But there is something that God has given me that's even better! An understanding of HIS will! I am so thankful that when I decided to follow Christ, He decided to show me how! As I look at the world around me lately, I have just been overwhelmingly greatful that I have a compass to follow that will never let me down, leave me behind, or point me in a direction that would be harmful to me. By pointing my life in the direction that God is guiding it I can have confidence in every single choice I make and every single step I take. Is that something big or what?

My baby love

What else is this blog about if it's not about cute pictures of Savannah? Really?

What my body was made to do

So after two trips this year (one to the Boone bump and one to Sundown) I have decided that God must have created my body just for snowboarding. I say this not because of how quick I'm catching on (because I'm not) and not because of how easy it is (because it's not) but because after both times, I wasn't sore at all! Unbelievable! Love it!

So here are somethings I need to work on:

- Getting off the lift (I fall every time so I just started "sledding" off with my butt on my board)

- Turing to the right

- Steep hills

- Getting from the hill to the lift without having to unbuckle so far away

- Anything besides stopping.. I'm good at that.

And some pictures:

It was -5 degrees when we went. Here's Jasey all ready to battle it!

Travis and Rowen gettin geared up.

And yours truely! I had to prove I was there.

A past due Christmas post

Merry Christmas!

It's been a busy couple weeks! With Travis home for Christmas break it was hard to find time to do any computer stuff. We watched a lot of Prison Break during our free time - of which there was little...

We celebrated Christmas Eve and Christmas Day here with my parents this year. Savannah was awesome at opening everyone's gifts. Once she got into ripping paper mode, we couldn't stop her.

One of her favorite gifts this year was a box of animal crackers from my dad. She has never been able to have her VERY OWN bag of animal crackers before... or for long. We ended up prying them from her hands because she was going to eat them all in one sitting.
Here's a good one of what Christmas looked like in Oklahoma. We went down there for a few days after Christmas. There were so many gifts, I'm still trying to figure out what all we brought home. You can tell travis is back there going "ooooo, that's nice Savannah".
Normally we can look forward to our trip down south because it's a good 20 degrees warmer there at Christmas time. Not this year. They had just had a big storm before we got there and it was *almost* as cold there. Savannah scored this new snow suite though!
And this is just a snap shot of how we ended our Christmas visit. The night before we left Savannah experienced her first night of the flu. She threw up 8 times in 6 hours. Mostly on me. In the morning Travis' brother's family jetting out (so they wouldn't get sick too) and Savannah cuddled up with Grammy for a while. She's not super cuddley these days so it was kind of a nice change of pace. She was done puking by noon so we decided to head home. Her being sick probably made the 9 hour drive home a little easier.
Some Favorite gifts:

A stroller for Savannah's babies

A tent for Savannah to play in with all her new toys

A game that actually electrocutes people for fun (not for Savannah - for Travis)

A coat (me)

just an update....

This month has been flying by! Here are some notable high lights:

- We are almost one month through another Iowa winter and Travis and I are both in okay spirits about the winter. Normally by this time in December we're moaning and groaning. We've each been snowboarding once, and Travis took Savannah sledding once. That probably helped.

- Our crazy Christmas party week is passed. We had 5 parties to go to in 14 days. 3 of them included white elephant gifts. Some things we came home with : The Everybody Poops book, a "Water Spider" pool toy (sorry Beth and Brian), The Emu doll, and a T-Rex tooth - along with some other treasures. We got to go to Perfect games for two of the parties and play lazer tag. I beat Travis at lazer tag, race car driving, and DDR at one of them. That was fun :)

- We got most of our Christmas shopping all done a week or more ago.

- We had our last Escape of the year, until January 13th. It will be nice to have a few weeks off.

Here are some pictures of Savannah ... that's why you're here... really. (Savannah updates at the bottom)

Yep, she's a keeper. Here's what she's up to now:

- Still taking 2 naps a day. One from 9 - 10:30 and one from 2 - 3:30. Then she goes to bed at 7:30pm and wakes up at 6:30am. I talked to her doctor about it because it seems like everyone is telling me that she should have dropped a nap but he said she's just so busy when she's awake that she probably needs the sleep.

- She weighs 27 pounds.

-She still drinks soy milk, but she loves Cheese. The cheese is easier on her then straight up milk (Travis and I have the same deal). She also loves cookies right now (thanks for everyone who gave us cookies and introduced them to her diet), and waffles. We're struggling right now to get fruit and especially veggies down. But we'll keep at it.

- She's having fun experimenting with things she can crawl under, jump off of, and run into. She also likes running around with things over her head so she can't see where she's going.

- She talks constantly! Not a ton of real words yet (although she does have some), but lots and lots and lots of babbling.

Snowed in.

Travis stayed home from school yesterday to go to the doctor. Then today he had a snow day! Even better, they have already canceled school for tomorrow too! They have 3 built in snow days so he wont have to make up for today or tomorrow.

Here's some pictures from today:

Travis spent 4 hours shoveling out us and our neighbors. Savannah just looked out the window at him a lot of that time until I finally suited her up and sent her out. She only lasted 10 minutes.

Look how pinky her cheeks are!

Morgan and Jasey spent the night last night. I like seeing their faces. I like having slumber parties with them. We (they) made Christmas cookies this afternoon. We pretty much just hung out in warm the house while Travis was outside all day.