Deacon Dave's Light Display

Last night we went to see Deacon Dave's light display. This is a house in Livermore that has thousands of lights on display. As you can see from Kayla's eyes above, she loved it!

I told you, thousands of lights!

It must take forever to put all of this up, but even worse to take it down:)

Thank you Deacon Dave for putting such a wonderful display for all to see! We had a great time. I think this will definitely be a new tradition for us.

Kayla's (and Mommy's) Friends

On Sunday, Kayla and I got together with Tiff, Ashlyn, Colton, Nicole and Ryder. We all had so much fun! We ate yummy food from Buca, played and exchanged gifts.

Here is a picture of our family room after we opened gifts!

Good thing Colton is such an easy going little guy!

We heard banging from Kayla's room and this what we found!


Ryder gave the girls the cutest little backpacks with their names on them and they had to try them on :)

We had such a fun day! Thanks all for such an awesome day!

Kayla and Kona

Kayla just loves giving Kona kisses!

Kona says "Get me outta here!"

Kayla decided she would cooperate!

While trying to get some more pictures of Kayla in front of the tree, we thought maybe we could get some of Kayla and Kona together. Wow, was that difficult! It is hard enough to get Kayla by herself, much less with the dog that keeps moving too! Anyway, this is what we got!

Here are Kayla's Christmas pictures that we got professionally done. She was pretty cooperative, and actually smiled for some of the pictures. There was one more that I liked, but I don't have a copy of that one for some reason. I will have to add it later!

Christmas Pictures!

We went to take Kayla's Christmas pictures today and I tried to get a few shots before we took off. She was not being too cooperative, so I had to be fast. They are a little blurry because she just moves too fast! I will post the professional ones as soon as I can get them uploaded!

Thanksgiving

This year for Thanksgiving we went to Grandpa and Lola's house. It was their turn this year. Instead of trying to see everyone every year, we have been rotating between my family and Keith's family every other year. It just makes our life a lot easier. Unfortunately, I did not take any pictures st their house, but I did manage to snap a few at home before we left.

Shoes!

We all knew it was coming...Kayla has officially shown her love for shoes. Her new favorite thing to do is walk around with our shoes on. Before she would try to do this, but now she can really walk around. She walked all the way from our bedroom to the kitchen and around and around from the family room back to the kitchen.


And for perfect timing, Aunt Stacey dropped off some of Faith's old shoes and she had a blast with those too! She especially loved wearing the rain boots (they were a bit harder to walk in though). I can't wait until she really fits into them, they are so cute!

Milk, Milk, Milk!

Ever since Kayla's 1 year doctors appointment, we have been trying on and off to get Kayla to stop drinking milk from the bottle. A couple of months ago, we decided we were going to take it away, and were not going to give in. Well, since then, Kayla was hardly drinking any milk. I was concerned, but the doctor said to give her some time. We were stubborn and she was stubborn, and it looked like neither or us were going to budge. So I tried one last thing. Something that one of our best friends tried out first. They were successful, so I decided I had no other choice. We went down to the Disney store and Kayla picked out her very own NEW sippy cup (of course the same on that Ashlyn had picked too). Kayla was so excited that she wanted to drink out of it right then, but I told her that she had to wait because we were only going to drink milk out of the new Minnie Mouse cup. When we got home and had dinner that night she drank 1 1/2 cups of milk and the rest is history. I cannot believe it worked. And we are so proud of her! She is becoming such a big girl!

Halloween Pictures & 18 months

Yesterday we took Kayla's 18 month pictures and some with her in her costume. I cannot believe how big she is getting. It feels like yesterday we just had her birthday party. Doesn't she make a cute little Tinkerbell?

Joan's Pumpkin Patch

We had so much fun today! We just got back from the Pumpkin Patch at Joan's Farm right here in Livermore. Kayla loved it! She loved riding in the wagon, looking at all of the pumpkins and of course, she loved all of the little animals.

Kayla in the wagon. All ready to go!


She loved climbing into all wooden displays (i guess that is what you call them)

This was our best attempt at a family photo.

Shawn, Cassandra and Sophia were able to come along with us! Its was Sophia's first official outing!

Concentrating as she is feeding the goats.

This is my favorite! I just love her expression in the little corn cut-out!

These little pumpkins were just her size...but she had her eyes set on a bigger pumpkin...

Here it is!

Kayla had so much fun and she was such a good girl! We all enjoyed ourselves!

As usual, catching up!

I was doing really good keeping up with the blog, but somehow I kind of fell off the wagon. We haven't been up to much, but Kayla has been keeping us busy. My Mom had bought Kayla a "chair booster" called a Kaboost and we just started using it. It works really good and Kayla feels like such a big girl sitting at the table with us. You can see the picture of it below.

Kayla has also been enjoying bike rides with Daddy. We got her a little seat to ride on the back of Daddy's bike. She loves, but she usually falls asleep. It took her awhile to get used to wearing a helmet, but we bribed her with a Hello Kitty one :)

On Saturday we went to lunch with a bunch of our extended Aunts, Uncles, cousins, etc. I didn't get too many pictures but here are a few...

What a week...and it is not over yet!

Poor Kayla! These past couple days have been horrible. On Monday afternoon I realized that Kayla seemed warm and that she had a fever. I immediately gave her Tylenol, but it did not seem to help. By 6:00 p.m. her fever had reached 103.5! I have to admit I was freaking out! I called Keith at work, texted Elisa (I knew that she was at work - ER nurse), and called the doctor. Keith ended up coming home for a few hours which was awesome. Wendy immediately came over to help out too. Elisa called back and told me to give Kayla Motrin and wait 1 hour to see what happens. The doctor called back, and funny enough, that was the same thing she told me to do too. After about an hour Kayla's fever had dropped to 99.8! I was amazed, but of course it was too good to be true. By 12:00 a.m. it was back up to 102.8. After talking to the doctor again, we keep pumping the medicine into Kayla. Thankfully we did not have to go to the ER because we all know how fun that can be!

After waking up every couple of hours we made to Tuesday morning. I called the Doctor's office first thing to get Kayla an appointment to be seen ASAP. We received good news at the visit. It was just a virus, and it was not H1N1, Swine Flu! Thank goodness for that!

On Tuesday Kayla seemed to be improving, but definitely not herself. Since Monday she had been very clingy and wanted to be held constantly. Tuesday went pretty well except for the night. She didn't fall asleep until 11:00 p.m., and we were already exhausted from the night before. But to make matters worse she woke up at 4 a.m. completely sweaty and could not fall back asleep until 6 a.m. Needless to say, we were all pooped.

Wednesday was better, and we could tell that Kayla was getting back to her old self because she was getting back into trouble. ;) The day went pretty well, but the night was a different story. Kayla fell asleep easily with Keith around 8:30 p.m., but woke up crying around 10 p.m. She was not happy for about 1 1/2 hours. She was crying uncontrollably and we could not calm her down or make her happy. Finally around midnight she fell asleep again, but she was restless all night. We will see what today brings...


The first time asleep last night!

Cuddled up with daddy!

Hanging Out!

We haven't been doing much these days now that school is in session. We have been enjoying family time with all of us and Kona, and just hanging out with friends too. Since I don't have any specific pictures of anything that we did, I wanted to post some cute pictures that I had on my camera from some random days.

New Additions!

This past week has been full of new additions. Some of our best friends welcomed a new baby boy! Colton was born on Wednesday, September 2 and we are so happy for the Wittmer family. I only got a few pictures taken at the hospital, but here is Nicole with Colton.


Ryder and Kayla waited in the waiting room while Nicole and I visited with Tiff and the baby. They are so cute together!

Along with the birth of Colton, we also adopted a DOG!! Her name is Kona (we had to stick with the "K" theme of our family). She is a beagle, walker hound mix. I still can't believe we did it! This past Saturday we went to meet Kona at her foster home in Valley Springs. I never even knew that there was such a place and when we got there we knew why. I was such a small little town in the middle of nowhere. Kona was quite nervous and scared when we brought her home, but she is getting more comfortable everyday. Here she is laying in the bed...her favorite spot!

More pictures to follow of Kayla and Kona. It is just hard to take pictures of 2 subjects that are constantly moving! Kayla loves Kona, she constantly wants to give her hugs and kisses, but we are not quite sure Kona is as excited about Kayla. I'm sure over time, they will be the best of friends:)