December 1987 to December 2013 (Aila 7 months)

This red dress is the one clothing item my mom saved from my babyhood.  She made it, of course, and I wore it for my 6-month pictures.

I was so excited when she brought the dress to me when I first had Aila.  The dress fit Aila perfectly for her 7-month photo shoot!

Kristin (6 months), December 1987:

Aila (7 months), December 2013:

She got tired of the photo shoot and decided to crawl over to the Christmas tree.
(The plan was for her to start crawling after Christmas...)

 Sweet baby Aila!

Family Pictures (November)

Our Bishop's wife was generous enough to take our family pictures in November (our ward has been so good to us; so many great people. We feel so blessed!).  I thought Abram would be hesitant and hard to get to smile, but he did great--he smiled constantly for the first 5 minutes and probably said "cheese" about 200 times!  :)

Ben realized after we showed up at the site that he had on black ankle socks with brown shoes...haha.  Ha.  For some reason it looked a little weird cropping it out for our Christmas card, so we decided to leave it.  I even tried to edit it a little, but it made it more obvious.  

Good times.

The Rest of November

(Some of these pictures are backwards chronologically, but I'm not taking the time to fix it...)

More bites for Aila...

Abram was ecstatic the day Aila became his "sippy-buddy!"  A sippy connoisseur himself, he was the first one to give it to her.

A lovely leaf-collecting walk in November.  Yes, short-sleeves in November.  Couldn't be happier about it!

Crunchy leaves.

Her first swing ride!

She loved it, despite the expressions in these pictures.

We love the park by our house!

And for an embarrassing tidbit, this picture is my only proof that we celebrated Thanksgiving:  a leftover piece of an amazing pumpkin pie made by the one and only BTW (Ben).  (Although I believe I do deserve a little credit since I found and suggested the recipe :) ...I made a chocolate cheesecake pumpkin pie--the filling turned out fine but the crust totally bombed.)  Anyway, what kind of a mother doesn't take pictures on Thanksgiving?!

We celebrated at my grandparent's in Napa with my Uncle Brett/Jessica/Alexis and Uncle Mark & Aunt Lesley.  We're so lucky to live so close to family!  Abram is always in heaven at Grandma & Grandpa Eide's house. (I think Grandma & Brett might have a few pictures...?)

Christmas tree shopping.  With no coats.  Or hats or mittens or scarves...!

A little Black Friday shopping (in the afternoon) at Target where we bought a new TV, and after setting it up at home, realized our fuzzy sound issue was in the DVD player, not our TV.  So we returned the TV.

Long live our Dinosaur TV!

On the morning of Black Friday, we went to the church to run around and play.  Family exercise!

After running in circles for about 15 minutes straight with me, Abram took a break to erase the chalkboard.

Miss Aila was a happy little peach chewing on her pant strings.

Mr. Basketball had fun reliving the glory days. :)

Abram loves getting Aila from her nap, and I love walking in and seeing her little dark head popping up to see us.

(We have since moved Abram to a toddler bed and Aila into the crib.)

This is my "spray-man" helping me wash the windows.  One of his favorite jobs. :)

Back in Time: First Bites

This week I am trying to get back on top of my blog.

So here we go back in time to November, when Aila had her first bites of "solid food" when she turned six months old.  It's killing me how much older she looks now!

Abram was so excited!

Abram's helping her open wide.

Cheeks, cheeks, cheeks. :)

Not so sure...

Maybe it's not so bad!