Happy Birthday to....

Josh, Cheri, Callie and Barb! Tis the season - of Jones family birthdays! I guess I chose the right family to marry in to. Happy birthday to my wonderful family! Lots of celebrating this year!

Josh gave me the most amazing gift by surprising me by bringing 4 of my best friends in town! After 2 days of celebrating, we came home from a movie on Friday night to find Sarah Taylor, Courtney, Erin and Katherine sitting on our couch! I have never been more surprised - I cried and shook until I finally calmed down enough to go to sleep that night! I have been missing these girls so much recently, and I think Josh picked up on that. Thank you Josh for organizing this special treat and thank you girls for making the trip to be with me- it meant more than you know!

Saying bye bye to Sarah...

And Katherine...

And Conor.

And bye bye to Erin and Court!

pajama time with Sarah and Katherine!

Helping Dada open his gifts!

Callie and Allen were there to celebrate!

Kyle and Abby Hedges joined us for our night out!

Birthday festivities kicked off at Ed's Tavern with Amy and Eric, Amanda and Callie!

Birthday Cake No. 1 (of 3)

A New Tradition

A few weekends ago we decided to start a new tradition and have a family baking day to kick off the holiday festivities. Callie, Cheri and I baked cookies and Libby played with Chief and Scott. When Libby woke up from her nap, we let her go to town with sugar cookies, icing and sprinkles. She had a ball, but was quite worried the whole time about her messy hands! She loved playing with the sprinkles and quickly discovered how great the icing tasted! After cookie baking, we stopped a lot to get our tree - Libby was worn out from the fun day, so it wasn't too much fun for her, but she loves looking at it now with all the sparkling lights!

Worn out little girl picking out the tree.

This one is just my size!

Libby loves Frosty!

Her favorite decoration so far is the lights! She picks each one up carefully and stares. She says something that I think is "sparkle"!

Yummy cookies!

These were Libby's creations- I really admire her use of mixed media and heavy dose of sprinkles :)

Only an Aunt would do this- thanks Callie! We really wanted her to enjoy the whole experience, so eating icing was definitely allowed :)

Good thing we had extra sprinkles!

Pastry chef in the making...

And a big kiss for Chief - he didn't wash his cheek all week!

This is yummy...

Libby was so worried about the mess on her hands, she kept holding them up for us to clean.

First taste of sprinkles...

Trying out the rocking horse!

Pretty decorations arrived while Libby slept! She loved discovering everything new!

A Turkey Says... Gobble Gobble

We all went to Richmond for Thanksgiving and Libby did much better in the car (although she still hated it). She actually watched Elmo on our Ipad for almost 20 minutes - yay! Now she's obsessed with Elmo and walks into the living room, points at the TV and says "Ehmo". We got to see so many Richmond friends while we were home and meet 2 friend's babies- Vaughan and Remy - both beautiful baby girls! Libby got lots of time with her family and got to meet some new cousins too! Josh did the Turkey Trot with Katherine and Conor and Lindsay and Steve, which was a little more challenging than the one in Charlotte, so Libby and I had to cheer from the sidelines!

Cheeeeeese!

Beautiful weather in Richmond, meant lots of playing outside!

Morning PJ time is the best!

Libby LOVED the trampoline!

Nature walk with Laura.

Looking forward to Turkey Day!

Libby is already looking forward to Turkey Day! She has been making Thanksgiving art all week in school and is going to love the food! Here our sweet baby is last year at Thanksgiving. She was almost 5 months old and had not had any real food yet, but was quite cute at the table :) What a difference a year makes!

A Little Girl

I think I'm (almost, actually never) ready to acknowledge that Libby is no longer a baby. It took be about 6 months when I stopped calling her a newborn, and now at 16 months, I think its time for me to say she is a toddler. Afterall, she has been walking for 6 months now and "toddling" was ages ago!

She likes to read books on her own and climb up in her chair to read them. She even likes to turn on her music and dance.

She LOVES doggies! She knows Buffet (buba) and Gracie (gacie) by name and is so excited to see them and play with them. Gracie is especially wonderful with her and lets her climb all over her, tug at her ears give her hugs and kisses.

Libby loves to hide now and is really good at it! She'll run away and be totally quiet until we find her and giggles so excitedly- that's how I finally got this smiling picture- I had to surprise her while she was hiding!

Libby has been sleeping with a crib tent for a few months now- she's such a climber and started her attempts around 10 months, so we didn't want to take any chances.

If she takes a good nap, she wakes up and plays in her crib now - how adorable when she first wakes up!

Libby in her toddler class- they sit down at this table and have breakfast together every morning. She's not sad at all when I leave she just waves and says "bye". This day, Libby was late, so her friends decided to help feed her since she had missed group breakfast.

A sweet kiss from Margo!

This was picture day and exactly the face she made in all of her school pictures - nice!