The Big 2

December 27th was David's second birthday and he loved opening more presents. He also loved blowing out the candles which he repeated several times.
His party consisted of Mom, Dad, Lydia, and himself.

Here is our little grownup ready for church the next day. To prove that he is getting older he stayed in nursery the whole time without mom or dad!!

Happy Birthday David! We love you!

Christmastime

David was very excited for Christmas to come. He tried to explain it all to Lydia but the thought of eating candy out of socks while sitting around a dead tree didn't sound like much fun to her. Then she saw how pretty the tree was and thought it might not turn out to be so bad.

With sub zero temperatures and a few colds going around we didn't go outside to play in the snow. To compensate, we built a snowman indoors. David kept waiting for him to grow, "tall, tall, tall".

The good thing about being little is even if your tree in only three feet tall, it still looks big from your point of view.

A rare and random photo of me and David
A cute photo of Lydia whose smile always says, "you know you want to hold me!"

Anyway, back to Christmas: Grandma and Grandpa Salmon and Aunt Alita came to spend Christmas with us. Here are some photos of Christmas day..Lydia received her very first doll and loved it right away, thanks Aunt Joanne!
David putting together a puzzle with Grandpa Salmon.

David shooting some hoops on his new favorite basketball hoop.

Aunt Alita getting ready to read us a Christmas story for the tenth time just before being interrupted again (oh well, I guess you'll have to come again next year to read it to us!)

Scott and I on the "L" coming home from "Wicked" the greatest Broadway musical of all time (a Christmas gift from the greatest husband of all time)

Happy New Year everyone!

We love dad

I don't think it is possible to be more of a daddy's boy than David is. He can't even make it through the night without coming in to say hi at least a few times. This week is finals week for Dad and although he's not getting much sleep, he's still working hard. Thanks for hanging in there dad! We went to Canada for Thanksgiving and for Jeff's wedding. We loved seeing the family and we had a great day at the temple. Four handsome men...

and three gorgeous girls...

A Happy 3 Months

I can't believe Lydia is already three months old. She smiles so often and loves playing with David already. As you can see they are becoming good buddies.

Here are more cute pictures to celebrate a cute baby.

Just like David, she likes to hang out with dad, even if they are only sleeping. We love you Dad!

David and Friends at the Zoo

halloween

We hope everyone enjoyed their Halloween festivities. David was a bee and after much coaxing and a few pieces of candy he decided that candy was a pretty good trade for keeping his costume on. We attended a Halloween Circus downtown which was lots of fun. We didn't get any good pictures of the performances although David did steal the show a couple of times.

I took the kids to the zoo with some friends and we saw a giant jack-o-lantern, a few rhino's, and of course, the elephants.

Lydia's costume was a scarecrow if you can't tell, she was a pretty cute one and was much more cooperative about wearing it than David was.

However, she was pretty disappointed that we didn't bribe her with candy too.Scott was nice enough to do the dirty work while carving our pumpkin.

David did a little pumpkin designing of his own..

The final product..

David got in on some superhero action with Mr. Incredible, a little friendly duel:

Smiles

These pictures are for the Grandparents, mainly to entice them to come visit again soon! I promise Lydia doesn't always wear pj's although it appears that way since most of her pictures are taken with her dressed in them, it's just that she's the most happy right when she wakes up and always has a smile ready.

This next one is right after a bath, hence the crazy hair.

We were able to visit some of the museums here in Chicago while Grandma & Grandpa Cook and Grandma & Grandpa Salmon were here. The weather was gorgeous everyday and it made for great walks along the shore.

David had fun experimenting with the water, he got his feet wet but it was a little too cold to go swimming.

A Blessed Day

On Sunday Oct. 12 Lydia was given her name and blessing by her father. Both Grandpa Salmon and Grandpa Cook were able to participate. Lydia is such a good baby and hardly ever cries! She is starting to smile more and we are grateful to have her in our family.

The best part of the day was having our family here. Thanks for coming Grandma and Grandpa Cook..(just in the nick of time- they arrived from the airport just before the meeting)
and Aunt Alita and Grandma and Grandpa Salmon..
This weekend we also got to enjoy spending time as a family and seeing some of the sites of Chicago.

hope everyone had a Happy Thanksgiving (the Canadian relatives at least)