Happy New Year!

Happy 2009 Everyone!

We hope everyone had a safe and fun new year! We had a little get together at our house (planned at the very last minute) and had a blast! As you can see, even miss Elsie stayed up all night! We tried over and over to get her to sleep at normal bedtime, but she must have known she was going to be missing out on all of the fun then! It is so crazy to think that this exact day last year is when I first felt Elsie kick inside me! She kicked just before the ball dropped at Time Square. Now she is doing a lot more than kicking :-) .

Lyle and I invited just a few friends and family members over to help us celebrate. I enjoyed making some treats including chex mix for the first time. Of course we had to expect Grandma Pat to surprise us all with a gift basket full of sparkling drinks, cool glasses, fun feathery masks, bead necklaces, party poppers, and silly string. We had a lot of fun with it all. Alex and Jake (a friend of Alex's who occasionally helps on the farm) especially had fun spraying both cans of silly string all over the living room at midnight. They thought it was funny until they had to clean it all up of course :-).

The new year has already been keeping us busy. Well, I should say that Lyle's days have been more full than mine. During Christmas break, Lyle started helping Grandpa John with his chores everyday, along with building a farrowing house for his hogs, keeping up with a full barn of new lambs, and doing his own daily chores. Our farmhand buddy Alex stayed with us during most of his break to help Lyle, which without him would have been impossible, but now that he is back in school Lyle has been doing it all on his own. We haven't seen a lot of him as he is back to work at Deeres and he rolls inside from the farm at least after 9:00 every night. I do admire the hard work ethic of my husband though, and am so thankful for all that he does to keep us going strong!

At times I really miss the days when I was able to go outside every day and help Lyle on the farm. It may sound silly but for the past five years we have been together, doing farm chores was always sort of our "bonding" time. It is something that I will look forward to doing again someday and involving our children with as well. For now though, I really can't complain about spending time in our warm, cozy home with our beautiful little girl.

Elsie definately has been keeping me on my toes! She is crawling EVERYWHERE! Her new favorite place to crawl is over the ledge into the kitchen and towards the dog food. She has also been standing up on any furniture she can reach and walking along towards anything she wants- especially if its food! Lately she has been saying "Da da da da" a lot. It is kind of funny because she didn't start saying it much until Lyle went back to work during the day. Coincidence or not? haha. Although today, she did actually say "ma ma" a few times. This is such a fun age watching our little girl grow into such an independent little girl already. At this rate, we are guessing she will be walking way before she turns one! Parenting is just such a wonderful thing.

We hope everyone has been enjoying their new year so far! I start back to UNI Jan 12 and hoping for a good semester. Safe and warm winter wishes to all!