Boo!

Happy Halloween!

This year has been so much fun because I got to dress up our beautiful daughter as her favorite animal, a duck!

A few weeks before Halloween, I decided to use a tutorial on how to make a penguin from makeit-loveit.com.  It was a very good tutorial because I have never made anything like this before.  It even shows how to use dresses she has already as the pattern.  It ended up fitting perfectly (although in another week or two it will be too small).  I followed a different blog for the hat and had to make 2 because the first was too small and Kaitlyn didn't like me trying it on her head before it was done.  

The best part is that I submitted it to makeit-loveit.com to enter the costume contest and Kaitlyn made the cut!  She's famous!  Jeremy has been making fun of me all day about how excited I am about this.  I guess I think its pretty cool to be on a blog that I follow almost religiously.

Here we are at our ward Halloween party (Kaitlyn had just been woken up prematurely and wasn't that happy yet, but its the only picture of all of us).  We were in charge of activities at the ward party and a very nice lady in the ward took Kaitlyn for most of the party so we could help all the other kids play the games and pop the balloons.

We walked to the law school trick or treating and showed her off for a while.  Then we went to our courtyard Halloween potluck and ate with our neighbors until we had to go home for Kaitlyn's happiness and to give out candy.  It was a great Halloween!

She wants to fly!

If you haven't seen enough of our Kaitlyn duck, then watch this video of her walking.  She loves walking and has a lot less interest in crawling.

Castle Rock State Park and more of Kaitlyn

 At 7 months old, Kaitlyn still loves to swing.  She is laughing at everything now and has become very ticklish in the last few weeks.  Now when I change her diaper, she laughs even if I accidentally touch her stomach or legs.

Kaitlyn is very determined to learn how to walk and crawl, but she's still not there (Mom, you haven't missed it during your travels).  She loves when we help her balance and she takes steps in whatever direction she feels like.  She is also close to crawling and gets on her hands and knees and rocks back and forth (video coming soon). She can move her feet or knees, but hasn't figured out that her hands have to move too.  Most of the time she ends up scooting backwards which is frustrating when her toy was right in front of her.

Sometimes she doesn't like the grass on her skin.

Kaitlyn loves music and loves playing the piano too.  This keeps her entertained for quite a while. 

 

I bought myself some new running shoes that I love.  My feet were really hurting when Jeremy mentioned that I had not bought any running shoes the whole time we've been married (3 1/2 years) so I decided it was time or my feet would not last another run.  We have been taking Kaitlyn running with us almost every morning (most times Jeremy goes first and I get a little more sleep and he comes back and I take Kaitlyn again).  She loves the stroller and we have beautiful places to run.

As you may notice, these pictures have some beautiful soft carpet in them.  Our apartment has the almost black and dark blue indestructible carpet with no padding underneath.  It makes the whole apartment very dark and shows every speck of dirt too.  I saw a friends apartment with nicer carpet and they said they just got some at Home Depot and put it over the top of their existing carpet.  So we went to Home Depot and found an old remnant of super nice carpet that used to be $750 and we got it for $170.  Turns out it was measured wrong at the store and we had enough for our family room downstairs, Kaitlyn's room, and some of our room too.  We LOVE our new carpet.  It feels so much more like a home.

Yesterday we went to Castle Rock State Park (about a 35 minute drive south) and hiked around a loop.  It was a little chilly so we left Kaitlyn in her pink bear pajamas.  It was such a beautiful place with really cool rocks, lots of tall trees, ferns and moss covering everything.  Kaitlyn loved arching her back in the front pack to look up at the tops of the trees.

Kaitlyn likes touching everything and pulling off leaves.

This is a tree that looked like a big root system above us.

Easter Island... with a ghost underneath.

Not the most flattering picture of Jeremy, but Kaitlyn was too cute.

Someone should come visit us... and everyone else too.

She thought the moss was pretty awesome.

Stanford in September

September was very busy, but we still managed to explore places near our new home in Stanford, CA.  So far we love the area and are very happy to be here.  It is such a beautiful place to live.  One of our first weekends here we drove about an hour north and over the Golden Gate Bridge to Muir Woods.  It was incredibly beautiful with all the redwoods and everything so green.  Kaitlyn loved our hike until the end when it got cold and we didn't have enough warm clothes for her.  We got to the car as fast as we could and turned the heater on full blast.  She was happy and slept the whole way home.

 

 Our first Stanford Football game.  Once she noticed the big screen, she wasn't so scared of all the noise anymore and she loved the people watching.

One of the weekends we went to the Oakland Temple.  While trading off with Kaitlyn, I took these pictures. 

One weekend we went up into the hills behind Stanford and found this little hike.  Its so awesome to have such beautiful hikes just a short drive away.  When Kaitlyn gets tired of the front pack, she wants to stand up so we end up holding her so she can stand on our hands.  It gets tiring hiking like that, so we figured out how she could stand up inside of the front pack.  She loved it and we were happy to give our arms a break.

Kaitlyn drove us home from the hike...

The Stanford grounds are pretty to walk around on Sunday afternoons.

This was the Stanford-USC game.  It was awesome even though we had to leave early for bedtime.  The only sad part is that I lost her new hat already.  She loved the ladybug hat (she loves all hats) and she must have thrown it out of the stroller because it is gone gone.

Big Basin Redwood State Park is about a 45 minute drive south.  Even the drive there was amazing on a windy narrow road through the trees.