Mom's birthday

My mom has the unfortunate pleasure of being born on Christmas day.  This means that most years, her birthday takes a backseat to celebrations of our Savior's birth.  So, this year, I decided that since she was turning 55, I wanted to do something special.  So, I came up with a plan to surprise my mom with a Branson girls' night with her and all of her daughters!  We decided we would take her to a nice hotel in Branson, Missouri, so we could go shopping at the outlet malls and just hang out and have some girl time.  My mom only knew that she and I would be hanging out on a Friday night.  She didn't know we were staying at a hotel or anything.

The nice daughter that I am, I made my mom drive all the way to Branson with me with her eyes closed!  It's about a 45 minute drive, so I think she may have been a little carsick by the time we got there, but she was a good sport.  I had previously sneaked into her house and stolen some clothes and things so she would have what she needed for our overnight date.  She quickly noticed that things were missing from her closet, but she just assumed that I didn't trust her to wear the right clothes on our date!  Anyway, we got to the hotel and I went inside to get a room key.  Then I took her up to our room, but my key wouldn't work!  Luckily, my sisters were waiting inside and we knocked on the door and they surprised us.  It was so fun to surprise my mom and pamper her!

We played some games and then put our bathing suits on and went down 4 flights of stairs and outside in the frigid air and over to the indoor hot tub.

Me, Angie, Vicky, Carley, and Mom

We had fun in the hot tub, but then we had to make the journey back to our hotel room.  Some of us thought the trek up four flights of stairs was worse than others did.

Carley's response to walking up 4 flights of stairs.

Vicky and I had on the same bathing suit...who wore it better?

 We tried to have a lot of Mom's favorites available.  Here she is with her favorite dessert:  vanilla ice cream with Nestle quick on top!

The next morning we went and got pedicures, but I didn't take a picture of everyone's toes.  It was so much fun and I definitely think we should make it a tradition!  Happy birthday Mom!  Thanks for everything you've done for us and all you've taught us.  We Love You!

10 & 11

So since it's January, I thought I should tell you what Eva's been up to in the last couple of months.  She's now 11 1/2 months, but I never posted about 10 or 11 months, so I thought I'd play "catch up" a little bit.

Here's the car seat pose - to me she doesn't look much older from 10 to 11 months - if anything, I think the shot of her at 10 months looks older than the one at 11.  Anyway, I think she's a cutie!

 

 

 Eva was born with quite a bit of hair and it's just kept right on growing; which is why most of the time it's fixed.  When I don't put it into some kind of a ponytail, this is what you get!  Crazy haired Eva.  I love it when her hair's in pigtails, but I don't want it to break off or be pulled tightly all the time, so I don't "fix it" every day.  This hair was probably after she'd slept in her ponytail all night and then I took it out in the morning to redo it. 

Something Eva has learned to do is turn on the water in my bathroom.  Almost every time I am in the shower, she will find her way to my bathtub and turn on the water just to feel it running over her fingers.  Luckily she's only ever turned on the cold water.  Even when I turn it off, she'll turn it right back on.  Sometimes I think she's too smart for her own good!

Some things that happened during her 10th & 11th months:

• We got rid of her pacifier during her 9th month, so it's totally gone now and she's done wonderfully with that transition.
• She learned to crawl down the stairs by herself.  We still keep the gate up because sometimes she has gotten to playing on the stairs and tumbled down, but she does know how to get down herself.
• Eva FINALLY stopped spitting up!  At about 10 1/2  months we decided to take her off her medication because she hadn't spit up in awhile and thankfully she hasn't really spit up since.  What a blessing that has been!
• Eva started walking!!  She took her first few steps on November 16th - just before turning 10 months.  By 11 months she was still crawling to get most places, but she could take 4-8 steps by herself.

Hopefully I'll be more on the ball for her one year post!  We think she's a doll and are so glad she's a part of our family!