Our poor sweetheart has been sick the last two days and managed to use the entire kleenex box (half for her sneezing and half to play with) :) I stayed home from Church with her yestarday evening in hopes that an early bedtime would help her recover, and I think she is much better today. I just hate it when she is sick, I know how miserable it is to have a cold.

These are the rest of the photos from our little photo session. They sure are squirmy at this age! I'm using a couple of them for Taylor's Birthday card.. but that will be a surprise, I won't post that until the week of her Birthday!

Taylor has started saying please and thank you... or rather... pleee & hey ew, but we know what she means. :) She definately knows the meaning too, she will see a cookie and say pllleeeeeeee pleee pleee pleee... lol, it's so cute, I can't help but give in. I'm just glad that she is asking the right way! Next week we will be teaching her to say antidisastablishmentarianism so stay tuned!

Taylor is now easily able to crawl upstairs, I can't believe this day has come! John and I were about ready to head to Babies R' Us to get a gate, but I thought I'd check Craigslist before we left. We ended up finding the perfect gate on there for just $6! And the best part.. we never had to get in our car to go get it because it was right down the street from us on our normal walking route! How cool is that, I love saving money. :)

Updated Stats

The contest for my sister Kaitlin to win a

scholarship is still going on, so keep voting here:

http://tinyurl.com/yvobsk

She is currently # 146 out of 35,000 entries!

You can vote every day until February 12th, 2008.

Thanks for all the support so far!

Have you heard of Etsy? It's my new favorite website!

My cousin Shondra has a shop, here is the url:

www.inkdropdesign.etsy.com

Above are a few designs from her store. Etsy is basically a place where you can sell your handmade goods (and there are SO many amazing stores). My Mom and I will each be setting up a shop soon so stay tuned for the details! If anyone else has a store, please leave the url as a comment, I'd love to check them out!!

Thanks Nikki for this Cookbook last year for Christmas! I just started going through it page by page, we give each recipe up to 5 stars (5 being - Incredible) 4 is still excellent and we had one last night that was really yummy! I used pork chops instead of the lamb, and the spices were wonderful on it! My Grandma always served pork chops with applesauce, so I had to add that in too. Otherwise, everything in her book is a "30 minute meal" and SO easy! If you don't already have this, you should get one, great "not-so-ordinary" meals! Tim & Jamie inspired me to start using it because they have the same one and bookmarked a couple good ones for me to try. Does anyone else have this book??

Okay okay, so she doesn't turn 11 months for three days... but I won't have time to post this then! Plus, I want this next month to last as long as possible because on February 26th, our sweet BABY will be all grown up! It feels like I was just pregnant yesterday and I hear that it goes faster and faster after each birthday... *sigh* One reason to cherish every moment!

Chocolate

This is Taylor's little mischievous look, I caught her with a piece of chocolate that she knew she wasn't supposed to have. She was checking to see if I could see her in this photo.

Movin' up!

Kaitlin is #252 now! Keep voting! :)

Click Here: http://tinyurl.com/yvobsk

Little Red Car

For Sale: $3,200
1974 Triumph Spitfire . Cherry Red
Contact: John . 503 998 8031 . johnandshell@comcast.net

BUT WAIT! If you call now, we'll throw in a free tank of gas!

Laundry

My budding little helper! Taylor was helping me push the laundry into the dryer the other day, it was pretty cute so I had to get a snapshot of it. Okay... so she didn't really do much, but she was having a blast standing next to me while I did laundry.

Congratulations!

Congratulations Brad & Monique on your new baby boy - Brett Jacksson Boehme! He is so handsome! You have such fun times ahead of you!

Keep Voting...

Keep voting... she could win the scholarship! Just click on "Vote for this entry" then on the side will pop up a thing where you have to sign in... instead, just click on "Vote as a guest" (I think that's what it says) and then click the vote button again. Thanks so all the support so far!

For those of you that have been asking (I just checked on this):

24 - Days left for voting as of today

24 hours - Time before you can vote again
28,000 - people that have entered so far

1039 - Kaitlin's Ranking on the last post

374 - Kaitlin's current ranking
My sister winning - Priceless! ;)

She is entered in a "Crazy Hair" contest too, but the winner only gets hair products... you can vote for that too if you want... but I don't have a link for it.

Vote for Kaitlin!

My little sister is trying to win a scholarship by having the "Best Smile" please click on the link and vote for her, she needs all the votes she can get to win! You can vote every 24 hours! :) Thanks in advance for the support!

Click Here to Vote: http://tinyurl.com/yvobsk

This is the photo she submitted :)

Peek-a-boo!

Oh, I should have video taped this, it was SO cute! Taylor was hiding behind the curtain and I said "Where are you Taylor..." and she quick popped out and said "Ba!" this means "Boo" in here baby language, then she hid again. I love it that I can play with her now! I love being a Mom!

Dolly

We got Taylor a Doll for Christmas because she seemed fascinated with other babies, children, anything with a face really, so we thought she might like a baby of her own. Sure enough, she loves her dolly. I came in from her nap yesterday and she was just standing there talking to her doll. She is so sweet, I love her!

Messy

Taylor has been learning how to feed herself lately, and as you can tell... she is still learning! :)

Guest room sunshine

Taylor and I were straightening the guest room a bit and the sun came out... while it was hailing (only in Oregon), so I had to take a few photos.

I just love this look that she gets when she is examining something...

Watching the hail... Love these eyes!

Standing

Taylor is making her way around... much sooner than we were ready for. She is crawling, standing, and walking (while she holds onto things) all over the house. We are finding new things to baby-proof every day! But it's so much fun to watch her, I'm just sure she will be walking any day now!

Gifts

More Photos from the Weekend...

Taylor loves her new laptop from Aunt Nikki & Uncle Steve!

Christopher and Nana opening gifts.

Bad Week?

We were on our way up to Maple Valley, WA after church on Sunday to visit John's family, celebrate a late Christmas and have a fun New Years, but on our way up, our car broke down on the freeway (still being fixed), I'll spare you all the details in between, but we finally made it up there by 11pm. Then we ended up staying two extra days because all of us.. yes, all 9 of us came down with a terrible stomach flu right after we took this photo. So needless to say, our New Years was not too much fun since all of us were sick. John's Mom went to so much trouble to have some wonderful food all weekend, "Christmas" Dinner, New Years snacks, and so much more, but none of us were up to eating much. When it finally came time to leave, we got about 30 minutes away and realized that I left my wallet and the high chair tray at John's parents... we headed back to grab the stuff but barely got back out of town when Taylor got sick all over the car again... What a week!

We did manage to have some fun though, we played a couple games, and celebrated John's Mom's Birthday and had a blast seeing all the kids together. Next time we will just have to check the sick status before we come up. ;) We are just all glad to be feeling better.