Bradley sure enjoyed his chocolate pudding the other day.

We're not sure how much of it he actually ate, but he was sure proud what he did with it.

Here is a video of Bradley walking last week. He LOVES that he can walk now and is always smiling as he's walking.

Our 4th Anniversary

THEN...

NOW...

or more realistically... NOW

Four short years have brought a lot of changes to our lives.

Mackayla has been wanting me to try on my wedding dress for a long time, and I told her I would finally dig it out for our anniversary. She's always so dissappointed that she wasn't at our wedding, so we had a little wedding party for her to be part of tonight. She was so excited and wanted to get all dressed up.
Dancing with her prince




She was wearing my slip for a while pretending it was her wedding dress. It was so cute to see her lifting it up while trying to walk around.


Then after a lot of pleading and a few tears she convinced me to let her try on the real dress.

Dressing up was fun, and not just for Mackayla. I loved putting the dress back on too. It's always nice to know that it still fits! :)

Jared and I hired a babysitter and went out to dinner last night. It was so nice to have an actual date, and tonight we'll get to watch our wedding video. Jared knows that is always my one request on our anniversary, so he's very nice to sit and watch the whole thing with me. I better go get back to the anniversary celebrating.

Introducing the newest addition to our family...

It was dark when we got home with it so this isn't a great picture, but here's Jared with our new (to us) 2004 Honda, Odyssey. We're no longer debt free, but sure enjoyed the feeling for about 6 weeks. We need to figure out for sure which of our other vehicles we're going to sell and quickly sell it. Once we get that taken care of our car payments shouldn't be that bad.

I finally reached the status of a minivan driver. My dream come true! We've been having so much fun going for rides all weekend in the minivan. The kids love it! If anyone wants a ride, we have room now. :)

Mackayla LOVES playing strawberry shortcake. She's always Strawberry. I'm Blueberry Muffin and Daddy is Ginger Snap. Jared had tried to get her to let him be Strawberry's friend Huck since he's a boy, but she won't budge and quickly tells him he's a boy Ginger Snap. Bradley gets to be her dog pupcake. She makes him wear this doggie hat when he's pupcake and he loves it.

Besides the new car, our other exciting news is that Bradley's second top tooth finally cut through. He was miserable for a full week before hand. We went through the same thing last month when the first top tooth cut through. He had a fever and pretty much layed on my shoulder looking like this for two full days before the tooth finally broke through. It's so nice to see him feeling better now.

Well, that's all for us, what's new with you?

Melissa's Birthday

I turned 29 on Saturday and had a wonderful birthday! Jared and Mackayla made blueberry pancakes for breakfast. Then I went to get my hair done. I wanted to get rid of all the lighter highlights I had put in my hair previous times and wanted my natural color back. It turns out that my natural color is much darker than it use to be :) Anyway, that took forever so it was so nice of Jared to watch the kids all morning. That afternoon we opened presents and then went to Cafe Rio for dinner which I had been looking forward to for months! Finally, it was time to come home for some birthday cake. Mackayla made the decision a while ago that my cake needed to be a purple "M" because my favorite letter is "M" and my favorite color is purple. So, Jared made me this beautiful cake! It really was a GREAT day!

A birthday hug from Bradley


Opening presents



Dinner at Cafe Rio


Blueberry pancakes for Breakfast

Here are a few other pictures from this fall

Playing in the leaves

BEST FRIENDS

There are difficult moments but this is why it's so great to have the kids so close together, they're already becoming the best of friends.

The other day Jared and Mackayla left to go take care of some things and Bradley and I stayed and played at home. When they got back we went to the door to greet them and I figured Bradley would jump out of my arms to his Daddy as he usually does and I was ready to give Mackayla a big hug. As they walked in though, Bradley dove down to his sister so fast, almost causing himself to get dropped, and gave her the biggest hug. They were so excited to see each other. It was pretty dang cute.

We got a little bit of snow the last week and Mackayla couldn't wait to get out and try out her coat and boots.

ELMO

Bradley has found a new passion in his life... Elmo. He wakes up taking about Elmo and talks about him all day long. He loves to find Elmo in books and magazines and of corse, to watch Elmo's world.

We found this Elmo costume for practically nothing at an after Halloween sale. Mackayla wears it almost everyday and Bradley just loves it.

Mackayla's favorite character now is Strawberry Shortcake. She wanted to dress like her today and this is the best we could do to match her.

Bradley enjoying some sour cream at dinner.

You can't see it much, but since we were laughing about Bradley having sour cream all over his face, Mackayla decided to rub it all over her face as well.

Bradley's first haircut

This picture is from the week after Bradley's birthday. His hair is still long but we cut two full inches off the top. It was really long! I don't have any desire yet to cut it all real short. We're still enjoying the beautiful curls.

Happy Halloween

Snow White

(This is actually Mackayla, dressed as Snow White for Halloween)

Since Snow White always has little animals around her, Mackayla wanted me to be one of her little bunny friends.
Our Super Heros

Looking for people to save... or maybe they were just wondering if they could go get some candy yet.

Bradley and Mackayla

Going Trick or Treating

We only went to a few houses then headed over to the church for a Halloween party.

In the costume parade

playing games

The morning after

After having a piece of her candy she was looking cute, so Jared tried to take her picture. She, of course, protested. I asked her to please just hold still for a second. She agreed, but still in a rebelious state would not open her eyes.