Festivities

Sorry, the camera was misplaced once again. This time for much of the Christmas break. These are the photos we did manage to get, and we'll try to post pictures from other family's cameras when we get the chance.

Reese playing with the moving, singing snowmen at Grandma Faber's house.

Reese found the phone in Grandma and Grandpa Faber's room.

Reese playing with cousins at Grandma and Grandpa Heath's house.

Reese not waking up from a nap after not falling asleep very easily. Notice the ring on her arm. I don't think the toy was meant for that.

Reese trying to blog since mom has been out of commission.

We stayed in Utah Valley for the week of Christmas and New Years. Here are some of the highlights:

Christmas Eve: Reese and cousins act out the Christmas story at Grandma and Grandpa Heath's house. Reese loves being a wise man because she gets to wear a Burger King crown and hold the bad of gold.

Christmas Day: We open gifts at the Heath's. We try to show Reese how to tear wrapping paper, but she takes one try and hands it to the nearest adult and asks them to finish by using the ASL for "please" I figure it's just as well. I don't really want her learning it's okay to rip all sorts of paper until she's old enough to know the difference between the mail and the presents.

Will gets shoes. Anna gets another wig. Will likes dry feet and Anna likes not having to do her hair. Reese gets Duplo blocks. They are currently scattered in every single room of our apartment.

Christmas Day: Anna runs to her parent's house in the middle of the day to be there for her brother Darren's Christmas phone call from Canada. She brings the camera back with her to take pictures at the Heath's and that's the last we remember of the camera until the end of the holidays.

All Week: Reese makes messes everywhere and charms everyone. She loves having so much space.

All Week: we all get to play games with family. We learn a new game called "beananza" where players grow bean fields to win. Will has a nightmare the next morning where he believes that he can't wake up until he has enough of the right beans. Anna thought he was just extra tired.

New Years: We rang in the new years at 8:00 with the Heaths (and cousins) then return to the Faber's to put Reese to bed and continue playing games with Family until it's so late we're all tired and grumpy.

Going Home: We've finished packing up the car to go home with I realize there is one pocked of a bag we have not checked. Sure enough, there's the camera.

Happy Holidays!

First Words

For the record, Reese's first word was "hi." She uses it all the time. She used to walk down the halls of the institute building with me and wave and say "hi" to anyone and everyone. I think she made a lot of people's day.

She also frequently nods her head and says "yeah" when we ask her a question. "Reese, are you the cutest girl in the world?"- "yeah." She doesn't always- or even most of the time- know what we're saying, but I think she likes to feel included in the conversation, anyway.

She also says "mama" and "dada" but she doesn't know what they really mean, so it doesn't count. We play the game where we point to Daddy and say "dada" and then point to Mamma and say "mama" and then we point to Reese and say "Reesey". But it hasn't worked out the greatest. She thinks "mama" means "nose" because I usually point to my nose when I say it. I think she's catching on to dada, but once, when we said "where's Reesey?" instead of pointing to herself she covered her eyes because that's what we say in our version of peek-a-boo. So so far we don't count names as words.

Despite all the effort to get her to say our names, she caught on very quick yesterday when she was in the bath tub with her rubber ducky and I pointed to it and said "duck." I said "a duck says: quack quack quack quack." She repeated, "quack quack quack quack," and I was pretty excited so we kept saying "duck" and "quack" and she caught on. Today she even grabbed the duck and said "duck."

So officially: Hi, Yeah, Duck.

The Power Strip Phone

Daddy's Little Boy - er - Girl

Daddy had to wear a suit to school for a presentation. Reese saw him picking out a tie and decided that she had to do the same thing. She was quite happy with herself.

Phoning- The Series

Reese likes to pretend that she's on the phone. She even has conversations and answers the imaginary person at the other end. It's fun to see all the things that she pretends are phones, so I've decided to try and capture as many as I can. I'll post them as they happen. I have two for you from this past week:

The Shoe Phone

The Comb Phone

Jazz Game

Megan and Todd were nice enough to invite us to their work Christmas party. Each employee is aloud to bring a guest with the idea that they'll bring a spouse or family member, but since they both work there, they each had an extra ticket to the box seats at the Jazz game courtesy "Spiral Interventions" as the signs on the doors said. Reese got to come, too.

Reese enjoyed the food and being with adoring aunts (Megan pictured), more than one of which was there.

With Aunt Kenzie watching the game. We got to go down at halftime and give high-fives to players as they re-entered the court.

We also got Free T-shirts. The only size was XL, but that didn't stop us from putting one on Reese, too.

Will, having a good time.

Reese, having a good time.

Christmas Shopping

I was at the mall with Reese and for the first time ever I found myself needing to use a public bathroom and bring her with me. I purposely chose the handicapped stall because I had my big stroller with me, even though it held our coats while Reese was happily walking and exploring. When I tried to latch the door, I found that the lock was broken. No matter, I thought, there was no one else in the bathroom and I could just pull the stroller in front of the door to keep it closed.

Unfortunately, this dilemma took two seconds too long. Just as I was pulling the stroller to block the door, I heard a 'splash splash.' Reese! Get your hands out of the toilet!

Thanksgiving

Sorry about the lack of Thanksgiving information. I was in charge of the dinner this year at my mom's house and it was great- thanks to the help of my wonderful sister, Megan and her hubby, Todd. I didn't get any pictures because I lost my camera before the event, but here are some of my favorite things:

- We combined two tables together to form one huge long table to seat 18 people.
- We had to use two tablecloths- one fall leaves and one plain red. Then we had red plates, blue bowls and white napkins. We had to change out the blue bowls for white ones so the settings looked more Thanksgiving than Independence Day.
-we had orange leaf-shaped place cards that we set in the glasses. It helped the red and white table look a lot more festive.
- We had two turkeys. Todd was in charge of the turkey, but I defrosted a second one by accident, so I ended up cooking a bird, too. It's a good thing we have three ovens between my mom and Megan's houses.
- Half the yams didn't get done, and the other half were only done halfway through dinner. I gave the whole bowl to Shelly because she was emphasising how much she loves yams.
- Reese would have nothing to do with anything except the jell-o.
- Other than the yams, the dinner was a huge success! Thanks to those who helped and those who brought extras!

And here's a video of Will and Reese playing the cover-my-face game, just because I don't have any more pictures.

Oh, PS: I still can't find my camera. Would you keep a look out for it, Mom?