Snowpocalypse

We finally dug ourselves out of all the snow that we got in the blizzard last night! Whew! It was a fantastic storm! There were gale force winds, white out conditions and a TON of snow! The snow in our backyard looked like a sand dune this morning from having been whipped around in all the wind. When I tried to open our front door there was at least 3 feet of snow heaped up on it! I spent a couple of hours this morning digging 2 deep trenches; one from the door to the street and the other from the front door to the driveway. It's crazy! The trenches are about 2-3 feet deep! What an impressive sight! Here are the pictures to prove it!

My awesome trench!

Trench to the front door.

Looks cold? ...We've seen worse!

What you are looking at here is the 10 foot drift that is literally burying our neighbors completely! The small deck in the upper right corner is actually on the second story!

Here it is again, you can barely see the neighbor's sliding glass door peeking up over the snow drift under the deck.

These are our front windows. The debris you see in front of the windows is actually a large shrub! This stuff is deep!

On Saturday we took advantage of the 'best sledding hill in the Madison area' at the park across the street from our apartment. It was really fun! We only did 3 runs down the big hill though. We would have stayed longer but my legs couldn't hike up the hill anymore! (I did run 5 miles earlier that day so I deserve a break!) It was really fun! Audrey even got to try out sledding too!

A very kind lady let us borrow her awesome toboggan for a couple of runs!

All bundled up having a great time!

Cookie Face

I don't know why I think this is so cute but I do. Mitchell gave Audrey a cookie last night and she looked so cute with it that I had to have a photo shoot. Don't worry health nuts, she only ate maybe 1/16th of the cookie, if even that!

"Daddy gave me this new thing then took a bite out of his"

"Yummy treat!"

I love how she held on to her cookie with both hands for the longest time.

"Yum! Cookie!"

Surprise!!

Last week Audrey and I migrated south to warmer temperatures. Oh, that and we surprised my best friend, Lindsey, for her birthday!! It was so fun! She didn't know we were coming and we just showed up! It was such a fun adventure! Audrey was an angel (except for a couple of nights that she decided not to sleep, and therefore, I joined in her rebellion) and she charmed everyone wherever we went. Lindsey has 2 little girls and all 3 of the girls were so cute together! Audrey immediately took to Lacey (the almost 3 year old) and the 2 of them played so well together. Michayla is 4 months and is the happiest, smileyest baby ever! We visited the children's museum, shopped, ate sweet pork salad, gave and received scalp massages, chatted, laughed, slept a little (see we have changed a little since our college roommate glory days!) and just overall had a wonderful time! It was such a fun week! Also, while I was in Dallas soaking up the warm sun, wearing short sleeves and leaving the coat packed up, Madison was beyond FREEZING! One day the high temp was 7 degrees! Brrr! So glad I missed that! Here are some photos.

Lacey was singing "Row, Row, Row Your Boat"

Partners in 'climb'

Audrey loved this activity board with spinning tiles. This was such a fun little kids play place.

Beautiful Babies!

Lacey wanted to have a 'sleep over' with Audrey. You can see they adore each other.

And I adore this girl! Happy Birthday!

Audrey and a Unicycle

I'm inspired by my friend Kim (Hi Kim!) who recently posted several updates to her blog so here's my catch up post. I haven't neglected this blog because of lack of things happening around here, we've been busy! Happy new year to all! 2011 is off to a great start for the Harris family. Mitchell just hit his 6 month mark at work. It's hard to believe that we've been here 6 months already! Melanie is staying busy with Audrey, a quilt, babysitting once a week and I am making a better effort to read consistently too! Audrey is just as obsessed with climbing as she has been for at least the last month. She gets impatient when we have to do other things that take time away from her climbing practice. She stands up in bed now which, fortunately, has only interrupted her sleep routine a couple of times. Nowadays when I go in her room in the morning she is standing up in bed talking, I love being greeted with a big smile when I enter the room! Speaking of her smile, she has a couple of new additions to it! 2 teeth! The lower teeth broke through a couple of days after Christmas.

Audrey won't let me look in her mouth at the teeth so this is the best picture I could find of them. Just 2 little points poking through!

Here are some of Audrey's other 'likes':

*CLIMBING (it's her passion so it's worth mentioning again)

*Experimenting with lots of sounds including: mah, gah, bah, guh, dah, neh, buh. Sometimes she will string different sounds together too!

*Clapping. It's fun to see what gets her excited! The other day she went from crawling position to sitting on her own and clapped at her accomplishment!

*Smiling. Audrey is very generous with her smiles. She makes lots of friends this way. :)

*Crawling. She has mastered the hands and knees crawl and rarely army crawls anymore.

*Being social. She would rather be in the same room with me or Mitchell than be left alone playing with her toys. I often notice her following me around the house if I am doing other things.

*Reading books. Audrey got a lot of books for Christmas and she loves being read to! She has even learned how to open the flaps on her flap books and goes right for the flaps when we turn the page.

*Everything goes to her mouth these days.

*She is getting better at her fine motor skills and is able to pick up small things with her pincer grasp.

*Playing with cords, wires and heaters, all are off limits.

*Playing fetch with herself. She often throws certain toys (especially balls and rings) ahead of her and then crawl after them and repeat the process across the room.

*Sucking on a wet paper towel when I wash her hands and face.

Audrey's 'Dislikes':

*Anything that gets in the way of climbing.

*Water on her face in the bath.

*Being strapped in her car seat.

*Getting in her snow suit.

*Scratchy kisses from her dad who grew a beard.

*Being removed from the vicinity of cords, wires and heaters, they are off limits.

*Dad's Easy Button. She pushed it one afternoon and it scared her and made her cry, now she wont go near it.

Saturday morning we went to a regional juggling expo with our friends Andy and Lynn. It was amazing to see so many people juggling, doing tricks and riding unicycles. Lynn and I decided to give it a try. I have to say, it's a lot harder than it looks!

This guy had 5 pins going at once!

This guy was juggling 7 balls at the same time! His hands were moving SO fast!

I had a lot of confidence that I could learn how to ride a unicycle...until I actually got on it.

Audrey was tired and ready to go home.

Merry Christmas and Happy Birthday!

We had a wonderful Christmas this year! It was mine and Mitchell's first Christmas on our own without traveling to be with family. It was a little sad because we definitely miss being near our families but it was a neat experience to put in place our own holiday traditions. It was exciting that this year is Audrey's first Christmas! Mitchell and I didn't think she would get it at all, we pretty much thought Christmas would be like any other day to her. We were pleasantly surprised that she was extra excited that day! Here's how it all happened. Christmas Day Mitchell and I woke up about 7:45. We were SO excited to take Audrey to the living room to see what Santa brought! She normally wakes up between 7:00 and 7:30 so we didn't think she would sleep much longer. We waited and waited. We even went into her room and watched her sleep thinking that for sure she would stir and we could go open presents! No...she slept in until after 9 that day!! We probably should have taken advantage of the opportunity to sleep in on Christmas morning, I'm sure there will come a time when that is a luxury not to be had. I heard that my 9 year old cousin set his alarm for 5:00am this year! Anyway, Audrey was so cute and excited about all of the new toys and books! By the time we were done opening presents the living room floor was covered with fun new things for her to explore! She crawled from one toy to another playing with them and squealing with delight! She circled the living room playing non-stop until noon which was WAY past time that she should have had a nap. She wanted to play so badly that she was crying from exhaustion as she crawled from toy to toy! After a nap though, she was right back at it for the rest of the day! I think Christmas is made for kids. Seeing Audrey so delighted was definitely a highlight of the weekend!

Here's Audrey's haul! She was definitely spoiled on her 1st Christmas!

Later in the afternoon we decided to walk across the street to the big park nearby. There were TONS of people out sledding! We don't have a sled so we tried to improvise by using the lids from plastic storage bins. It was a fail. Bummer.

~HAPPY BIRTHDAY MITCHELL!!~

Sunday was Mitchell's birthday! And not just any birthday either, it was his GOLDEN birthday! We of course went to church in the morning then we had the missionaries and our friends Andy and Lynn over to celebrate! I made Mitchell's favorite meal of Chicken Curry Pasta Primavera and we had a yummy chocolate cake with lemon curd fulling. I attempted to get fancy and pipe 'Happy Birthday' with melted chocolate to make a 3D decoration on the cake but it was a fail. That's why the cake has a very crooked 'Birthday Happy' on top. ;)

Audrey loves company and is quite the little social flirt. She sat at the head of the table in her high chair for an hour entertaining herself and us. That earned her a little taste of birthday cake!

As seen in the last post Audrey figured out how to pull herself up on the furniture last week. Apparently she is very proud of herself for figuring that out because now all she wants to do all day is climb! She climbs on the couch, the fireplace, chairs, people, toys, her crib...basically anything she can access she wants to climb! She also thinks she can walk even though she really can't. She gets herself standing up then she lets go and tries to walk off. Of course she promptly falls flat on her face. I wonder how long it will take her to figure it out? It's very fun but I am nervous that she will fall and dislocate her shoulder or break her arm or something. Well, gone are the days of getting anything done during the day. Nap times are all the more precious now! I am so happy to get to be home with her though, I wouldn't trade this time! Another silly thing that she has started doing lately is fake coughing. She coughs all the time. I think she does it for attention, or maybe just to experiment with sounds.

This Baby Doesn't Want to be a Baby

I simply cannot believe how fast it seems that Audrey is growing up! She wants to do all things adult. She hates to be treated like a baby. Part of me is so proud of her for learning so quickly and so well but part of me would rather her stay my little snuggler forever! The one baby-like thing she still embraces without a hint of discontent is nursing. She will nurse as often as it's offered (even if she's not hungry) and she's really not that interested in solid food. She will, however, eat food if it comes from my plate on my fork! Haha, silly girl!

Yesterday she pulled herself up on a box and today she pulled herself up to the standing position on the chair. Doesn't she look so big!?!

In the evenings when Mitchell gets home from work the 2 loves of my life have play time together. I guess they were cold the other day because I found them having quiet activity time in bed. Audrey was trying to copy Daddy by examining her toy quietly next to him. I love to see them together!

This is just random cuteness. Silly sleeper!

Looks like I have a very special gift under my tree!

On the Move

Our little girlie has learned how to crawl! In the last week or two she has been getting up on her hands and knees and rocking back and forth. Yesterday she actually took her first crawling...steps? I put up several videos, I don't really expect that the casual Audrey fan will watch them all but I do know there are some die hards out there that will. Enjoy!

This is a little plush nativity that my mom sent for Audrey. She loves it!

Watch out world! Here she comes!

Mitchell and I are on the move too. Santa visited our house early this year and brought us a treadmill! Hooray!