Hadley at 18 Months!

Hadley at 18 months is such a joy!   She is a great sleeper and napper, down to one nap a day and it is usually about a 3 hour one.  Hadley is starting to interact more with Allie and it is so fun to see them actually play together.  She loves being outside and has toyed with the idea of potty training, and can go potty, but not consistently enough to merit being out of diapers. 

Her hair officially fits into pigtails.  She chipped one of her front teeth falling on something, just a little break.  She is a bit clumsy, which isn't really all that surprising considering who she comes from. :)

Hadley is quick to give a smile, a little mischievous and is growing into such a cute and amazing girl.

We love our spunky little girl and could not imagine our lives without her. 

One of my favorite physical features of hers is her amazing eyes and eyelashes that people would pay big bucks for!

Glendale Giltters (with jazz hands)

The day after Thanksgiving, Mike had to work, so the girls and I finished putting up all the Christmas decorations and then picked up Mike on our way to Glendale to watch them turn on the lights for their city.  They actually quite a few - think a desert scape with lights and a carnival all mixed together.  The girls loved it, especially Hadley!  Before they turned on the lights, they had a stage with a variety of Dancers and singers and Allie was in HEAVEN.  That girls loves her some stage time.  The best part of it?  Not having to wear coats to see Christmas lights, although we did have to break out the long pants. :)

We took the shuttle from that parking lot- as always, one of the highlights of any bus trip.  Hooray for Christmas lights!

A Simple Thanksgiving

For Thanksgiving this year, we kept it simple and had a wonderful dinner as a little family of 4 in our beautiful Arizona weather.  Mike played semi-intense flag football in the morning with the ward and we spent the rest of the morning cooking and just enjoying time as a family.  We kept if simple and didn't even cook a turkey, because we all know that the best part of Thanksgiving dinner is the sides!  We had ham, rolls, sweet potato casserole, mashed potatoes, green bean casserole, banana cream pie and chocolate caramel pie and cherry 7up.  

 At the beginning of November, we had a family night about being grateful and introduced our Thankful Tree.  Each night at dinner we each wrote something we were grateful for on a leaf and attached it to the tree.  By the end of the month, we had a tree full as a reminder of what we have in life and how blessed we are. 

Oh Christmas Tree

We set up our Christmas tree today while Mike was at work and the girls just LOVED every second of it.  We have a lot of Mike's Christmas ornaments from when he was little so we put up most of the unbreakable ones and they were arranged and rearranged countless times throughout the day.

To fulfill Shaw tradition, that night I turned on some good Christmas music and showed the girls that if you lay under the Christmas tree looking up, it is like stars shining.  Five minutes later, I turned around and they were doing it themselves.  It made this Momma heart go pitter patter.

Veterans Day Parade

 Mike had Veterans day off, so we started the day at the zoo and then we headed to the Veterans Affairs Hospital for the city's Veterans day parade.  It started right in front of the hospital and boy were there a lot of floats, balloons and cars with significant people in it. We left after 2 hours and it was still going strong.  I love me some patriotism and this was the perfect place to share it with others and to support our veterans and current troops.