Our baby cake!

We had our doctor write down the sex of the baby on a card which I took to a bakery unopened. The baker made a cake for us with the filling dyed either pink or blue to reveal the sex of the baby. We cut the cake Monday night to find out what we're having!

And the filling is blue!!! We are having a little boy!! Mac and I are both very excited, Charli is going to love having a baby brother. You may have noticed I took the name polls off the blog. We obviously don't need the girl list anymore and we are working off a new list of boy names, but the new list will remain unpublished. :) Thanks to all of you who voted. In case you're curious the winners were Reese McKenzie and Sawyer McAfee!

Charli is still growing and changing so quickly. She LOVES to be outside which is quite a challenge since we live in a construction zone right now. She likes to climb on the ladders leading to the roof, dig into buckets of nails, and play on the piles of lumbar laying in the yard. Yikes! no wonder I'm getting so much grey hair. She also is really growing attached to Sadie. She likes to throw the ball for her (all of 2 feet), feed her, and take her for walks. Although Sadie doesn't seem to notice she exists, Charli doesn't mind and continues to shower her with love.

Gilroy Gardens!!

Mac, Charli, Grandma Susu and 2 of our couple friends (Allen, Lisa and Jordan and Rob, Sharon and Trey) all went to Gilroy Gardens on Sunday. We had a great day filled with rides, sun, train, water sprinklers and bad food. Charli loved it! She really LOVED the little cars. I think because she got to drive it all by herself. As soon as she got in the car she started steering and knew just what to do. As you can see in her picture she was very focused, I think she takes after her mommy. :) When the ride was over and she had to get out she cried with great disappointment, luckily there was the carousel right next door. Nothing cheers up a little girl more than a horsey ride!

Cousin Olivia visits

We got to have Cousin Olivia spend the night with us on Saturday while Grandma and Mac went to a wedding. We had lots of fun; fed the horses, walked to the rope swing, went to Cold Stone for ice cream, shopping at Claire's for "jewelry", and then bathtime and LOTS of Disney channel. Charli loved following Olivia around and is already immitating everything she does.

story time

One of Charli's favorite things to do is read. Lately she has taken to reading to her "Lambie". She will sit and rock the lamb while reading story after story. When she decides lambie is good and tired he gets a big kiss! It's very sweet to watch.


As you can see, sometimes it's hard to turn the pages while holding Lambie










Here she is pointing out the important characters in the story
Lambie is looking pretty tired to me. :)

Sunday morning

One of Charli's favorite things to do is to hang out with her Daddy. On weekend mornings they sit and "read" the paper together, Mac with his coffee and Charli with her milk. Although Mac doesn't get much reading done until Charli gets distracted with a new activity. It warms my heart when I watch the two of them, they just adore each other. As you can see, Charli is his biggest fan and thinks he's very funny!!

Charli is in love

These are the horses that live across the street from us. As you can see Charli has NO fear of these giant animals. From the moment we moved in she has been enchanted by the "ories". When she falls and her hurts herself a surefire way to calm her down is take her to see the horses. They always get a smile and a squeal, Charli just can't help herself.







Charli is calling the "ories" over so she can feed them some carrots. I think Daddy is in big trouble as the love affair has begun........

We're back!

As my beautiful friend Lisa said "sometimes it is best to just move forward and not become weighed down by trying to catch up". I missed a number of months on the blog but in order to prevent me being overwhelmed, I will just start with today and commit to being better about posting updates!!

So, the biggest news in our lives is that Charli will be a big sister soon! On or around January 27th we will have a new baby in the house. We are just thrilled and feel so incredibly blessed. Charli is going to be a great big sister! She already loves babies and wants to see them all VERY close up. And Charli is getting lots of big sis' practice with her dolls and cousin Gigi. She really enjoyed spending time with Gigi when they came to visit in July. Charli gave her lots of hugs and love. She took on a mothering role right away and even tried to lift her into her stroller (Gigi is only 3 months younger than Charli). It was so sweet seeing the girls play together. I know they are going to be best of friends. Charli is also practicing her big sister role with her "babies" (dolls) she loves to wrap her dolls in a blanket and take them for walks in the mini stroller. She will hold them, rock them, and give them little kisses. However, when it is time to put them to bed she often pitches them into place with great force. We may need to work on this technique before the baby comes. :)

Getting ready for bed

Charli loves to sit in this tray!!

She also loves to brush her teeth, all 8 of them!!

Charli has more designer dresses than Mommy!

Charli's watering pot

Charli's getting ready for church

Update on Charli

I've been horrible about updating the blog! Here are a cluster of Charli photos over the last month, and I still have a few to add. Charli started walking just a week ago, and she's already ready to run! She loves to go for jogs with Mommy, reorganize every cabinet in the house, dance to music and push her toys around the living room. She talks all day long and loves to give you things. She has started taking items from the bedroom and bringing them to daddy in the living room, then go back for more, she is very generous! She also discovered pears on a recent grocery store visit. She picked one up as we walked by them and immediately started eating it. She wouldn't put it down for much of the day. It was the funniest thing!