Because I'm Picture Crazy....

I thought I would share some of my favorite recent pics!!




Landon and Chloe at baby bookworm yesterday. I love how he is putting his hand around her!




Landon, Chloe, and Dominick. Chloe is still trying to perfect the whole sitting up thing. Oh, and look at Dominick checking her out, haha. SO CUTE!!


Chloe making and eating Gingerbread cookies at Grammy's! She was covered from head to toe, lol.

Looking at lights at the Mission Inn. She was so HAPPY and SMILING the entire time. We are taking her to the Alta Loma lights this Saturday because she liked it so much.

Helping daddy decorate the Christmas tree.

If you got our Christmas card, you have seen this one. Oh I could not believe that I found this outfit and that pink Santa hat. LOVE IT!! It's so Chloe.

Our little ham.

Holiday's with the Salmon's (and some sad news)

Well, it's been a while since if I have updated our blog. It's amazing how busy a little 5 month old can keep you. Her social calendar always stays full. We truly have been blessed to have so many friends have their babies around the same time as us. We have so much fun with them all. All fun is coming to an end though, I have some sad news at the end of this post.

Chloe is now 5 months and she is just starting to sit up. It is so fun to watch her grow so fast. She is always wanting to play and be a busy little bee. Mommy is constantly entertaining her! I love spending my days with her!

Here she is stitting up! The boppy is there to catch her when she gets to excited!

We had a great Thanksgiving holiday! The last 4 years our family has come to us, which makes it so much easier. We no longer have to travel to 4 different houses. I really love cooking for a huge family. My 27 pound turkey came out amazing, I might add! David and I also had a great week off together. We took Chloe to meet Santa, and she smiled the entire time. It was great. We also spent a great day at the park, and went to Oak Glen.

Swinging at the park the week of Thanksgiving

My sister with Chloe on Thanksgiving

Chloe had a yummy Thanksgiving too!


The day after Thanksgiving we held true to our tradition and took the baby up to the tree lighting ceremony in Big Bear. Poor kid, she was so bundled up she could not even move, lol. She got to see Santa (again) come in on a big fire truck. Her eyes got very big.

All bundled up

Waiting for Santa to come to town!


There goes Santa!

We have lots of fun stuff planned for Christmas. We are making Gingerbread houses at Grammy's tomorrow, we are looking at the lights at the Mission Inn and in Alta Loma, we have a couple of Christmas parties to attend, and we are getting our Christmas tree on Sunday! The holidays truly are so much more fun with a baby!

Although, there is a little bit of a damper on the holidays this year. I have to go back to work on December 17th! Ughhhh... Right in the middle of the holidays. The worst part is Chloe will start day care January 4th. She will stay home with daddy for the 2 weeks I have to go back to work. I am so devastated. I want to be a stay at home mommy so bad!!! But life has to go on. Back to reality I go.

I found a great in home day care for her. It's actually our neighbors day care. She has an awesome infant program that will teach Chloe baby sign language, she will start on a computer at 9 months, and she actually has a baby curriculum with activities that stimulate her throughout the day. It will also be very convenient for us, plus I really do trust her. I seriously looked at over 15 day cares, and was so disgusted that the state would even give licenses to these people. It was a very painful task, but I am confident with the decision we made. Hopefully in the future David and I will be in a position where I can be at home with her and our future children! But for now, this is what we have to do. I am going to enjoy my last 2 weeks at home with her, and be thankful that I was able to be at home this long. Nobody will ever do as good a job with her than me, but I know Ms. Rosalind (her care provider) will come close.

My Little Flowers First Halloween!!

Chloe had a great first Halloween! Although, I really think mommy had more fun! I completely forgot how much fun it is to go trick-or-treating! Grammy and Grampy, Auntie Courtney and Uncle Anthony, all came over to help celebrate her first Halloween. We had such a great day! She looked so cute in her costume, and she never cried in it once. She is probably so used to mommy putting stuff in her hair all of the time that it did not even phase her. I cannot wait until next year when she is walking!!


Having fun with Lily (Chloe loves her lily poo!). I love both of my little flowers!

My cute little flower

Okay mom, I am ready, lets go....

Trick-or-treat!

Okay I'm done, bed time PLEASE!!!

My Baby Bookworm and her Milestones

The last couple of weeks have proven to be very exciting for David and I. We have had the pleasure of watching Chloe do so many new and amazing things. All of the sudden she decided to wake up and start showing off her amazing talents. It's so funny too, because when she does something new, David and I stare at each other then start screaming with excitement.

Only a parent can understand the excitement you feel your baby rolls over for the first time, or when they accomplish any milestone for that matter. You are just so proud of your little one!! David was hysterical when she rolled over for the first time. He got to see it first, of course (even though I am home with her all day, haha). All of the sudden I hear, "BABE.... BABE....., Chloe just rolled over. Oh my Gosh Chloe, good girl baby, good girl!! (in a very high pitch tone). So cute to see such a proud daddy. Among rolling over in the last couple of weeks, Chloe is also holding onto and shaking her rattle (and any other object she can get her hands on, including mommy's hair), holding her bottle, making lots of new sounds, jumping around in her bouncer, and my mom claims that last night she picked up her own paci and put it in her mouth, all by herself.

Chloe just starting to roll over

After she rolled over and landed on her belly

Holding her own bottle. She is even starting to understand that when she drops it there is no milk. She is learning to put the bottle back in her mouth.

In her P.J.'s playing in her bouncer.

I have also started taking Chloe to a baby bookworm class at the Highland Library with a bunch of my girlfriends and their babies. We sing, read books, learn sign language, and have playtime. The babies just kind of stare at each other, but it's soo cute. I think Chloe is crushing on baby Landon and baby Dominick. We also started a playgroup with my Alpha Phi sisters and had our first play date on Thursday. I am having so much watching Chloe explore the world and discover the new things that she can do. We are making the most out of every day that we have together before I unfortunately have to go back to work.

Chloe at baby bookworm with baby Dominick and baby Landon At our Alpha Phi play group. We dressed the kids up and tried to get a picture, but this task was just impossible.

Gettin in the Halloween Spirit!

This year Halloween is definitely more exciting now that we have our precious little Chloe. I have felt more inspired than ever to create and continue holiday family traditions. Now, I understand that she is only 4 months old (almost), but I assume she will appreciate it when she is older and looks back on the millions of photos I take to document her life. (Hopefully she does not get mad at me when she sees all of the crazy bows and flowers I put on her head, haha).

We started all of the Halloween fun on Saturday when we took her to the pumpkin patch. She did not really know what was going on, but she loved looking at the farm animals. Only in Cali it would be 95 degrees on a mid October day. Oh man it was HOT!! I ended up de-clothing her along the duration of the day to try to keep her cool. Off went the shoes, off went the socks, sleeves got rolled up, and her pants turned into shorts. The day was fun despite the weather and we ended up bringing home a family of 3 pumpkins.

Family pic! Here shirt says "Too cute it's scary"!

Me and my baby

Daddy and his little angel

Playing around at home, she was not feeling this photo shoot. She is still super cute though.


So we continued the Halloween fun on Sunday and carved our pumpkins. David carved the pumpkin on the left and I carved the other 2. We had soo much fun doing this, but my hand hurt like crazy when I was finished.

I then proceeded to make and decorate Halloween cookies to Boo my neighbors with. My friend Holly gave me the idea and I thought it was so cute I just had to do it. You leave cookies or sweets on your neighbors door anonymously and they must do the same to two other neighbors. So fun! The baking was no fun though. For some reason my cookie cut outs expanded so big when I baked them that you could not even make out what they were. I really enjoyed decorating them though. I need to figure out the baking part before Chloe gets old enough to realise that I have no idea what I am doing.


Here are just a couple of the cookies. Time for a new cookie sheet, lol. I am really excited to dress Chloe up in her Halloween costume and take her to a few houses on Halloween. It's so fun having a baby, I truely am loving every second of every day with her. I cannot imagine how fun this stuff will be when she is actually old enough to know what is going on.

Beautiful Baptism

Our sweet little angel Chloe was Baptised on Sunday, October 11th at the First Unitied Methodist Church in Riverside. Chloe was baptised into the Christian religion and her baptism will be recognised at any Christian church. We chose this church as it has become very special to us. David's father and stepmother have been members there for years, and David and I started going prior to my pregnancy.

This day was so special for us. We invited all of the grandparents, Godparents, and siblings to join us on the stage. When the ceremony was over, the pastor took Chloe down the aisles of the church to show her off to the congregation. She was our little star as always. She was awake for the entire church service, and did not cry once. Everybody headed over to our house afterwards for yummy pulled pork sandwiches and lots of fun! We will hold this special day in are hearts forever.
Our little Angel. Grammy Striegel made her Baptism dress, bonnet, and matching white blanket. She did an amazing job!

With the Godparents, My sister Courtney, and David's best friend Lorenzo

The beautiful cake that my mom made. She is one talented women!

This blog is for you Heidi!!

Okay, I am dedicating this blog entry to one of my best friends Heidi. She is the most creative person I know, and has inspired me to complete a few projects while I am out on maternity leave. (Katie, you give me inspiration too!) You can check out Heidi's stuff at the craft monkey blog at http://thecraftmonkey.blogspot.com/ . I still have several projects that I am working on, but with a baby, it gets a little difficult to be crafty. So here you go Heidi, thanks for motivating me to do something with my spare time.

These are the flower pots I made for Chloe's Baptism (more to come on that in a future post). I made really cute ones with crosses in the middle but I gave them away before I got a good picture of them.

I found this frame at Marshalls for $5.99 and fell in love. It has the same kind of design as Chloe's nursery, but it was the wrong color. So I used the same color that I used on her walls, added brown to the scrolls, and it matches her room perfectly!!

Heidi, I took this picture so you can see that I use the wipe box you made me, haha.

These are the famous mercury pumpkins that everybody was making this year. Thanks Heidi for guiding me the right direction on the paint.

This is probably my biggest accomplishment, only because my husband said that I could not do it. I originally tried stenciling a border in Chloe's nursery with regular paint and no knowledge on what I was doing. It was a disaster. With Heidi's motivation, a little research on how to properly stencil, whaaa la, I figured it out! Oh, and I totally bedazzled my wall with rhinestones, do you see them?? When David saw it he was like "I know you did not just bedazzle our wall". I was so proud that he even knew what bedazzled meant, haha. PROGRESS!!

Bad picture, but there is one on each side of the "you are a dream come true". Heidi, do you like my new rug?? It took me forever to find a rug that matched her room perfect!

Current projects I am working on is a door hanger for her room, a thanksgiving banner (very different from anything I have seen), and some odds and ins Thanksgiving projects. Of course this all depends on how much SPARE time I can really squeeze in.