Merry Christmas (since we didn't send out cards..... here you go)

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Lily's Birthday Dress!

Natalie gave this to Lily last year when she was making Syndey's first birthday dress! We didn't brave her wearing it with her cake (especially since it would have just been for me and Josh) however - we did let her wear it to church today?! What a cutie :) Thanks Nat!!

Lily wants to eat some Daddy!

So this is something Lily has started doing lately. It comes without warning - whenever you're eating something and she can see you eating or smell it (ie GUM is a big one...) and she decides she wants some! It's usually quite the surprise but we tried to catch it on video (sorry I did it sideways...) So this one took a little prompting because the camera caught her eye. ANYWAY - we are usually laughing so hard as we try and dodge her. It's pretty gross - but hilarious ALL the same.
Our little bird...

Birthday videos

Happy Birthday Lily!!!!

A few of our favorites... from 12/15/2008 almost exactly from her birth time! It was -10 on the day she was born and it's only 2 degrees today... so we consider that close enough!! Lily had a "normal" day going to daycare as mom and dad worked - but she came home to balloons, gifts (which most of you supplied) and cake! Enjoy!!









Her first birthday celebration with Grandma and Poppy Elston over Thanksgiving vacation (thanks for coming!!!! and cooking!!!)


And a mother/son Thanksgiving dance for good measure :)

Lily is coming up on the 1 year mark!!

(thanks to the Blackwell's for this outfit!)


That's right - she's 11 months and counting :) What do we have planned? Nothing... lol - seriously, what are you suppose to do for a 1 year old without family close by? We'll bake her a cake for sure and celebrate - but we have nothing planned. We'll wait and expect Grandmas and Grandpas to throw her lavish birthday parties with petting zoos, private ponies and blow-up jump-around bouncey things!





Lily was dedicated at church this day! She was adorable. We really enjoy our church here (despite the long efforts to find it) and have fit into a wonderful Bible study and group that we love!!! We chose and really believe in infant dedication -- that we as parents are dedicated to bringing her up in a Christian home (read deep into that and all that this entails) and admit that we cannot do it alone. We need and ask for our church family (friends and family too... but we're just too far away to have people here for this) to take part in this adventure and HUGE responsibility as well! Lily was pretty good up on stage but it was bottle time... She waved to the crowd a few times and rammed her finger up her nose. It's like she just realized "Hey - this fits here" so the repeatedly puts her finger up her nose and then pulls it out... what can you do?

The Boy Scouts say...

The most dangerous knife is a dull one. I bed to differ - I much prefer my dull knives pre-marriage to the fancy ones we have now! LOL - I need to rephrase that - the dull KNIFE I had prior to marriage. When I met Josh I learned you were supposed to sharpen knives! Know I know - with sharp knives.. you can't cut an object while it's in your hand!! Lesson learned.
Thursday night - I was simply slicing an English muffin with our big ole bread knife. Well - I opened up more than the bread! I saw the cut - knew it was deep and knew it needed stitches... but both Josh and I dreaded that with Lily at 8pm at night and an ER that was already backed up (we called...) So I went against all nursing knowledge and stayed home! I did inspect the wound (on the floor mind you - it made me woozy of all things?) and I saw no tendon or muscle damage - no bone -- just lots of fatty tissue and a gaping wound!
I went in Friday - and they were stuck with what to do... the proper way to treat a cut is having is stitched within 12 hours and I was there like 14 hours later. So they finally decided to stitch it loosely with just a few stitches... leaving it open so that if there was an infection - it would ooze out instead of go deeper. Fine. Lucky me - I got to be the guinea pig if you will for a learning airman on stitches too! I figured - after I was numb... might as well let someone learn! My cut was just over an inch long and about 1cm deep. Good one. They had to cut off some of the fatty, jagged edges so it would stitch well. Then he tried... removed the stitches and tried again. LOL (but not really laughing) I was a good patient though. They finally stopped with just 3 loose stitches intead of the 6 the dr asked for. HA - it looked fine to me.
So now my task has been taking care of Lily and such while keeping it dry and watching for infection. No signs of infection at this point! I cleaned it up as best as I could for a picture for you guys! It looks marvelous now compared to before - I'll spare you the lovely gaping hole with lots of tissue hanging out :)

The deepest parts were in the fatpad - which is good~ kept me from cutting anything important!