Merry Christmas!

We had a wonderful Christmas. We spent the morning of Maggie's birthday at home and celebrated with pancakes - which she loved!

Then, we headed down to spend that evening with the Lamberts.

Although Maggie woke up WAY too early (even for Christmas) - 5:45am - we had a great morning celebrating and spent the day at Ryan's grandparents in Mooresville. In most of these pictures Maggie is SO tired she can't even smile. Even after three naps that day she still didn't catch up on sleep!


It was a fantasic Christmas! We hope you all had a blessed Christmas as well with family and friends!

Celebrate!

Maggie's first birthday will be on Christmas Eve. Since birthdays are a concept that she doesn't really get we decided to celebrate a bit early this year. Today we had some friends and family over to celebrate Maggie. We had such a great time!

Maggie was pretty reserved eating her cake, but all smiles!

Maggie's Honorary Aunt GG made some excellent cupcakes. I forgot to get a picture of the whole spread, but here is a sampling of the wonderful treats!

Four of Maggie's Six Great Grandparents were able to celebrate with us today. Maggie is so blessed to have so many greats: Great Grandpa Lambert, the Great Hartzler (as my niece Addie calls her) and Grams and Pap.

Maggie's grandparents ...

Aunt GG with Mags ...

Happy first birthday Mags! We love you and are so blessed to have you in our lives.

Great Friends and Good Food!

Tonight I got together with a group of girls that I don't see very often. It was so fun to catch up with everyone and have some great food at the Cheesecake Factory.

And here are some recent pics of Mags playing with Ry and testing out walking with some assistance.

More Family Pictures

For Christmas, we got my parents a photo shoot while we were in Ohio. I just got the disc with the pictures in the mail today. Here are some of my favorites ...

Merry Thanksmas

That is what my sister called our family gathering this last weekend. It was quite fitting since we celebrated both Thanksgiving and Christmas.

My entire family spent four days together in Ohio and had a blast! Beth was a wonderful host who had signs on all of our rooms, goodie bags for each family and a planned menu that was fantastic! Since we don't often ALL get to be together (it has been almost a year) it was special to have everyone there. We were especially thankful my Dad could make it for the entire time since he still isn't done with harvest and thought he might only be able to come for two days.

Fried Cheese

I really think that fried cheese should be in its own food group. It is so delicious! The other night Ryan broke in our small deep fryer by making homemade fried cheese. The picture may not do them justice, but know they were scrumptious!!

And today was family picture day on Ryan's side. Can't wait to see the final pics, but in the meantime here are a few of our amateur shots ...

Sleep is not overrated.

In the last two and a half weeks Maggie has slept through the night three times. Yes, you read correctly ... three times. Part of this is explained from being sick. On this particular night she threw up nine times in four hours. It was very sad.

I'm going to blame a few other nights on teething because in the last two weeks the first two teeth have showed up. You may have to click on the image to get a really good look at 'em.

The other nights ... who knows. I can tell you that it is not an ear infection. Got that checked out just to be sure. For now, I'm praying this is a short lived phase and we will bounce back quickly because honestly, sleep is not overrated. You need it function. Really.

In other news, Ryan has reupped his IU tickets for this year. We went to our first game last Friday night. (The bow was a necessity after I was asked if this was my little boy.)

And a fun one while playing today.

Aunt Adie is Home!

Friday night Ryan's sister, Adria, flew in. Adria hasn't seen Maggie since January. We are so thankful to have Adria home for two months! Yippee!! :)

And here are a few other pictures. Today was 70+ degrees in Indy. We wanted to make sure we got outside to enjoy it - after the Colts win of course!

I have to mention that this onsie my sister Paula bought Maggie for Valentine's Day. It clearly runs big for its size, but it is a 3 month. Oh Mags ... gotta love our peanut!

I hate plumbing.

And I'll tell you why. It is always more complicated than you think and it always goes awry at a bad time. Like say, Friday night when your kitchen sink stops draining. Yep. Happened to us.

First off, HUGE kudos go out to Ryan. Most home projects at our house end in extreme frustration and arguments. This was not the case. Ryan worked diligently last weekend to attempt to fix the problem. Through the process he successfully installed a new garbage disposal (which we found out was not the problem, but is dreamy nonetheless).

In short, we found out some piping needed to be rerouted in our basement - clearly beyond our own expertise. Since it wasn't diagnosed until yesterday, this is what our bathtub looked like all weekend:

Nice, huh? Nothing like having to move dishes to take a shower.

This I took when Ryan was working hard and not very happy that I took a picture of him!

And one of him and his assistant working hard:

Anyway, I'm happy to say all is well and working great now. Thanks to my new favorite plumbing company, Hope Contracting. Love them! If you live in Indy, I highly recommend them. They were fantastic.

Happy Halloween!

Maggie dressed up as a pea pod last night for her first trick-or-treating!

Since the pod didn't allow for much moving around, we also had her decked out in her jack-o-lantern onsie for afterwards.

Gotta love hand-me-downs ...

I don't think Ryan and I have bought Maggie anymore than two items of clothing. I know ... we are really lucky! One of our favorite hand-me-downs is an authentic Colts jersey. I hadn't gotten it out yet because it is a 12 months size. But, I dug it out Sunday and even though it is very big, it worked.