Boggle, boggle!!

Or Gobble, gobble would be more appropriate to wish everyone a Happy Thanksgiving! Reed for some reason wants to say "boggle, boggle." We had a wonderful lunch with our friends, the Terrells and the Duncans. I took the camera with the intention to take pictures of all the kids at the kid table, but amoungst all the craziness never managed to get there. Oh well! After seeing the cute little hats the kids had made over there I thought we'd make a couple for ours to capture a "thanksgiving" picture! This was the best I could get at the end of a long day with little and no naps. We realize we have soooo much to be thankful for, even amongst often hard life circumstances! Today was a sweet reminder of the precious blessings God has provided and given us in our lives! Hope you all had a wonderful and blessed day as well!

2 little snowbunnies

Yes, last night it snowed here! I know it's only November and we already have snow! We had just a dusting on the ground, but still it was fairly covered, and some of the northern area schools were closed. I'm so not ready for a long and couped up winter......especially here in KY, it will be like this til probably March! And April and May still are usually cool, not at all very warm. So here are our sweet snowbunniew in their matching pjs.

Happy 1/2 year old sweet baby girl!

Our baby girl is officially 1/2 a year old today. 6 months has passed since you joined our family, which I sometimes feel like it was just yesterday! She is such a tiny, petite little thing that I want to look at her and think she is only 4 months! But oh no, before I know it she will be crawling, walking, talking, etc. Some of the fun new things we are seeing her do lately........

• She loves to grab at (mine mostly) faces and laugh, giggle, "talk" (lots of vowels, maybe a couple consonants thrown in there!)



• She is so observant and alert, taking in all that is going on around her; especially when it comes to watching big brother



• She is responding to her name, smiling and looking when she hears it



• Smiles and laughs at Reed, it is so sweet to continue to watch them engage with one another; I know he is so excited for her to interact back with him



• Feeding about 4 times a day/every 4 hours......which on the flip side we also started the cereal; I know I have posted before that she has always been such a slow paced eater, but I think lately she is sooooo much hungerier! And unfortunately since the cereal is only in week 2 I can't just add all these other foods to her meals yet, so I'm afraid the hunger/milk demand is not up to par with the supply....so all that to say we've had to occasionally supplement after a feeding here and there with formula----the girl just finally decided she was hungry!!



• still a fabulous sleeper (typically 11-12 hours a night)! and usually a 2 -3 hour morning nap, 2 hour afternoon nap, and sometimes needs an hour or so in the late afternoon, and still ready for bed by 7/7:30!



• she has almost mastered rolling back to belly.....I think I need to put her on the floor more to completely help her master this skill; she has been rolling from her back to her side and almost making it to her belly, but just not quite all the way yet!



• when she is sitting in her bumbo on the table with a toy and then drops it, so cute how she looks and bends down like she is really trying to reach it! makes her look so big!

We love you sweet Emery-Claire and you are such a joy to us each and every day! Our family wouldn't be complete without you!!

Yummy soup, first bites, and sweet faces!

Ok, so now that it's cold we LOVE to eat lots of soup! This has been my staple for about the past month or so, and I seriously can't get enough of it! I think I may have found the receipe in a cooking light magazine some time ago, but for some reason never really made it! So I thought I'd share it because it really is so good!

Nana's Chicken Pastina Soup
1/2 c water
2 (14 oz.) cans chicken broth (I use low sodium)
2 1/4 c prechopped celery, onion, and carrot mix
1/2 tsp black pepper
1/8 tsp salt
1 lb. chicken breast tenders (I usually boil them) cut up or pulled, whatever you like
1/4 c uncooked pastina (tiny shaped pasta; Kroger sells the brand Acini di Pepe)
3 Tbsp pesto (I have been making it from a receipe from my Betty Crocker cookbook, but you probably could buy some too)
2 Tbsp fresh lemon juice
1/4 c preshredded fresh Parmesan cheese

1) Bring water and broth to boil; stir in celery mix, pepper, salt, and chicken, bring to boil. Add pasta, cook 4 min. Stir in pesto and juice,
and simmer 1 minute. Sprinkle your serving with the cheese....oh it's so good!!

Sunday I bit the dust and started some cereal with Emery-Claire. She'll be 6 months next week, and I finally think she is getting more of an appetite. She loved it! As you can see she is pulling the spoon to her mouth, and was so excited to eat! Ahhh, here we go! I decided it probably was time after her early wakeups 2 days in a row at 6:00 and 6:30am.....and she never wakes up much before 7:30am!

I guess it helps to go down as you suck those fingers in between each bite!

Reed loves sitting in EC bumbo seat???! So he decided to plop in it the other day and enjoy his snack.

So sweet sitting in Daddy's chair! We made Reed's shirt yesterday, thanks to my friend Rebekah's adorable idea! And he can't get enough of his turkey! She used white shirts and they looked so much better to show off the paint colors, but Walmart was out of his size so I got red...fall and festive I guess.

An update and some pics

Not much of a very eventful week at the Willis household, besides I've just slacked some in posting! We did have beautiful weather all week, until the rain and cold started today. So we enjoyed as much outside time as we could! I did get to have some fun women's time....girl's night with our small group Wednesday night....had such a great time hanging out with you Karen and Liz! We definitely need to do it more often! And then Thursday morning I got to work the Henry Brown warehouse sale. If you have never heard of them click on my link to see their website....very cute purses/bags! I did it in the spring and it is such a blast hanging out and being at the sale (and of course the best part...free purses for working!) Our friend, Meredith, who is also in our small group...is the sales and marketing manager, so she has roped us all in to work the sales and get fun free bags and purses!

So here are a few pictures of the kids from the week:
Reed loving the warm weather outside and the leaves! We have several HUGE trees in our yard and leaves everywhere!

If you notice on his shirt (the "punkin" shirt as he calls it) his "I voted" sticker....yes, Reed got to experience voting in the election for the first time! At least we can say our vote counted and helped in Kentucky!

Such a serious girl!

Her favorite, sitting in the bumbo and chewing on the keys, her favorite toy these days!

Trick or Treat!

So yes it's Sunday and 2 days after Halloween.....well, we've had a very busy past couple of days so here I am FINALLY posting our pics from the weekend! Mom came up to help, since we thought Casey had to go out of town, which last minute he didn't! But we were still very glad to have her come and visit and play with us for the weekend! So here are a few of the things we did, and this is just Friday!

Our little man was a dinosaur....thanks to our friend, Quinton, whose costume we borrowed! He was so excited to be a dinosaur and LOVED wearing his costume!

We went to the local library that morning for a storytime and trick-or-treat time. Reed enjoyed that as he LOVES going to the library for our normal storytime weekly! Here he is listening intentively with a friend from our church, John, who is the Pooh Bear. I should have taken one of the two of them together, but in the chaos of the day you know how that goes!

Emery-Claire all dressed up as a little flower! She just rode in the stroller taking it all in and sucked those sweet little fingers!


That afternoon we met up with the Hardins to go trick-or-treating downtown. All the local businesses in our community participate in it all afternoon, so there are kids everywhere! It's really fun and such a cute idea! Reed LOVED saying "trick-or-treat" and was so in awe when someone would put candy in his pumpkin. At first he was trying to eat the suckers with the wrappers on them, but quickly would be out the door in order to follow the girls, Hannah and Leah ("Leela" as he calls her)! He was a trooper and so cute!