Christmas and a little bit of our trip

We've been on vacation for many weeks, so here is the first of several holiday posts:

Rachel in her pretty Christmas dress. It has a matching jacket, but we couldn't get a good picture of her with it on. Pictures are a lot harder when they can walk!

Her new ponies needed some kisses. We had a fun time opening presents this year since she actually got excited for her toys.

We left for Portland the day after Christmas. Matt's mom got Rachel and her cousin Olivia matching dresses. I love matching dresses (right Jen?)!! They looked super cute, even though they wouldn't sit still and look happy for a picture.

Thanksgiving and other happenings

I am really struggling with blogger. How do I write above this picture? It can't be that hard... Anyway, we had a great Thanksgiving with a lot of our friends. The Bodens came up from Blacksburg and stayed with us for 3 short days. It was so fun and reminded us of old times, even though both our families have changed a lot in the past year and a half. I didn't get a single picture of all of us :( We had Thanksgiving dinner over at the Johnson's house, a family in our ward. Some of our other friends in the ward were there too. We had a delicious dinner and a great time hanging out with everyone. When Bro. Johnson discovered that Rachel loves (is totally obsessed with, actually) blowing out candles, he sat at the table and lit a candle over and over again for her. They must have done it 30 times. The kitchen was pretty smokey by the end. I think Rachel is grateful for candles. (Thanks to Tony, our resident photographer, for the pictures).

Last Wednesday I got my wisdom teeth removed. Matt took great care of me and I'm recovering nicely. He got me these lovely roses the day after my surgery.

I'M FAT! My face swelled up pretty bad. This is my "angry face", which Matt thought was hilarious.

A great use of our frozen veggies.

Matt left this afternoon for a week of business training in Atlanta :( I'm already really lonely and he's only been gone 3 hours. I haven't been alone on a Sunday afternoon in a long time. Only 5 days until he gets back!!

Pics and Stuff

Michelle wanted me to post to the blog...

H-O-K-I-E-S Hokies!!

You have to train them when their young, I have already begun Rachel's training to the Maroon Side of the Grid Iron.


Look how cute she is in her little hat and mittens!


Just look at the boots...what would she do without an aunt that works at a shoe store.

...so I did.

Halloween

I have some good news and some bad news. I'll give you the good stuff first: Rachel's costume was pretty cute and she won our apartment complex Halloween party costume contest for the second year in a row! There were only about 10 kids total, but we'll take the win anyway. The bad news is we had a heck of a time getting a good picture.

The belt was really the only thing that distinguished the Princess Leia dress from a ghost costume.

We went to a Halloween party at Sara and Brandon's and our friend Tony was Darth Vader. Rachel was none too happy about this picture, but Princess Leia doesn't really like him anyway, right? And now, please prepare yourself for the cutest costume in the world:
It's Roxie the witch! Is that the best costume ever or what?

Our little toddler

Rachel and her "bling". She plays with her necklaces all day long.

Rachel is quite the little walker now. She got really good at it while we were in Brazil. Now that she is walking she can wear dresses a lot more. It made her pretty mad to try and crawl in a dress. So for our last month of summer she wore a dress several days a week. Winter isn't quite as convenient since her little legs get cold without tights, but September was great :) It's so fun to see her toddling around. She still falls over A LOT, but is usually a good sport about it (unless she is tired). Her latest lovely trick is taking really big bites of her food, gagging, and throwing everything (and I mean everything) up. She did it 4 times last week alone. This morning I made the rather stupid mistake of taking her out of her chair to try and calm her down so she wouldn't do it. She puked all over me, herself, and the floor. Lesson learned: it is a lot easier to clean it up of the high chair tray. Don't worry, though, I didn't take a picture of that!

Rachel enjoying some tasty ravioli.

A Weekend of Gluttony

My little sister Jen visited us this past week. We did a lot of stuff: went downtown, shopped for nail polish (she's a reformed nail biter and now enjoys painting her lovely long nails), played with Rachel, took naps, read books, watched movies, played monopoly, annoyed each other, birthday doorbell ditched, visited a pumpkin patch, etc. But mostly we enjoyed my personal favorite of the seven deadly sins: gluttony! We ate ourselves sick. It was the best visit ever, despite the severe overeating. I hated to drop her off at the airport this morning. Luckily we get to see her again at New Years! See you soon, chum! Thanks for having so much fun with us.
** Note about our Brazil posts: Matt's parents in Portland watched Rachel for us. She had a good time with them and actually cried a little when she saw me for the first time after getting back. We were glad that we could vacation happily knowing she was in good hands back in Portland.

Bedtime story. What a cute pair of redheads!

Jen getting her workout by swinging Rachel up and down.

Jen (going in to get Rachel from her nap): Michelle, do you think Rachel's crib will support my weight?
Me (in the other room): Probably not, so let's not test it.
Jen (a few seconds later): Michelle, come look!

The pumpkin patch! The pumpkins that we got to take home ("included in the price of your admission!") were considerable smaller. As in Rachel can easily hold hers without any help and there is no way we can carve them.

Rachel didn't love the slide...
I wanted to add another picture of Jen petting the goats, but the darn computer won't let me. Let's just say that Jen loves goats and the goat pen was almost the highlight of her visit. Rachel was just mad that we wouldn't let her play with the goat poo.

Brazil: Part 3 of 3

For the last leg of the trip we went to Iguassu Falls which roughly translates into "a whole bunch of water falling down a cliff" or something close to that. Notice our matching park sweatshirts that we had to buy since we were not prepared for the cold. The first two pictures are on the Brazil side, the next two are on the Argentina side...and here they are:


Michelle and I near the falls.

Cool isn't it


Up close and personal at the "Devils Throat" I think the Portuguese sounds more ominous "Gargantua do Diablo" either way it was big and cool.


Your two favorite people on San Martin island. The falls consist of 2.6km of cliffs with over 206 identified falls. Doesn't that just blow your mind.


Michelle's shoe or a tasty snack? This toucan sure could not tell the difference.


And Michelle with a Macau on her arm. And the rest is history.