First snow!

I can not begin to tell you how excited Kylie has been to have it snow.  She has been trying on her snow pants for almost two months now.  There was a whole week where her outfit wasn't complete until she had her snow pants on too.  Everyone that came over would laugh at her, but Kylie refused to take them off.  Well, it finally snowed last week and Kylie was so excited!  I was putting Ellie down for a nap when she came in the bedroom, opened her closet doors in order to find her snowpants, boots and jacket.  A few minutes later I heard the door slam (I had locked it).  I put Ellie down, got my shoes on and ran outside to find Kylie already in the front yard running through the snow.  "It snowed Mommy!"  And then, "My hands are freezing!"  She did pretty good about getting her snow stuff on...just forgot her gloves and couldn't zipper her jacket.  Oh and she forgot to wait for mom to go outside.  :)

Ellie on the go

Ellie is 9 months old now.  I am always saying how fast she is growing up.  She has been incredibly fun lately (besides the up in the middle of the night teething episodes).  She can clap, wave hello, do "so big", and lots of funny sounds with her mouth.  My favorite thing is when she sees something she likes, reaches for it or holds it out for me to see and does this cute, "Oooooh" sound.  

After almost 3 months of army crawling, she is finally crawling on her hands and knees all the time now.  She loves pulling to a stand on anything she can and is starting to cruise along things.  Her latest thing she likes to do is to walk.  After a few days of seeing this, I got out the walker for her.  She likes it, whereas Kylie never used the thing.  I am sure Ellie will be walking by her first birthday, but only time (a very short amount of time) will tell!

San Francisco!

Chris and I stole away for a long weekend in San Francisco.  It was such a wonderful trip, mostly because we were together.  But we got to do some fun things as well.  We dropped the girls off at Grandma and Grandpa Bunker's and flew out of Las Vegas Thursday morning.  It was my first time in San Fran and it was fun to be in a big city (but reminded me why I don't want to live in one).  We stayed at Hotel Stratford, this older place right on Union Square.  Our room was smaller than our bedroom! but it was fun to be in the middle of everything.  The night we got there, we just walked around a bit, window shopped in China Town and had some dinner at this Chinese restaurant.  Friday we spent most of the day at/around Fisherman's Wharf.  We toured the Jeremiah O'Brien, a WWII liberty ship that was involved in Normandy and had lunch at Boudin's....clam chowder in a sourdough bread bowl.  For dinner, we had a brownie sundae at Ghirardelli's.  The hot fudge was amazing!  Mmmmmm.

 

Saturday we rented bikes and rode across the Golden Gate Bridge and to the cute town of Sausilito, where we window shopped and had lunch.  There were quite of few hills (or small mountains?) on our ride, but we only walked maybe twice in the 25 miles that we did that day!  So proud! (esp. since we haven't ridden bikes in almost two years).  On our way back, it started to rain (of course).  That night, our legs were a bit tired and our bums sore, but it was an amazing adventure to do with each other.

Crossing the bridge!

Sunday morning we still had the bikes, so we decided to bike to Golden Gate Park and ride around there for a little while.  It was a beautiful area, especially the Japanese Tea Gardens we visited.

 

  

After returning the bikes, we hung out for a little while at Pier 33 watching the sea lions and a little magic show before boarding our boat to Alcatraz.  The audio tour was really done well and the whole island and it's history was very interesting.  I can now say that I have visited the Rock! Pictures of Alcatraz are on Chris's camera, so I will post them later. 

What a trip we had.  We saw lots and did lots.  It was fun to have Chris all to myself!  The girls missed us of course, but they did real well.   Kylie continues to say, "I go there too" when we show her pictures of our trip.  Maybe someday we will make it back to San Fransisco for some more adventures.

The Halloween Pictures

We finally got a moment to download our Halloween pictures!  So here are our little bugs:

Kylie is saying, "Cheeeeeeeeeese".  I know, not the most natural smile.  But it took all of her strength to just stand here for a picture.

My cousin Jamie and her little girl, who is just two weeks older than Ellie, came over to go trick-or-treating with us.  It was so fun!

Second cousins!  Gracie, Kylie and Ellie

 

I should have made Chris wear antenna!  (Next year)

 

Can't you just feel Kylie's excitement to go trick-or-treating?  Pure bliss.  It was so fun to watch.