Sledding Movie

I just realized that I should have posted this in a different order, because all the photos of Kylee preparing to go sledding are below the movie now. I also just realized that I'll probably be voted "World's Worst Mom" because 1) I took my 11-month-old sledding while it was STILL SNOWING outside, and 2) not only did I let her go on the sled by herself, I also gave her a push start! I figured, she really likes to be pushed up and down the hallway in a laundry basket, so why not? If she hates it...we'll wait a week or so before we go again, and we'll make dad (Andy) take her! Luckily, she seemed to think it was lots of fun.

Sledding

This week it finally snowed a bunch, so I decided to take Kylee sledding out at our park. She put on her new snow pants and prepared to go.
We stopped off at grandma's so she could help me get the rest on. The boots were hard! We finally got them on, and tucked the elastic layer of the pants into them. Then the mittens went on, with the coat over top to help hold them there. Then the hats. Unfortunately, she kind of looks like the little kid on "A Christmas Story" because I purposely bought her pants and coat a little too big, and her boots go almost up to her knees so she can't really walk. She face plants a lot, and that doesn't make her happy because she can't get back up.

Once we got outside, she started to realize that maybe this wouldn't be so bad. However, it was still snowing, so she wasn't too thrilled about the snowflakes in her face.

Once we got to the park, she loved sledding. I went down with her the first two times, and then sent her down by herself. At first I made her lay down on her back, but then she kept trying to sit up and hold onto the rope like she had seen me do, so I let her try that. I figured if she fell off...the snow was soft, and the hill wasn't that big!

This is what she looked like every time I got down to the bottom of the hill to drag her back up. She sledded for probably a 1/2 hour before she suddenly got this brilliant idea of trying to eat snow. Then her face got cold and she was done!

Idaho Falls Trip

Last Friday & Saturday we went to Idaho for the baptism of my sisters daughter Tapanga. This is Kylee at the baptism with her new dress on. I was trying to get her to stand up so I could get the picture with her cute tights and shoes, but she was too busy playing on the chairs.
This is Kylee with cousin Michael (my sister Candice's son). The other kid was named Conrad, and I'm not sure how he's related. I think he was Michael's cousin. He came with Merlin's (my brother-in-law) parents, and he was cute. He wanted to be in all the pictures with the family.

Here's the best picture I could get of Kylee standing up.

Kylee and Andy at the baptism. Look at that cheesy smile! (On Kylee)

Kylee Thinks She's Cute (and we agree)

It's the new cool thing to suck your binki upside down. Kylee hasn't even really used a binki for her first 10 months of life, but she found one under her crib the other day when I was cleaning her room, and she decided that chewing on it upside down is the way to go.
Here she is smiling away, as always!

Showing off her pretty butterfly.

Eating cheese. She LOVES cheese.

Here she is jabbering. She jabbers a lot! We can't understand a word of it except "mama" and sometimes "baba" (when she sees her bottle), but she sure thinks she's saying something important.

Carrying Things

K.P.'s other new talent is carrying around things that are too large for her. Usually she'll have one item in each hand. The result is that she walks like a drunken baby because she is off balance.

New Talents

In the last couple of weeks Kylee has learned a few new talents. She's pretty sure that she is smarter than Andy and I.
One of her favorite talents is climbing inside the towel drawer. She also likes to pull all the towels out and put them back in, over and over again.

She also likes to brush her teeth...even if it is with the wrong side of the tooth brush. At least she kind of gets the idea.

One day she decided she wanted to open up all the cabinets in our basement and play with the DVD's. I put them up on the top shelf, thinking I had outsmarted her.

But instead, she just climbed right in and got to them anyway.

Laughing Her Little Baby Head Off

The other day Rachel was sliding a plastic cup around on the kitchen counter, and Kylee thought it was hilarious. I set her on the counter so that I could catch it on video...so here it goes:

Catching Up

A lot of people were disappointed that I didn't post a picture of Andy as a lion with Kylee for Halloween, so here it is. He also had a tail pinned to the back of his shirt. I would have preferred him to wear a brown/yellow/orange shirt, but it was already a big ordeal to get him to wear these. However, once he went out trick-or-treating, he had just as much fun growling at people as Kylee did!
This is Aunt Rachel with cousins Branson, Zach, Conner and Kylee.

When I was looking at the photo's on Karen's camera for the Halloween picture of Andy as I lion, I found this one from a while back that I had forgotten about. One night Rachel dressed Kylee up and claimed to be taking her to Disney Land.

Today my sister Connie called from Maryland, and was quite disappointed that I answered my phone. She was all set to leave me a "threatening" message, saying that she was going to send thirty vultures, (that she CLAIMED were circling above her head at that very moment), to eat my dead body if I didn't post Halloween pictures of Kylee by today. So...here they are, along with a video of my little tiny K.P. walking! For those of you who voted "by Nov. 1st" in the poll, you win!! She has been taking steps for the past two weeks or so, but now she's getting pretty good at it, and I was finally able to catch her on video. She would have done better in this movie, but she was trying to impress everyone by showing that she could brush her teeth WHILE walking. Quite a talented young lady! Anyway, I unfortunately can't figure out how to rotate it, so you're just going to have to watch it sideways.

Halloween

For Halloween, we dressed Kylee up as a lion since she likes to growl at everyone. She looked so darn cute! I even convinced Andy to put on a lion mask and tail that I got him, and take her trick-or-treating.
Here she is trying to attack everyone like a real lion!

Look everyone! Kylee finally grew some hair!

2008 24-Hours of Moab

After I posted this, Andy was sad that I didn't use a "cooler" picture, so here's one more. We unfortunately don't have any of him this year riding any of the hard parts of the trail, which is kind of disappointing, but at least in this one he is going down a hill!

On October 11-12, we went down to Moab for the annual "24-Hours of Moab" mountain bike race. It was so ridiculously sandy that I didn't dare take my camera out for photos. This is one that someone else took of Andy out on the trail.
Here we are at camp on Sunday morning at the end of the race. Notice...finally, no more sand!


This is the canopy shelter that we made to try to keep out some of the wind/sand. What you can't see here is that Lindsey and I used a bunch of fire wood to build a wall of boards all around the bottom, and Pat buried it in dirt, to keep the sand from coming in beneath the tarps. We had quite the set up!

Unfortunately, even though our wall of boards kept the dirt from coming under the bottom, there was nothing we could do about the front. This is the dirt on our tables...approximately 5 minutes after Lindsey had just used a brush to sweep it all off! Needless to say, that was the end of the table brushing. We still had a blast, even with all the sand.

Climbing up the Slide

For a couple of months now, Kylee has been trying to climb up the slide at Grandma Watkins' house. Branson can do it, and he always gets upset because Kylee tries to follow him up and she gets in the way of him coming down. The other day I was watching a movie, and Kylee was playing on the slide again. I wasn't paying attention because I figured she'd eventually get bored and move on to some other toy. All of a sudden I heard her laughing and I looked over and she was sitting inside the play hut, looking out at me through the side hole. Crista and I made her do it over and over again, and she got really fast. Then we tried to tape her...and suddenly she couldn't do it anymore! I think her feet got too dry. She needs the clammy-baby-feet-sweat or she can't get enought traction!

This is Kylee's newest talent. She can stand up for quite awhile all by herself. She learned it about two weeks ago, just before she turned 9 months old. Andy calls her a "Park City baby" when she wears this outfit, but it's my favorite one!!
Here she is growling at the camera. She growls a lot! We bought her a lion costume for Halloween. I also bought Andy a lion mask and tail so that he can take her trick-or-treating.
I just can't get over how grown up she looks! I took her to her 9-month appointment today, and she weighs 18 lbs. (50th percentile), and is 28 inches tall (65th percentile). She also has a head in the 75th percentile. I decided the reason her head is big is because she is so smart! All those brains have to fit somewhere!

For Primary Activity Day we had a parachute for the kids to play with. I got it out beforehand to see how big it was, and Kylee thought it looked pretty fun. She crawled right out to the middle and just sat there!
She's turned into a little camera lover. Everytime I try to take a picture or video tape her doing something cute, she stops doing it so that she can come and grab the camera away from me.
This is Kylee doing her daily leg stretches. She feels like her thigh muscles are almost big enough to start walking.

8 Months Old

I can't believe my little baby is already 8 months old. In fact, she's going to be 9 months here in about 2 1/2 weeks. This is her in her new dress last Sunday. Doesn't she look so grown up?
This was on Monday morning at 6:45am. We had to wake her up to go to Day Care, and she had a stuffy nose. She actually LET me use the boogie sucker without a fight! The she crawled away with it really fast and turned around to smile at me. If you zoom in, you can see all seven of her teeth. Next thing you know, she'll be all grown up!

Swimming, Dancing, Biking...What Next?

Okay, so maybe she's not actually swimming yet, but Kylee does love water a lot. She'll play in the bubble bath (and eat the bubbles) for over 1/2 an hour until we make her get out because the water is cold.
And of course, she takes her bubble bath in the kitchen sink. She outgrew her baby tub, and she's too slippery for the whole regular tub...so she decided that the kitchen sink is just her size! She likes to splash all the water out with measuring cups.
The other day Aunt Rachel came over to play dress-up's with Kylee in her old dance outfits. Kylee says, "Oops mom! The skirt is too big!"
Now she's all ready to go. I'm not sure what the facial expression is supposed to mean. It's like she was just humoring us with the whole dress-up game.
...And FINALLY....the long-awaited bike trailer has arrived! We took Kylee out around the neighborhood on Saturday because it was cold and cloudy so we couldn't go on a real bike ride. She thought going over the speed bumps was funny.

Grandma Day

On Saturday, Sept. 13, Andy & I went to our annual Associated Foods Lagoon Day. Kylee spent the morning with Grandma Watkins, and the afternoon/evening with Grandma Timmins. I think Grandma Timmins thought we lived someplace really cold. She put Kylee to bed with a onesie on underneath her jammies. But hey! The next day Andy just got her up, took off her jammies, and she was all dressed and ready for the day. It's a great idea!
While at Grandma Timmins' house, Kylee played with the big happy face beach ball. In this picture I think she looks like she's plotting some kind of mischief.
"Look grandma! The ball is the same size as me!"
My mom took Kylee on a walk up the canyon in the late-afternoon, but then she couldn't figure out how to collapse the stroller. She drove home with it hanging out of her front-passenger window like this...right in the middle of post-BYU game traffic!!

East Idaho State Fair Demolition Derby A.K.A. "Our Redneck Weekend"

Every year for the past FIVE years, Andy & I have attended the East Idaho State Fair. And every year, I am completely grossed out by the animals, and experience a feeling of deja-vu in that all the booths are exactly the same, in exactly the same places they were the year before. The first year that we went, before Andy and I were even dating, we made the BIG mistake of wearing khaki shorts, flip flops, and sunglasses. People looked at us as if we were from outer space. Luckily, we have more common sense than that now. Andy even remembered to bring his Dodge T-Shirt that we got for free at the Pleasant Grove rodeo last year. He ended up being matching with Merlin, who apparently also attends rodeo's. Anyway, this is Kylee feeding herself at the fair. Good redneck parents ALWAYS let their children feed themselves. It makes a bigger mess that way!!
Grandma Timmins DID NOT get the memo about how to dress at the fair. Luckily, there's always next year! And Kylee enjoyed eating grandma's necklace like a good redneck baby.
For dinner, we OF COURSE went to the nearest Wendy's, where all the employee's looked like they wished they were dead. Merlin put a For Sale sign on my car as a joke, and somebody actually wanted to buy it the minute the sign was up. Who knew my car would be so popular?

The real tradition that keeps us going back to the fair year after year is the Demolition Derby. This was our 4th year in a row. What started out as just Merlin, Candice, their 2 kids, and Andy & I, is now the 6 of us plus one more kid for them, Kylee, Todd & Tiff, Karen & Rachel, Crazy M, and John & Lindsey. I'm pretty sure the ticket woman thought I was insane when I called her way back in July to order 12 adults and 1 kid ticket, and asked her to ship them to Utah. Luckily, we were smart enough to bring Kylee ear plugs. We left that place with our ears ringing...and Kylee took a nap for 1/2 the time. She never even tried to pull them out!!
I really don't have anything left to say, except that Kylee now has SEVEN teeth, for those of you that are counting, and if you don't get the joke of all the capital letters in this post...let me know and I'll share a really funny blogspot with you. I just feel that Kylee is such a wonderfully perfect baby, I am seriously...so blessed.