This is a very typical Illianna face.

          

Since the job market is the worst my generation has ever seen, we are having to resort to other methods to pay the bills:

          

Aunt Natalie gave Illianna a new coat/hat outfit that is just too cute.  Here is a picture, hopefully it warms your holidays like it does ours!

          

Looking for disipline ideas?

          

She is getting more and more crazy….

          

We noticed tonight that we recently had some traffic to the site from the google search ‘missy moo’. This peaked our curiosity. What other missy moos are out there?

Well, it’s a popular name for a cat. Missy moo is Oober Yuckems ‘ not so secret admirer. Somewhere along the lines we ended up buying a bib from Australia (fyi-delivery by sea takes 2-3 months! we opted for air). We found some cute onesies (Link Removed on Remote Site) for identical twins, and the true meaning of missy moo.

gotta love the net

          

I love kids in hats. From day one I’ve had Illianna in a hat. Unfortunately she’s figured out how to take her hat off, and thinks it’s a trick. Now I’m having to wear hats as well because if she sees me in a hat then she’ll leave hers on.

Yesterday it wasn’t too hot, there was a slight breeze, and a few clouds remained in the sky from a storm that passed through the night before, so we decided to go on a walk. I got us all loaded up, which was a feat of it’s own because once the dogs see their collars come out they start going crazy, and we were just about to head off, when Missy Moo looked up at me with an evil smirk and pulled her hat right off. I only have one hat, which after recently falling into the pool I found out was made of paper (I didn’t know you could make a *real* hat from paper.), so I was in a bit of a predicament. Fortunately I saw one of Ryan’s baseball caps in the entry. It did the trick, and she kept her hat on most of the walk. Of course she wanted to try on Dada’s hat at well.

          

Well, we took our first family vacation to New Mexico. Illianna did great on the airplane. Here she is checking out the view from the overhead.

We did a lot of hiking.

See that hole on the right. I climbed through there with Missy Moo along for the ride. That was darn difficult. I couldn’t just get down on my hands and knees because just the day before we were hiking around in the snow and I fell and bruised my knees.. bad.

We didn’t do any intense hikes this time because it was the first time I’ve worn a pack since I was a teenager at summer camp . I’m glad we stuck to the easy stuff because that’s all Illianna could do anyway. She is at the age now where she’s too interested in everything to fall asleep anywhere other than her bed. Towards the end of the trip she was doing better to sleep in the car, but that was out of total exhaustion and desperation. I’m not sure how long it will take her to catch up on missed sleep. Nor am I sure how long it will take us to catch up. She woke us up everyday at 5AM, which is 6AM her regular time. Usually when she wakes up early at home, I let her hang out in her crib until time to wake up, 7AM, but you can’t really do that when you’re in a hotel room.

Maybe if I have a little more time or energy I’ll blog a bit further about the whole thing, but right now I’m not that into it. more pics

          

It’s tradition to take photos in the blue bonnets. For some odd reason they only seem to grow on the side of busy highways, except for the crazy guy who plants them in his front yard in Southlake, only to spend all his time on the front porch chasing people away.

We were on the side of a highway, actually where two meet, but it was off the road quite a bit.

Illianna was far too interested in the flowers and grass to actually look at the camera, but I figure I’ll have many years of blue bonnet photos where she’s looking at the camera. Only one where she’s actually fascinated by the flowers.