Good Times with Gracie

It has been a crazy couple of weeks of fun and travel. There is nothing like 6 flights in 6 days. At least all flights were on-time or early. After a quick trip to Atlanta for work, I came back to go to the musical Wicked with Adam and his folks. This is the first musical I have seen three times and I will probably see it again. I can't wait for Gracie to see it as she gets older. Speaking of musicals, my mom and I headed to NYC Saturday for a long weekend of musical fun. We had such an wonderful time seeing Bye Bye Birdie with John Stamos, The Rockettes Christmas Spectacular, and Wishful Drinking Carrie Fisher's one woman show. Around all the shows we were able to see the usual sights: Central Park, FAO Schwartz, 5th Ave, Grand Central, 30 Rock, Today show, NBC studio tour, China Town, Ground Zero, Times Square, and....we got some great advice from Sarah, our friend who was a chef in NYC, about a restaurant that was amazing! That night was fun since we went to a hole-in-the-wall bar my friend recommended that was actually an old opium house, then to another great bar that we had to be approved to enter and then to the Little Owl Restaurant that is in the building used as a reference for Monica's apartment in friends. Oh the fun! Here is a photo of us before the Rockette's show. It was good to get back and see my girlie though.

Gracie updates: We went to the zoo on Saturday and she is now really enjoying the animals though still prefers to watch the other kids. Here is a photo with her and the ducks that she loved to enjoy.

• Gracie calls any electronic item: remote, phone, etc. Dada. It is so funny.



• She is eating us out of house and home. Today she had a whole ham and cheese sandwich, 1/4c apple sauce, veggies, and juice. She is so hungry.



• Her favorite position to play in is squatting like in the photo below.

Today I was actually able to get a bow to finally stay in her hair. At least it stayed in long enough to get a great photo of her. You can barely see it here.

Here is the close-up that you can see her tooth, the lower left, with the second coming in now, the lower right:

Now we are getting ready for a weekend of family Thanksgiving fun. Wishing everyone a wonderful blessing Thanksgiving holiday.

You Have My Heart, But Wonka Has My Belly

This was an interesting and exciting week for The Peters' clan.

Our typically sunny and dry Denver autumn weather threw us a bit of a curve ball by bringing snow flurries to the front range on Tuesday. That was not a huge surprise as we've experienced more than one Halloween 'dusting' in the past. What was surprising is that it did not stop snowing till Thursday evening. All in all we got around 24 inches at our house in Parker. Grandma Jeanne (aka "Gigi") was nice enough to come over early on Wednesday evening to help watch Gracie so mama and dada could try to work from home on Thursday.

For a girl who requests to go "out" a lot, she sure didn't like being "out" in the snow! You may be able to infer that from the photos...just doesn't know quite what to make of it yet. (It's early in the season so she'll have plenty of chances to decide if she likes snow or not)

Our normally happy child picked up on the sudden drop in barometric pressure and decided to channel that into her mood for the better part of the week. She was a cranky mama's girl due to her one and only tooth coming in! Thankfully she has slept through most nights and only showed her cranky side during daylight:)

One of the benefits of Grandma Jeanne being dropped off at the house was that she was without car, and therefore, a captive of ours during this pre-winter storm. We took full advantage of this by taking our little monkey (and yes, Gracie was dressed as a monkey) to a Halloween party at our friend's house in Parker. After a brief appearance we dropped her off at home for Grandma to watch her while we went back to the festivities.

Grace enjoyed her second Halloween much more than her first. This year she helped make a jack 0' lantern which seemed to intrigue her. But she finally said "please mom, no more pictures!"

That night she wanted to go trick or treating with all of the neighborhood kids. However, we stayed in so we could deal out all the sugary snacks for the nearly 80 children who ended up stopping by. Gracie hated to see them leaving our house after just a few minutes! What a social butterfly!!! Even though she was really cute in her costume, Brandy was, yet again, the hit for Halloween kids. This year we subjected her to dressing like a cat which consisted of a bow tie and fake ears.

Outside of those major events we had a good week with a lot of family time. After church on Sunday, Karla and Gracie visited Papa J. Great-grandpa lights up every time he gets to see Gracie and she apparently loves to see him too based on the big toothless grin she has when they're together. Sunday afternoon was spent exploring the collapsible tunnel system in our family room. After another huge dinner...this kid eats like a champ I tell ya...it was off for bath time and "naked time". The latter is now Gracie's favorite time of day!

13 months & what do you get? Another day older & a tooth

What fun we have been having these past couple weeks. Gracie has been able to spend time with friends, family and the good old folks. With me traveling last week and preparing for the trip, we all know why I am behind on the blog. Where do I start?

The first weekend away from Gracie was hard. Adam and I did enjoy our time together in Breck knowing Gracie has having a great time with the Peters. We also enjoyed some time up at the farm again because the Sanderson household was fighting a bug. No one seemed to mind and we were able to even visit with them. I think the fun time they had in the crib helped her to sleep better that night. Gracie and I were going to cheer on the Rams at homecoming, but the ladies decided to skip the freezing temps for the warm inside!

Next was our friend Graham's 1st birthday party. The most exciting part for Gracie were the "balthoons" She is just adorable when she says balloons, and yes that is her largest and favorite word to say.

This weekend, after I was away during the week, we had a fun time at a family festival that was free. The weather was perfect and Gracie got to play in a house of leaves. We are getting ready for Halloween this weekend where she is planning on being a Monkey without a tail. I am too cheap to buy a $5 tail or make one. We will all survive. She is still cute!

Updates:

• As of about Oct 12, Gracie had decided that she would rather walk. She still continues to learn, though she is determined to get to where she wants to go.



• She will now answer questions or what she thinks are questions with "ah-uh" Even if you ask her if she wants to be a lizard, that is her answer.



• Her favorite place to be is outside or "out" as she says.



• The least favorite place is getting into the car seat. She has moved-up to the larger size now, and boy is it fun to buy 3 car seats, thank goodness for friends and sales!



• The phone is her favorite toy and any time I am on a phone she says dada and thinks that is who I am talking with. Today she even bumped her head, saw the phone, and wanted me to call daddy and let him know what happened. She calmed right down when she heard his voice. What a wonderful bond.


• Her tooth continues to pop through and I wonder how quickly her other ones are coming in.



• These veggie straws from Costco have to have some addictive ingredient because she wants them all the time. It is amazing!! They do work week at distracting her during church though.

Hope you have enjoyed the photos.

They're here...

Finally we have felt a tooth coming in. That only took 6 months of trying to feel and thinking she was getting teeth before and actual tooth would arrive. This is the very early stages that is for sure because you can't even see the little side poking out yet, though you sure can feel that sharp edge. Gracie is obsessed with other people's teeth right now and I am sure she will become obsessed with her own soon enough.

Gracie continues to experiment with walking between objects and is now getting a lot more confident in her abilities and is ready to practice at any time. Later today I will provide an update to our recent activities with photo. Enjoy this good news for now!

Ohhhhhhh

Gracie is becoming so verbal now it is wonderful. My favorite is her say "Oooohhhh." She received a wonderful Jack-in-the-box from the Shiers for her birthday and every time she gets the clown to come out she say Ooohhh. That is her new word for anything she thinks is neat or is something she has learned. It is so sweet.

Right now we are dealing with a fever, which I think is due to the 1 year immunizations. This afternoon she has perked up. This has made me realize how much I miss being with her when I am working. Someday I look forward to a time when I can be with her the whole day and not think about everything I have to get done for work. Don't get me wrong, when I am home I know there will be plenty of other things to keep my mind occupied as well. We are taking one step close to our goal with Adam changing firms this week. We felt the previous company did not provide the potential for us to achieve our goals as a family. Here is a link to the new firm that Adam officially starts on Oct 1.

http://www.assetsandincome.com/

We look forward to this new step of faith and pray that God blesses this new chapter in our lives. More photos and updates to come after work!

Gracie is 1

What an amazing year it has been. To be honest I am so glad that I have kept this blog. As many of you know I don't have that great of a memory, so this will provide documentation to Gracie as she gets older and starts to ask me questions about her first year. Her birthday celebration started a little early with a cake the night before her birthday. We will just say the cake wasn't good enough to provide Gracie incentive to smash the cake in her face.

The birthday morning started out very nice with her sleeping in a bit. Daddy was off to church to serve while my folks came over to help prep for the party. Grandpa kept Gracie busy while my Mom and I got things ready. The decorations were minimal, cake provided by Aunt Michelle, and many friends to celebrate with.

The cake could take a whole page of the blog to explain how amazing Michelle's hard work looked. Here are a couple photos of the bear cake with the mini smash cake. It was almost too perfect to cut. Gracie was completely spoiled by her Aunt with this amazing cake that could have been in contention on Ace of Cakes!

Gracie didn't really enjoy the smash cake nearly as much as we thought she would. Like us, I think she didn't want to ruin the amazing cake. Here are photos of her starting to enjoy the cake before we had to run inside due to the rain that started that quickly stopped after the huge rush into the house.

There were two traditions we started this day. First I made a plate at a pottery store that we will use for celebrations to come. Gracie's first birthday cake as served on this platter. Second we took from the Korean tradition and had Gracie select an item from a tray of different objects to help tells us what her future will hold. Items like a hammer - judge or carpenter, ball - sports, money - wealth, calculator - finance, photo - photographer, were on the tray and our lady picked the money. There are worse things she could have chosen.

We were able to enjoy celebrating with family and friends. Gracie is loved by so many people that we feel completely blessed to be in our lives.

Gracie's big achievements:

• As of today Gracie is using about 10 words: mama, dada, uh oh, dog, ball, ollie, out, up, quack (just she ck sound) hi, and is working on bye.


• Today was a huge day of milestones: she signaled all done with her hands up in the air.


• SHE TOOK HER FIRST UNASSISTED STEPS!! Baylor was enjoying some Cheerios that she wanted to share, so she walked a couple steps to him. Here is a photo afterwards.

• Gracie is 19lbs, 10oz (25%), and 90% on height. She is long and lean like her daddy.
• She loves to wave, say hi to people, blowing kisses and giving high 5s.
• The girl will eat pretty much anything without teeth. I can only hope she is getting them or she is completely taking after Brandy and her drooling.

Looking back to one year ago it is so hard to imagine our life without Grace. She continues to be the light of our life and what we focus our time on. Her smile brings such joy to every person she meets. There is nothing more that I love then coming into her room, after hearing her say mama over and over in the monitor, and seeing her standing at the edge of her crib just smiling and motioning for milk. How can you not love your daughter giving you the biggest open mouth kiss with a little lick from her tongue to show you how much she loves you?!?! Daddy might get a little nervous knowing that his little lady just give her buddy Baylor a big lick kiss as well. The girl loves everyone.

Thank you all for celebrating our daughter's life! She is a gift from God that we are thankful for everyday.

The three weeks before turning one

Since it has been a month since my last post we are going to cover a few weeks. Lucky me got to spend a night with my goddaughter and her brother. It was such a joy to spend time with them and Gracie got some really good daddy-daughter time.

Just before Labor Day weekend Gracie and I were able to take a quick trip to KC. Hillary and the family were such warm hosts, Hill even watched Gracie for a day while I worked, and Maddie couldn't get enough of Gracie. Here is Maddie giving love to her. What a wonderful trip which I survived traveling with Gracie on my own. Gracie did great on the flights and slept pretty good. Now that she is older she is well aware of her surroundings and if we are in the room. This lead to our trip to the farm for Labor Day.

Labor Day was pretty quiet with a trip to the farm to get some work done. Gracie even tried to help Mommy attach gliders to the bottoms of the chairs. She is following in her mothers love of projects.

Adam volunteered at a CSU prep rally event that included many different fun activities for kids. We were lucky the event surprisingly drew Adam's brother and family. Here are photos of our little cheerleader from the wonderful CSU rally

Adam was very excited when CSU beat CU at the Rocky Mtn. Showdown. So awesome!!! After this fun I had to take a trip to ATL for work. Being away from Gracie is hard and Adam is such a wonderful father to me Mr. Mom during these times, not to mention my mom and Nicole.

The week before her birthday was a busy week too. We were able to celebrate my parents 40th wedding anniversary. The anniversary dinner included my folks, aunt & uncle, family friends, and Brad with dinner provided by a chef. What a wonderful reason to celebrate!

Next onto her birthday fun....