Lucy ... 7 months old!

Beautiful Lulu...happy baby.

Hanging out with Big Bro Riley...(still in his PJ's and with a carpet burn on his forehead. He likes to be a bulldozer sometimes! Really!)

Riley "babysitting" Lucy while I take a quick shower! Yes, they just watch a favorite movie...training her early, I guess!

Lucy has the perfect tummy for "zer-berts" (how do you spell those?) She did smile and laugh a lot, almost as much as Michael did!

7 months and still smiling!

Iowa Caucus

As residents of Iowa, we were able to take part in the Republican caucus held the beginning of January. It started with everyone saying the Pledge of Allegiance together and so we felt rather patriotic while fulfilling our civic duty and caucusing for our favorite candidate! We met in the media center of Sophie's Elementary school. She thought that was cool! The kids had a lot of fun...(they watched a movie on the DVD player!)...and we learned a lot about the whole process. Our candidate won in our precinct, too bad the whole state didn't follow our example! When we got home, we were sad to find that our Mitt Romney lawn sign had been swiped! Grrr.

John Deere...T R A C T O R S!

All the guys in our group gathered for a "manly" picture. All the dads are Ortho residents together spending precious time with their families.

Sophie felt left out and got her own pose with Daddy.

Lucy enjoying her ride at the indoor playground

Riley poses by an antique tractor...typical Riley pose (cheese)!

Riley telling me that this is a "wild ride"

We took advantage of the Monday holiday (for Sophie and Michael) and drove to Moline, IL to meet some friends at the John Deere tractor museum. There were lots of tractors displayed and almost all could be sat on/in. The kids had a great time imagining they were driving. And they especially loved the big combine that looks like "Frank" from the Disney movie "Cars". They spent a lot of time "racing" that one! It snowed quite a bit that day. We were happy to get home before everything started to freeze on the roads!

Lucy loves cereal

Open wide!

Bullseye! It goes in!

Ew! Not sure what to think.

And finally a smile!

(but it's debatable if the smile is because she liked the cereal, or if it's because she's got daddy's full attention!)

S N O W !

The kids had so much fun on our first sledding outing. It was pretty cold, but that didn't seem to stop them. It was too bad our snow tube popped on our first day! I guess we'll have to find another one...soon! Sophie says, "We want to go sledding every day of winter, now!"

Lucy warms up in the car!

Whee!!

Sophie and Riley laughing the whole way!

Give Lucy another year or so and she'll be begging for a ride, too! We thought the clear blue sky was pretty amazing.

Christmas 2007

Christmas Recap 2007 by Natalie, special thanks to Josh Groban for the song. (About 4 minutes).

Old Man Winter...gotta love him!

We've had a few storms lately with lots of ice and then some snow, too. It makes for scary driving and lots of time chipping ice off the driveway, but also makes very beautiful pictures.

I hope to post a few pictures of us enjoying the snow...if we can endure the cold for that long!