Deborah's 15 month STATs

All is well and normal. The doctor did comment that she was the 4th 15 month well check that day and she was the easiest by far. She did not experience any stranger anxiety like most kids do at her age. She does go to new people very easily unless she is tired. She continues to be our smallest kid, even though she is not small.
Wt: 23 lbs 14 oz  70th percentile
Ht: 311/4 inches   80th percentile

Deborah 15 months

Deborah continues to be a cutie. She still chooses not to walk but I think it will happen before Christmas. She has stood a few times without holding onto anything and has taken up to 2 steps by herself. She says dada, mama, baby, and what's that. She is a fast crawler and loves to climb. She loves being outside and going to the park. She is starting to be a cuddler like Julia and she likes giving kisses. She does let you know when she is not happy and can be a little aggressive at those times. Overall she is still generally easy going and happy. She is taking one nap right now for  usually 2 1/2-3 hours,which has been great. I have actually started to get quiet time for about 2 hours on the days Dean and Julia have preschool. It is amazing how much easier it is to clean without any distractions.  She is so fun to have around!

Thanksgiving

We spent Thanksgiving at Grandma and Grandpa Cardon's home. We had an enjoyable day and had great weather. We all ate outside in the backyard. Dean and Julia had fun with all of their cousin's and especially enjoyed seeing their cousin's from Utah, Drew and Braeden. Here are a few pictures of the day.

 Drew, Julia, and Alexis

 Us minus Noah

 Dean joining in the pictures

Julia starts Preschool

 A week ago today Julia started a new adventure in her life-Preschool. I was never planning on having her start yet since she is not even 3 and always planned on having her start when Dean started Kindergarten. If you have been around Julia you know that she can talk a lot but it is not always easy to understand her. I can understand her about 75% of the time if I know the content when she starts talking. If I don't know the content before she starts speaking it is about 35% understandable. For example if she wants to tell you something is over there it sounds like "oh be day". How she says one word will be very similar to another word so it is hard sometimes to know what she is talking about. It is very frustrating for her and for me. The school district will test children starting at 2 years and 9 months of age to see if they need extra help with speech or other areas of development. Well after all of Julia's tests they too agreed she needed help with her speech. She qualified for Preschool in the neighborhood school. It is 4 times a week for 2 1//2 hours a day. It is all free because she qualifies for this service through the state.That is more preschool than Dean gets. She gets help with her speech through the Speech Therapist, teacher, and the regular education students enrolled. It was a lot to grasp that our 2 year old (almost 3) would be starting school but she loves it and I have seen a little improvement just in the first few days. It was funny because we had to meet her teacher and speech therapist before she could start. We went in on a Wednesday and after we did all the paper work they said she could start the next day. I was not sure if I was ready to let her start this new adventure so I asked her if she wanted to start preschool tomorrow. She said yes but then hesitated and said "no today!". We all laughed and they were not worried about her having a hard adjustment. These are pictures of her first day. Dean and her are both getting ready to leave to their different Preschools. The bottom pictures of her are when she started taking the bus. The school is in walking distant but they offer front door bus service for the preschool kids. She loves taking the bus and it is quite convenient for me especially if it is during nap time for Deborah.

 She looks so grown up!

 Julia and her teacher Mrs. U

 After her first day I picked her up and got her in the car. She was not happy because she wanted to say goodbye to everyone. So I rolled down the window and she yelled out "bye teachy, by friends". So cute!

Halloween Night

We met at the Ferrells to go trick or treating with the cousins. The kids got a lot of candy. The baskets were super full. Julia's getting very heavy and she got wore out by the end of the night but she would not let anyone hold her basket. It was funny because she would start crying and we would ask if we could help her carry it but she would say no everytime. We would also ask if she was ready to be done but she wanted to keep going. Dean was ready to go home before she was ready. It was a beautiful night and all the kids had fun. Deborah did great just riding in the stroller and being carried by different family members. This was probably my favorite Halloween with our kids. Dean was black ironman, Noah not sure but he liked the costume, Deborah was a little ballerina, and Julia was a butterfly princess.

 The cousins getting ready for the night.

 Deborah was a cutie!

The extra highlight was finding out that my brother Scott and his wife Megan are excpecting their first baby this coming May. She had a cute skeleton shirt on with a baby skeleton in the belly part. The funny thing was nobody noticed the baby and they had to point it out. We are so excited for them!

Happy 7 Year Anniversary

We celebrated our 7th year anniversary and we had a fun and romantic evening.Since it was on Monday we asked my Mom to watch the kids. Brian made reservations at Elements Restaurant at the Sanctuary Camelback Mountain. I enjoyed getting dressed up and eating fancy food at a fancy restaurant. It was so nice and relaxing. The view was beautiful out the window. We shared the fiery calamari for the appetizer and then ate the asian pear and tempura goat cheese salads. Brian ordered the braised short ribs that came with the truffle mac and cheese along with the crisp kale and parsnip salad. He thought it was the best food he had eaten. I ordered the mained lobster udon 'carbonara' that came with pancetta, oyster mushroom, thai basil, and tomato jam. It was very yummy as well. We checked the dessert menu but both of us were very full that we passed. Before we went out we gave each other bouquets, mine was flowers and Brian had little gifts on his. He also gave me cinnamon rolls form Costco. A couple of days later due to shipping being slow I received a very pretty white and black diamond pendant necklace. The night was very memorable and so needed! I am excited for the coming year and years to follow!