2 Year Old??

A couple of weeks ago we had Evie's 15 month well visit and her pediatrician informed us that she's 1/2 an inch away from the average height of a 2 year old. How funny is that! And earlier that day Kyle said someone at a store guessed that she was 2. Ah, the woahs of being tall. :)

In preparation for the appointment I tried to figure out how many words she says. I've counted 10 so far: Mommy, Daddy, Louie, up, Bye, Hi, good-bye, eye, poop, and baby. I think the funniest is that at daycare she was squatting one day and Bev (daycare lady) asked her what she was doing. Matter-of-factly Evie said, "poop". That's our girl! Her favorite words though are "up" and "eye"/"I". Every letter is "i". Yesterday I caught her standing up in her crib touching the paper mache letter "e" on her wall that spells out her name, and she was saying "i", "i", "i". So cute. OH! And last week I was singing the ABC's and when I got to "Q-R-S", I paused and she goes, "T-U-B". I totally thought it was a flook so I redid it several times and she did it every time!! We have no idea how she learned that, but our daycare lady must be brilliant!

Here are some pictures from the past couple of weeks:

This is Evie's version of helping me "sort" the mail. :)


After bath with her new princess towel!

Learning to multi-task early.

December

December was very eventful for us. It started with our Christmas tree trip. This year we went "Coloradan" and went with a group of friends just north of Winter Park to cut down our tree from a National Forest. Besides the fact that Evie was a bit grumpy that day from not having her morning nap, we had a good time. We all bundled up and walked into the forest to find "The One". After about a 1/2 mile of walking we found this cute tree, cut it down, dragged it back to the car, and after getting it home realized it looked a bit (or a lot) fuller in the forest. Needless to say we had a Charlie Brown tree this year, but it was an awesome experience that we'll never forget!































Then in mid-December my dad and brothers came to visit for a ski weekend. We started in Loveland on Friday, drove to Steamboat Springs that evening, skied Steamboat on Saturday and went to the hot springs afterwards, then drove back on Sunday. It was a great weekend and we look forward to ski trips in the future with the rest of the fam!

For the holidays we drove back to WI for 2 weeks and had TONS of fun with the whole family! It was the first time Evie could really keep up with her cousins, so it was really great to watch them all play together. In addition to the immediate and extended family get-togethers, one of the highlights of the trip was going to Kalahari (the ginormous indoor water park in WI Dells) with the Johnson clan. All of the kids love to swim, so they were in heaven!

All in all we had an awesome close to 2009. December really was a reminder of how truly blessed we are to have such great family and friends. We look forward to this new year, one of transition for our family, but hold tight to the great memories we've made and experiences we've had together thus far.








Gettin' ready for Christmas Eve church service.










Playin' with cousin Charlie.




The Johnson family
The Johnson cousins
The Hornickel cousins


Niki, Ryan, Kyle and Dana with the 3 Hornickel kiddos and their 2nd cousin, Levi.