Thanksgiving in Due Time

It's taken long enough to get these pictures up. I know.

Dan and Elizabeth Dolton visited us. It was a great time and we are so happy to have them stay with us. Thanks guys!!!

I'm going to keep the explanations short, so that we can get up to date.

Gwen took to Beth and Dan so well. She loved them. Here we are almost ready to eat.

This is half of the feast. We had a good variety. I made some things from scratch this year and was happy with the way it turned out - cranberry sauce, onion and apple stuffing, and cheesy garlic mashed potatoes. Adam made the gravy. Dan and Adam took care of the turkey. Beth made the green bean casserole, sweet potato dish, home made rolls and honey butter, an apple pie and a pumpkin pie. Sounds like a lot doesn't it?

The other half...



Gwen waits very patiently. I like how casual and relaxed she looks while she's watching us run around to get things ready. She had turkey and stuffing for the first time. There were no unhealthy ingredients in those, so we blended them up a bit for her. She like the stuffing, but the turkey took some getting use to. It was kind of grainy and dry I think for her.

She was about to kiss me. She will do it when I ask...when she wants to.

Adam had her dancing to make room for dessert. ha ha


Someone that works with Adam and his wife and daughter that Gwen and I have befriended came over Thanksgiving evening for dessert and coffee. It was fun. Liesel is 2 and a half and Gwen loves her. She was giving Gwen kisses and hugging her that night. Fun stuff!



This was a couple of days after Thanksgiving right before the Doltons left. They don't have any children yet, but they'll be great parents in my opinion.

The day after Thanksgiving we drove 2.5-3 hrs one way to visit the Carlsbad Caverns. It was amazing. Our camera only took good pictures outside, but Dan has some amazing ones from the inside. Adam had Gwen's fleece jacket on his head. It was extremely cold and he wanted a hat. This is Gwen's first time bundling up. Her arms don't make it to the arm holes yet...room to grow.

This is the natural entrance. This seating is for the bat flying siting. They've migrated to Mexico for the winter, so we would have to go back to see it. All I need to say about that is watch out for the guano.
Walking down into the opening

In the cave Gwen behaved very well. She woke up from a nap and then needed the pacifier. It was 50 some degrees in there. We were under ground for 4 hrs or so I think.


Here's just one of the many, many pictures Dan took. It gives you an idea of the lighting effects and the formations.

Vicki's Visit

In lue of visiting at Thanksgiving Day, my Mother came to visit us the week before. We had a good time. Gwen was still in her second month of life when she saw her last, so it was nice to see them together. Gwen was affectionate to Mom and would put her arm out reaching for her often. It was cute.

We went to the space history museum. This was the view of the mountains to the west.


Gwen loved Mom's watch. It sparkled, and once she figured how to get it off Mom's wrist she always wanted it.

We still fit time in for Gwen's naps.


We also did some other site seeing. We had a fun time and fulfilled our need for the kind of laughter that you can't get to stop. That's the best kind in my opinion.

Feeding Herself

At eight months she's feeding herself pretty well. Today Adam had the day off. We went shopping. Here the pictures are in a food court. While Adam and I ate our lunch we fed Gwen some Gerber puffs. They are essentially like Cheerios nutrition wise, but they melt in your mouth....not in you hand. ha ha ha. It's a good step for the babies to learn how to grab and then put it in their mouths. It's good for the self esteem too I'm sure. A thought going through her mind might be something like, "Hey, I can do this myself".

Anyway, she would grab them out of these sections in the stroller. Many of them dropped on the ground in the process, but she's learning. She kept looking for more once we were finished eating. I'm not sure how long she would have kept going otherwise.





Other happenings are the while I was outside to grill this evening I saw a black widow...dead right next to our back door and a teranchela in the back yard 5 feet away from the back door. Yikes!!!! It gives me the shivers thinking about them.

Close to Crawling and Toys

Today she is eight months old. Can you believe it? She has one bottom tooth that's been trying to break through for about a month and now the other front bottom one is peaking through the gums. It's hard for me to imagine her toothless grin with teeth.

She's getting close to crawling. She pulls up on things like the basket that holds her small toys to look through it. It is so incredibly funny how she picks through the toys then too. She picks one up and if she doesn't want it she puts it over her shoulder and drops it behind her. She has a certain spunk about her like that.

She's also moving all over the floor....backwards mostly. She is interested in objects now and will go after them. Until now if she would want something out of reach while sitting she would give up and go for something closer. She also stands up from sitting while we're reading or when I'm sitting on the floor with her and she wants my attention or something I have ..... like the remote control. Every baby loves remotes.

On a different note, I had to through one away a couple days ago. She was playing with it when I was changing her diaper, and we'll just say it was totally destroyed in the most unpleasant way. That's the nicest way of putting it. It was the one we used mostly, so needless to say we have different one now.

I've taken some pictures of toys she plays with too, so that family can see what kind of things she plays with.


Reaching... This crocodile is really fun. It rolls if it's pulled and of coarse plays music. Gwen's favorite part is the yellow "stick" if you will. She just likes to chew on it mostly.

Got it
Moving on...
Oh, what's over there...
Got it...


Moving backwards not intentionally necessarily...

I'm frustrated...a little help would be nice...

Legs in motion...

This train either moves or is stationary. It spins balls around the top or shoots them out the back. When you hit the yellow button on the top it does all of that and plays songs. I love this one. Gwen loves to grab the balls while they spin around.

This toy lights up and plays music when you hit certain things and the center hanging part shakes when you pull on it. It was used for tummy time and now it can adjust for sitting time.

I know it's early for a turkey shirt, but I realized that it's a 6 month size and barely fits her now. If I wait for Thanksgiving, it probably won't fit. The shirt reads "Our Little Turkey".


She's getting good at holding this cup up herself and drinking either b.m. or water. I am planning on weaning her off of me with this handy dandy cup. She still doesn't use bottles, so we won't have to worry about weaning her off of those. It's just a bit tricky to figure out how to do all of this. Time will work itself out I guess..... I hope. ;)

Last Zoo Outing with the Olsons

Our friends the Olsons have moved, so this is the last time Gwen and Kaden are pictured at the zoo together. Isn't this sad? That's how our move was initiated. They needed renters and they lowered the rent from where we were....across the street. So, it's a win-win situation. Anne Marie is the one that would go walking with us in the mornings and we have been the ones initiating the play group. Now things are different here without them, but mostly because Gwen and I are still working on moving and everything that goes along with it. It comes down to every detail like changing your address with the insurance. It all adds up to A LOT of calls and things to remember.




This last picture was about 2-1/2 weeks ago. I wanted to show a side shot of how much hair Gwen is getting. It's so fun! The barrettes are not staying in yet. I can't wait until I can put those on her. :)

Some Pictures of Gwen

We just recently have moved up to a "Big Girl Bath" without the baby tub. We watch her like hawks. It's nice to lay her back to rinse off her hair. I had called Adam in this day to take these pictures, because I liked the spiky hair style. She really likes her time in the bath. We give her one every night before story time and bed time. Often this is Adam's time with her still unless school or work need his attention.

This duck is a favorite bath toy. It's the perfect size for it's head to fit in Gwen's mouth. It's so funny.


I try to keep the eating interesting for her. This is a cucumber with the seeds cut out, so it's like a donut cucumber slice. She loved it. Sometimes the meals are boring like rice cereal and a veggie or fruit, and then other times I introduce something exciting. She loves the apple slices. She just sucks on it, and then I just have to watch that she doesn't get a piece off that could harm her. She's mushed a banana in her hands and wasn't so interested in actually eating it. Just recently I blended up a mixed veggie medley for her which consisted of red peppers, carrots, peas and broccoli. She likes it. We mix it with rice cereal and some water or breast milk too. Then I also wanted to make the blended up apple more interesting, so I added canned cherries that were in water with no preservatives. She liked that too.

Air Show and Transformer Movie

September 26th and 27th there was an air show on the base here. Of course, Adam told me about all of the planes, but it was too much information to remember unless you would write it down. So, here are some pictures of the planes.

One really neat thing is that the F-22 is replacing the F17 Stealth at this base. They had that at the show and we witnessed it flying straight up. It is extremely loud and awesome.



Me feeling silly. I was suppose to pose, so that was the first thing that came to mind.

This was the C-5 if I'm not mistaken. It's a cargo (hense the "C") plane. I walked up this ramp into it and walked out the other end that looks just the same. The cockpit is above this pictured area. It's HUGE!

This one was explained to me as a quote "Bad A## Plane".



So, we walked around both days with Gwen. The first day we talked with people and watched a launch of an X Prize competition. This involves different teams competing to get up to the moon and perform. I'm sure you can google it and it would be explained in much more depth than I could say.

The second day Adam worked at a booth for the test group he's in. Then when he was finished Gwen and I met up with him to watch the air show. There was a wing walker. That's when a person is outside of the plane performing acrobatic moves while flying. Can you say CRAZY? That was neat. Then there were all kinds of neat historic and new planes flying and doing stunts. They had one where it was called the "Heritage" where they had four planes flying side by side in chronological order. There were two "old" ones I can't remember the names of and then the Stealth and the F22. They flew directly over us. It was really neat.

O.K. We just watched the Transformers movie. It was so good we watched a couple of times. Anyway, they filmed some of it at Holloman A.F.B. and at White Sands National Monument here just 13 miles away from our house. The sand dune shots where the white sands and the base in the beginning was Holloman when they show the hangers and planes. We thought that was pretty neat.