Maddie

Here's some of Maddie's cuteness the past couple of months.

Smiles for Dad at the hospital

This smile didn't last too long--who likes being in a duck hamper, anyway.

One of our first few times experimenting with Maddie eating what we eat at dinner

Experimenting with pigtails

A sweet one of Craig and Maddie

Our little scavenger

She thought this pillow pile up was hilarious

Evidence of Maddie's first big bump on the forehead--but she's still too darn cute in her new Earth Child outfit--thanks Auntie Lycia

Maddie loves to be part of everything. This is our mode of viewing General Conference

Eating and watching "Backyardigans"

In a hamper again--I don't know my obsession with putting her in hampers?

Maddie and her frog, Arro. She loves this little guy.

Here she is playing peek-a-boo.

Visitors!!!

Craig's parents came to visit us a couple of weeks ago. We got to show them some of our favorite Omaha sites even though it rained the entire time. It's been in the 70's for about a week now, so I don't know why we always get rain and 40 degree temps when we have visitors. Anyway, we visited De Soto National Park. I guess a ship wrecked on the Missouri river in the 1800's, but then the river changed routes, so the ship was buried under silt in the middle of a corn field. They dug it up along with a lot of really fascinating articles from the 1800's. We also went to Nebraska City, which is the birthplace of Arbor Day. We had some amazing apple pie. We visited our cute little downtown Omaha as well as West Omaha where all the new Omaha is. To top it off we took them to our favorite steak place that's located about 45 minutes from Omaha in a beautiful little town called Hooper. We had a lot of fun, and we're glad they made us a stop along the way.

This is Halloween

Halloween is probably in a tie for my favorite holiday all year long. I love that we get to dress up as whatever we want. I used to love to dress all "risque" like. I don't know why--probably that "sweet mormon girl" had a little devil wanting to burst out--I don't know. Every once in a while I still love to crank up Blink 182's Buddha so loud that I can't think--that's of course, when Maddie's not in the car...which is never. Well OK. So, for Halloween this year we were able to go to a couple of fun parties. Some of our friends' parents have a fabulous home near Omaha with a cool backyard. We made dip from our way-too-spicy chili, and we had fun time. On Halloween we went to our Branch Halloween party which was amazing. We had a chili cook-off (for which we won "Best Name"), trunk-or-treating, and fun games. We also won Best Family Costumes. We went as Tinkerbell, Peter Pan (sans tights), and Wendy (with tights). There were a few other adorable Tinkerbells around (including one of Maddie's sweet friends and one of our friend's dogs), sot that has motivated us not to buy costumes at Hell-Mart again. The night was awesome, and although we got home around 9 o clock we realized that this Halloween was one of our favorites.

"The Summer" all-in-one