First STEPS!!!

Jake actually WALKED tonight!! He took his first real non-wobbly step yesterday, then another one today, and then tonight he was standing in front of me and I motioned for him to "come here" and he WALKED to me instead of crawled!! We didn't get his best "round" on video, unfortunately, but before we started taping he had a round of 6 or 7 steps! We're so excited for Jake, he's going to just love walking, I know it! As for me and Steve, wish us luck ;)

The Pop-tart Bandit

Jake has always been a curious little boy. We even call him Curious George, he's just always exploring and getting into things, and it can get pretty tiring. I love this about him though, because he will usually stay focused on something until he knows how it works, or what to do with it. Well, the other day, he was in our 3rd bedroom where I had piled our food storage in the middle of the room because I was going to organize it and put it away. There were boxes and boxes of things and I thought he would have a fun time pushing stuff around and climbing on the boxes (don't worry folks, the boxes weren't too high, and they were the durable-kind you get at Costco or Sam's with the heavy duty cardboard, so he couldn't hurt anything). Anyways, I knew that would keep him busy for a while, so I was in the kitchen doing dishes and stuff. Well I went to go check on him about 15 minutes later because it had all of a sudden gotten quiet (and we all know what that means). I laughed SO HARD when I saw what he had done. He had opened the heavy-duty cardboard part of a box of Pop-tarts, and then the smaller regular-size box of Pop-tarts, and THEN the individual BAG and was eating a Pop-tart!!! I still don't know how in the world he did it, especially in 15 minutes, but it was a result of the Curious George in Jake. Oh yeah, and no adult supervision, hehe. But he was so proud of that Pop-tart, though. When I found him, he had beaver-chewed it all around the edges and was getting to the good-stuff, and I was going to take it away from him so he wouldn't get a sugar rush but then I realized that he had EARNED that sucker!! To say the least, it was hilarious, and I'm laughing to myself as I write this. For the next 20 minutes until he had finished it he kept holding it up to me as if it were some kind of trophy he had won. Oh, that kid... I wouldn't trade him for anything.

Pure happiness right here!

Clapping his hands together with the Pop-tart and the bag.

Taking a big ol' bite of good-ness.

A Reception and Reunion

When I lived in Arkansas (junior high and high school years), my family made good friends with another family in our ward, the Wright family. All the kids were about the same ages, so we always did a TON of stuff with them. My mom and Stephanie Wright are still best friends to this day, and we look for any excuse to see each other now that my family is up in Seattle and the Wright's are still in Arkansas. I just love all of them, and there are always LOTS of laughs when we get together :) So, their daughter, Brianna, got married not too long ago and her new husband is from SoCal so they had a reception there, and Steve, Jake and I were able to go and see them and it was SO FUN!!! Congrats, Brianna and Paul!!

They had bubbles and Jake of course was loving it.

Jim and Stephanie

The Happy Couple: Paul and Brianna Ovuoba :)

Jake LOVED Stephanie, he took right to her. I'm not surprised ;)

Thanks, guys, for inviting us to the reception, and thanks, Paul, for being from SoCal so we could make it to your reception!! It was great to see you guys, we miss you!!!

Halloween= FUN!!

We had a GREAT Halloween!! It was so fun to dress up for our ward party, go to a pumpkin patch, and go trick-or-treating with friends. And, Steve was pretty excited to get Jake's candy bucket all to himself, since I'm cutting out sugar for a little while to finally get this baby weight off once and for all! Anyways, hope everyone had a fun Halloween as well. Let the holidays begin!!!! (ps. This is my FAVORITE FAVORITE time of year!!! Well, this and the next couple months, hehe.)

Straight from the zoo: Me- a tiger; Jake- a monkey; Steve- our zookeeper!! I'm sad, these first two pictures are the only ones we got at our ward party.

He didn't really like the hood at first, but he got used to it as time went on :) ______________________________________________________

Peltzer Farms Pumpkin Patch!! It was a lot of fun! They had pumpkin picking of course, pony rides, a corn maze, a petting zoo, and train rides, but we were lame and cheap this year and only got a pumpkin. But it was still fun to look at the animals from far away and let Jake watch other kids ride the ponies, haha.

These were the coolest pumpkins I've ever seen! They were half white, half orange. Cool!

(Ok, I don't know what it is about blogger, but it never lets me turn the pictures around!)

So handsome...

Jake and Mom turned into pumpkin eyeballs!

He's about 2 1/4 feet tall this fall!

Wait... I mean 5 feet! Slight miscalculation, haha.

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Time for Trick-or-Treating!!! What we've all been waiting for! We went with our good friends Cameron and Rachel Martin, and their little girl Candice, who is just 3 months older than Jake. She was a monkey, too, and they were ADORABLE!!

Gotta love the tail.

Jake and Candice, the two little crazy monkeys!

Candice's costume was a lot cooler than Jake's, it was stuffed all around the middle, and it had feet! Jake's didn't have either one, but it was still way cute ;) So their hands are kinda blurry because they were both dancing up and down together, ha!

Time to knock on doors....

.... so we can inhale all of our candy!