Christmas!

Most of you are probably wondering why this blog is entitled Christmas when it's only the 13th day of the month? Well, in short Shannon leaves for TN on Thurs morning and I'm following w/Maddie the next Mon, so we celebrated our Christmas today. It was a relaxing and fun morning, as Maddie got her own pony!! Actually, the pony from the previous post was such a hit that Shannon found one online and Maddie got to ride it today for the first time! Below are some pics/video from that. Shannon's score was a Wii and Wii Fit game, one of which Bill won free in a raffle last week in Orlando! We've had great fun w/it so far, especially the workout functions of the Fit game. Bill's score was a Garmin touchscreen GPS and some pushup handles. Is that a hint?!? Anyhow, they were both much appreciated and can't wait to use them! Hope your Christmases are just as blessed as ours, and we can't wait to see you all over the holidays! Merry Christmas and God Bless!!

Shannon's big score!

Bill trying to do pushups w/Charlie on his back!!

Need I say more?!?

Oh yeah, we had 40+ mph winds for the past 12hrs, and here's one of the local tumbleweeds! It's half the size of the car!!

Birthday party

Maddie & I got to attend a fun birthday party today, & I was able to gather a couple pics & video of her playing. I think we found our next Christmas present for the kid! Before the party, however, she got a little mischievous.

She was having a great time riding around in the car until she saw me, then she decided that she wanted "up".

Thanksgiving

Turkey dinner is served! What a wonderful Thanksgiving! While we both would have rather been with extended family this year, the Lord truly blessed us with a great Thanksgiving. We slept in (thank you Maddie!) and never made it out of our pajamas for the whole day! We had a dinner with all the usual fixings, accompanied with little to no stress!

We have much to be thankful for this year. One and a half healthy children, a non-deployed daddy, a wonderful new home and community, loving friends & family, and a gracious God who never lets us go.

We hope you all had a great & safe holiday that was full of recognized blessings!

This is how we know she's ready to eat...pretty hard to miss!

Here's how we know she wants to watch "Baby Signing Time"....again, not hard to decipher!

New wagon!!!

Here's Maddie in her new wagon.

I love it when mommy tickles me!

Smiling through my pacifier.

Although proud papa thinks she's saying Da-dah, what she's actually refering to is the dog.

A busy little girl

Our little pony didn't like to keep her paws on.

Keeping busy at a neighborhood party.

Trying hard to gear up some excitement for the Big Orange!


Wearing her new dress & reading her new Clifford book (both of which Grammy made). She's striking her new "what's this" pose.

Ultrasound results

Well, the results are in and it's a boy! Guess we shouldn't second-guess the Chinese after all?! Anyhow, the sonographer (thought that was someone who works with underwater acoustic receivers?!) was very informative, showing us the division between the left/right brain, all the baby's organs, the length of the umbilical cord (longer is better?), etc. We learned quite a lot, and most importantly that the baby is very healthy and growing as expected. Now begins the process of deciding names.......

Random pics from the week.

Below are pics from our trip to Santa Barbara, the zoo, the LA fires, a visit by Bill's mom and brother Greg, and some from around the house. Bill is off to Virginia for the week, so our next post will hopefully include the results from the next sonogram....keep your fingers crossed!

Still waiting....

For those expecting news today, unfortunately we have none. After a thorough ultrasound, the Dr. was unable to determine the sex of the next little Maples. We have another appt scheduled in 3 weeks, so stay tuned .....

Happy Belated B'day!

Maddie is opening her presents & is apparently very excited about her new outfit! Charlie is, of course, right in the thick of things....gotta know what's going on!

This was her second birthday party, but this time daddy, grandma & grandpa were able to be there! She learned what to do w/the cupcake this time. More of it ended up in her mouth than on her body or the ground.

Hanging w/Grandma & Grandpa at the Trona Pinnacles. We discovered that she loves rocks, as she cried when we made her leave them there!

First haircut!!

Can you see her signing "more" for more animal crackers? She's already a foodie!

Today was a big day, daddy got a haircut! Oh yeah, so did Maddie. We must admit that she was heavily distracted with animal crackers and there wasn't much to cut, but mission accomplished. Not much else to say, so enjoy the pics!

Bull riding

I joined some cowboys in the infield of the Pendleton, OR Round-up this weekend to watch some bull riding. That fence you see between me and the bulls 50 feet away is only made of PVC pipe! Thanks to Casey for getting us the front row seats!

Some pics from the week

There was a parade of 1000 flags through our town to commemorate 9/11. They walked 100 rows of 10 men to Freedom Park, where they placed all the flags.

We found an amazing little town about an hour of us that reminded us of our beloved Smokies! There were people tubing down the river, fishing, having picnics...it was glorious!

The Many Faces that are Maddie!

Just so you have some perspective, these pics were all taken within 2 minutes, so it's safe to say that we have a moody kid! The full-on frown is the newest in her repertoire and she uses it frequently! Her 1-year checkup is fast approaching, so we'll post the new stats when we find out. Enjoy!

Off-roadin'

Here's what Bill does in his free time. Between supporting SCORE races in Mexico and running his truck offroad from Vegas to Reno earlier this month, there's always time to wrench on the truck and make small improvements. China Lake is surrounded by great offroad areas, and there's actually a 250 mile race here every Spring. Don't look for him to turn pro anytime soon, but if you want a fun ride, come on out! Kudos to Cricket who helped me build this offroad beast and filmed this clip.

Walking!

Okay...I know I already posted today, but I forgot a very important element! Maddie took her first steps out on her own last night! You can just see the pride beaming on her face! I was able to capture a few of them on video this morning....go Maddie!

Whirlwind Month

Wow! What a month we've had! It started when I found out I was pregnant. A week later was our anniversary, and we spent it in Vegas. Bill had a conference there for work, so Maddie & I joined him in his luxury suite (compliments of Uncle Sam)! We got to go swimming, watch a circus act at Circus Circus, visit Siegfried & Roy's Secret Garden (with dolphins, lions, tigers, leopards, & panthers), and plenty of shopping :) A few days after we got back, I wrecked my car. Maddie & I are perfectly fine (if you don't count a bruised ego). I cracked my rear bumper, but unfortunately the air bags did the most damage. We are still waiting on the appraiser to get back to us (extremely frustrating).

Then, a week later, I rented a car & drove to Yuma. Bill flew the jet down earlier in the week, as he had two weeks of work there. So, Maddie & I got to visit daddy & friends for a long weekend. Finally, to cap things off, I took a temporary part-time job at the church we have been attending. After hearing about my background at Stone Ridge, they asked me to fill in while one of their secretaries is on vacation. It's 3x/wk for a month or so. It's been a good opportunity to meet people in the church, and it feels great to be able to help them out. Bill returned home on Sunday, and will be home for a couple of weeks before going on a cross-country. I would say that we are both ready for a bit of downtime!

I would add pics of Maddie, but we are having computer issues & I can't access them right now. I'll try to add them once we get it fixed.

Expecting!

Maddie is going to be a big sister! Shannon had an ultrasound last Monday before our Vegas trip, and found out the baby is healthy and approximately 7 weeks old. That puts the arrival in mid-March, which means a whole new winter maternity wardrobe.....yeah!?! Let me be very clear......."we're not pregnant"...Shannon is. We ARE expecting, but as it's physically impossible for US to be pregnant, I'll leave that task to Shannon. The good news (I think?) is that I'll be around for this pregnancy and delivery to welcome Hadji #2 onto this earth. Stay tuned for more details as the belly grows......

Kermit's Near Demise

Maddie & I had quite the traumatic experience today. You see, we had an incredible thunderstorm last night, which produced much cooler temperatures today. So, I decided that we should sit outside (when it's not 112 degrees) & enjoy the weather. While sitting there, I saw that our grill cover had collected a large amount of water (we were actually grilling when the torrential downpour began...go figure). But, when I picked it up & emptied the water, two little frogs hopped out. I thought this would be a great teaching experience for Maddie. So, I set her on the ground, pointed out the frogs, made the appropriate "ribbit" sound, etc. She must have thought they were cute, as she immediately crawled for them. I let her do so, assuming the frogs would have some sense of danger & would hop away. But, oh no...one frog just sat there and let my 9 month old pick it up!

Two thoughts immediately went through my head. The first was that she was going to squish it to death & the second was that she might try to eat it (as everything goes into her mouth right now). So, I panicked. I promptly started yelling at her to drop it, while shaking her hand vigorously (must have been a wild ride for that poor frog), to which Maddie appropriately started crying. I finally pried open her fingers & let the frog fall to the ground. It sat there stunned for a moment before it hopped away. I think Maddie & I were also both quite stunned at what had just happened. I soothed her, apologized for yelling, and went back inside leaving the poor, stupid frogs to fend for themselves in this untamed land, full of dangerous babies.

Bath time!

Communication Woes

One of the worst things about living in a small town, is terrible reception...when contact with the outside world is what you need the most. In the month that we have had service, I don't think a day has gone by when our internet has consistently worked. Our home phone has had static so bad, that I've had to hang up w/people & call them back on my cell phone. Then, unfortunately, unless I was sitting outside in 100 dg heat, my calls would frequently be dropped.

All this to say, I think we are finally in a much better place for communication w/everyone!!! Verizon came out once again yesterday, and hopefully everything is fixed (except the cell). No more static & the internet works!!! I did learn that there is only ONE Verizon tower in Ridgecrest & it is all the way on the complete opposite end of town. They are planning to put another one in closer to this end of town...but don't know the time frame on that. In the meantime, I'll just continue to make calls when I head into town (closer to the tower) :)

Mt. Whitney

We had an awesome July 4th weekend, despite living in the middle of nowhere! We had our first family picnic at a local park, and Maddie enjoyed her first swing ride. There were flittering smiles, as she just wasn't really sure if it was supposed to be fun. That night, Bill & I were able to enjoy the local fireworks display from our driveway. Living in the land of forest fires, you can imagine fireworks are limited out here....but for Ridgecrest, we were impressed. I sure do miss TN fireworks, though!

On Saturday, we decided to take on Mt. Whitney. Bill got a fancy, new backpack for Father's Day to carry Maddie in & wanted to try it out. We decided to do a "leisurely" hike, and tackle just the first 3 miles of the mountain...which ended at a lovely little "lake". The three miles was at an incline of 1500 feet, and we were feeling it by the time we made it to our destination. The summit to the mountaintop was another 8 miles! Our puny 6 miles roundtrip was more than enough for us. It was a very rewarding day! We were told when we arrived that there have been bear sightings almost every day, so we had to empty our car of everything that smelled (gum, baby wipes, lotion, food, etc) or they would tow our car!! While it would have been cool to see, we fortunately didn't encounter any bears. We'll definitely do this trip again!!

Trial Run

We're deciding rather late to give this whole blog thing a go. This is a trial post to even see if we know what the heck we're doing!