Riley is 18 months old!

 Where has the time gone??  It seems like just yesterday I was bringing my plump newborn home from the hospital.  She turned 18 months old on January 17.  Riley is such a fun little baby.  She has started taking off with her vocabulary.  She learns about 10 new words every day it seems.  I love it.  She loves to play with babies, she loves to play the piano, and she loves having friends over.  She especially loves it when her cousin William comes over, although now she is realizing that she has to share things when people come over...so we will see how that goes.  She is learning how to throw some good tantrums and she loves to wake up around 5:30 every day.  We leave her in her bad until 6 most of the time, but she just whines and cries until we come get her.  Any suggestions on how to get her to sleep longer? 

 This is Riley on New Year's Eve...with marshmallow in her hair.  She has perfected the scowl. 

 She loves to be right where we are.  "helping"

 This is one of my favorite things she does right now.  She likes to play with her babies behind her curtain.  She will put them down for "night night" and I just showed her our pretend baby diapers.  She loves them.

 She loves to play on people's phones.  Of course.

 This was on her very first day of nursery.  She did well.  She seems to like it. 

Playing with her babies.

 I pulled out my jingle skirt the other day and Riley loved it.  It was nice because I could always hear exactly where she was in the house.  :)

Grocery Shopping

 Grocery shopping is one of the hardest things for me.  I guess the actual task isn't that hard, it is the getting myself to go that is hard for me.  I usually wait until I have hardly anything left that I force myself to go.  Once I get to the store, especially if I am by myself, it is fine.  And with the kids isn't too bad either.  I usually go while Zac is at school so I only have 2 kids with me.  And the store I go to now has a little basket of fruit for kids to eat while their parents shop.  It's awesome.  A little clementine will keep my kids busy until I'm almost done.

Well, one day over Christmas break I was watching two of my neighbor's kids for the whole day.  They started asking for snacks around 8am and I came to realize I didn't have anything.  No fresh fruit, no crackers, no bread, no milk, no cereal.  So I decided that before lunch I had better run to the store and get some essentials. I was worried that having 6 kids with me would be crazy, but it actually turned out great.  The older kids helped me out a ton, and the younger kids squished together in the car cart.  

 This is on the way to the car.  We were all still happy!  

And the other day we were at costco and I looked back to see this:

I fell in love with my family at that moment.  I mean...look at that handsome guy pushing that cart of beautiful children.  And they are all mine.  :)

Family Home Evening

Here is just a very small glimpse into what goes on in our home during family home evening.

Riley likes to stand here in this spot.  We are not sure why.  I think it is because one time during our "program" (a part of family home evening where everyone gets a turn to show off a talent or anything they want.  Most of the time it is just running down the hall and then running back or spinning in circles.) we all clapped for her when she stood there.  Now she stands there a lot but only during family home evening.  ha ha.

Here are a couple of videos. 

 I actually think that this one is after family home evening was over, but it was just so cute.  

 This is Emery's program.  She always runs down the hall or to the front room and back.  Riley always follows her and there is almost always a near collision in that same spot every time.  ha ha. 

Babies in a bathtub.

 One day when William was over, I found these two enjoying themselves in the bathtub drinking some milk.  Because whenever William has milk, Riley thinks she needs milk.  Ha ha.  They played in there for a good 20 minutes. 

Such Cuties!

New Years Eve

 This year for New Year's Eve, we invited everyone to our place for a yummy fondue dinner and dessert.  We found a yummy recipe for cheese fondue and Crys and I got that put together with some chicken sausages, some beef, vegetables, sauteed mushrooms, and bread.  Lots of bread.  It was delicious!  Thanks to Crys for letting us all use her brand new fondue pot. We were sad that Alan was feeling sick that night and couldn't join us. 

 This is the only picture I got during dinner.  It was so good.  It was fun to have Taylor's sisters there with us too.  :)

Then we cleaned out the fondue pot to start the chocolate and got all the dippers ready.  Strawberries, marshmallows, raspberries, pretzels, bananas.  I'm sure there were more, but I can't think of them.  And then...this happened:

 Whoops.  The kids were SO ready for chocolate so we just scooped some off the top of that pile for them (I know...we are bad) and we had to send Luke and Rob to get more chocolate chips at the store so we could make another batch for the adults.  It was so worth the wait.  It was yummy.  My favorite that night were the bananas. YUM!

 This is just a random picture that I thought was funny of Riley.  I don't even know what she is doing. 

Then a few days later, the kids wanted to sleep in a tent in the living room.  Rob did an excellent job building a tent using the kitchen table, some chairs, and a basket tower thing from our room.  The kids had a blast and we watched the movie home before going to sleep.  I really enjoyed the movie and so did Rob.  The kids did too.  :)

Riley the scavenger

If anything is ever left on the table after lunch or breakfast, Riley is quick to explore.  Here she quietly found a mug of hot chocolate and started sipping it while I was doing dishes.  She was just so cute I had to run and get the camera.