The White Family: November 2010

Saturday, November 27, 2010

Thanksgiving... We are so thankful!

This year we traveled to West Virginia for Thanksgiving! We were blessed with the great company of family, and Avery got to meet several family members for the very first time.

Avery got to meet her great-grandfather, who we call "Great-Papa" and his wife Dolores. They gave her an amazing gift - a totally huggable teddy bear - and quickly won her over.

Everyone soon learned that it isn't entirely difficult to win Avery over, especially if you pass along anything sweet such as zucchini bread, blueberry breakfast bread, cookies, pie, sweet potato casserole, cranberry gelatin, etc. She makes fast friends by mooching... more on this later.

Thanks to our lovely hosts:

So much fun spending time with family:

We all participated in the annual family cornhole tourney, which Martin and Aunt Susan won. (Avery and Parker were very cute little distractions, but we had to keep moving them out of the way to continue the games.):

YUM... time for food!

The guys man up to feed the kiddos their Turkey Day meal:

Avery decided it was more fun to eat off everyone else's plates (see, what did I tell you - MOOTCH!):

Meg had to clean TWO dishes... yes, just two whole dishes... doesn't she look thrilled?:

The cousins (Parker was sick, and Erin exhausted, yet we forced them to be in the cousins photo - nice, huh?):

By the time I got a picture of Avery and her Great-Papa, she was "over it" but nonetheless:

Great-Papa and Parker:

Couple of my faves from the weekend:

Thanks be to God for blessing us with the gift of a warm, loving family!

Thursday, November 11, 2010

I love you... Avery is 17 months old!

OK, so it may not be perfectly clear with the syllables all lined up right, but Avery is saying "I love you" now in a very apparent way. She repeats everything we say and follows us around watching carefully and learning. (Which can be scary to think about at times!)

She is doing wonderfully eating with her fork and spoon and we have started her using the big girl sippy cups. She will move to the big girl table with the other kids at school over the next month or so.

Avery has resorted to forward-only progress down the stairs. She gets very frustrated if you try and make her go down on her belly backwards, and despite our fears in her falling forward she has gotten really stealth at going down by scooting herself forward on her tooshie. She stops to look out the window every time she goes down the stairs. Her greatest hope is to catch one of the neighbors walking their dog, to which she proclaims "doggie, ruff, ruff, ruff!"

Avery has been very busy picking out her Christmas gifts. She LOVES looking at all of the Christmas catalogs that come this time of year...

"OMG - the latest Target catalog... let's check it out!":

"Oh Daddy, I'm really in love with this super-hero toy":

"I'm a sucker for a deal":

"I think I'll take one of each, please":

Our gal gets more opinionated every day, and is getting more and more verbal. She is learning to "jump" and "run." We are working on eating more meats and veggies as she's become a bit of a carbo-holic. I guess if that's our only complaint, well than we really can't complain at all!

Monday, November 8, 2010

Tweet! Tweet! Coming soon... Baby Magnarini!

Is it possible to feel more impatient to find out the gender of your friend's baby than you were to know the gender of your own? Yes. I have been making guesses on the unidentified baby inside my friend Alyssa's belly for months now, feeling quite sure every-other-week that it's a boy... I mean girl... I mean... well, we will find out soon!

On October 30th, we threw Alyssa a baby shower to celebrate Baby Magnarini. We had a great group of ladies gather at the Duke Mansion to share stories, blessings and gifts with the sweet mama-to-be.