Are you ready for this...

Here's another long blog, if you are reading this, you must really love us!!! So we are finally recovered from the very full Christmas we enjoyed. Lots of family, lots of fun, and lots of Maddy!

My parents hobby now is photography, they are really good. I think I took about 5 pics this Christmas. They literally gave my hundreds of pictures, so the ones in the blog are some of my favs. One day I took my parents to a little "museum" that had a photo exhibit. We were the only people there, Maddy loved running the empty halls. On the way out of the museum, my dad got this shot. I think it's cool.

Most of the time we spent having dinner at each others homes, while my parents and Zach and Tay had to get in their Maddy fix. She loved having so much family. She was exhausted every night after all the excitment!

Of course she did have to make time for Dora!

Lola even got her own photo shoot.

We did have some snow and boy did it get cold! On a warmer day we went out for some fun in the snow.

Christmas Eve we enjoyed our Zmoos Christmas traditions of opening one present and having dinner with the Garbetts. Vicky made her famous beenie weenies... Maddy is a fan.

Christmas day came and Maddy started strong, but quickly faded. She wouldn't open any gifts, but when we opened them and showed them to her... she perked up. She's soooo spoiled, she's just too cute. I really think she had a mental break down. Out of now where she would just start crying. Not a tantrum, or screaming. Just sitting there whimpering with big tears streaming down her face. She did that a couple times over 2 days. She has since recovered, thank goodness, I was feeling like a really bad parent.

Thinking that my parents would get some totally awesome pics, I took them to the Brucemore Mansion. It is an amazing house on 26 acres, the people that lived there owned 3 lions and the kids rollerskated around the house. Too bad photography in the house was prohibited.

Not only did we celebrate Christmas and New Years (which I actually stayed up for), we also celebrated Zach's and Mike's birthdays.

Before my family and the boys left, the manly men took the opportunity to go hunting. They came back with all body parts... so I'm pleased with the outcome.

So, there you go, a very full 2 weeks. We loved having our family here, thank you to everyone.

Now Videos Galore...

It seems every day Maddy's doing hilarious and cute things. Here are some moments, including Christmas.

Here she is Christmas morning seeing her baby station for the first time, I think it was a hit.

A little later she saw her other gift, a Dora doll house. She LOVES it, of course, she loves Dora!

We then went to Grandma Zmoos' house where Maddy got her first bike.

On a "warmer" day, we took Maddy outside to enjoy the snow. She saw and tasted her first icicle...

We then ventured to a snow hill in our yard for "sledding" it was totally lame, but Maddy had a good reaction.

Maddy really loves music and any shows that have music (like Dora). This video shows how focused she really gets.

So 18 months have come and gone. The days are flying by, Maddy is growing bigger and bigger by the second. Eth always says that she looks bigger every day when he comes home from work. As far as new developments go...

We had a photo shoot for this years ornament pic, here's a couple that were hilarious, but not ornament worthy!!


Maddy has gotten sick acouple times, and had a really runny nose. I was getting so grossed out pulling boogers out of her hair, or pulling her hair off of her face, I got her hair cut. The place was great, the played a video for Maddy, gave her a balloon, candy, and a certificate. She did pretty well, she just kept trying to see what the lady cutting her hair was doing. What's funny is they take a pic for you, as seen below, but they take it with an original polaroid camera, that's why it looks like a pic from they 70's, because that is film from the 70's! HA HA!!

As seen in my previous post we enjoyed Thanksgiving. Sadly, we didn't have any left overs, so Eth had to indulge in another Turkey leg the next day and graciously shared it with Maddy. As you can see she enjoyed it and kept coming back for more!!!

Also, Maddy has become obsessed with Dora... Thanks Eth!!! She wakes up saying Dora, backpack, and Map. So we had to bribe her with Dora to clip her nails!

It has been cold, to say the least, so Maddy has enjoyed the snow while I shoveled and on the days its been too cold, we went to the mall to enjoy the "toys" there. She was in awe of the snow. She just would say, wow, snow, and stomp!!!




We are so excited for Christmas, Maddy's got some pretty sweet toys we are really excited to give her. Plus, my parents are coming to town!! We can't wait.

Merry Christmas Every One!!!!

Happy Thanksgiving

We had a wonderful gut busting Thanksgiving with Eth's family. It was delicious and fun. Maddy had lots of fun helping us "cook." And while she didn't eat much of the Thanksgiving dinner, we ate while she napped, she really enjoyed grandpa spoiling her with icecream!!!

Rae Gun Ramblings

Rae Gun Ramblings

Has the cutest little christmas skirts for girls!!! Check it out, she even doing a give away!!! SWEET!!!

Rae Gun Ramblings: Advent Giveaway Extravaganza Day 3: Guest Giveaway Noggins

So Rachel posted on her blog about this give away, so now I need to post it. There are some totally cute hats... check it out!

Rae Gun Ramblings: Advent Giveaway Extravaganza Day 3: Guest Giveaway Noggins

More Videos

So here are a few more videos... gotta keep grandma happy!!!

So Maddy loves her shape sorter, she loves her shapes. She points them out everywhere and asks me to draw them for her all the time. Crazy kid!!!

So not only can Maddy do shapes, count to 10, and say the alphabet... she can also make the sounds of the letters in the alphabet. I have other videos of her doing it perfectly, but as you watch this video you'll see why Eth wanted me to post this one. Maybe Maddy should be teaching me!!!

I love this one, this is from carving pumpkins! She was really excited at first, but when she touched the gooey innards she wasn't to into it anymore! Another Ethan trait, she doesn't like dirty hands. She say yucky and then scrub, scrub; meaning wash my hands!!!

Lastly Maddy loves music and singing. She dances, conducts, and is starting to "sing" or chime in on songs. Here she is with Ethan, doing one of her favorites.

Randomness

So time has flown by and Maddy is now a year and a half. Can you believe it!? Man how time flies. She is just so wonderful, we love it! Here is some of what has been going on in the last couple months...

Well Maddy made her first "purchase." She kept climbing on her chairs on the deck, which are not sturdy and tip easy and was freaking me out. So using the money from her piggy jar, she got a chair. She can climb on it all day long!

Maddy is also now getting into stuffed animals. She carries around her cat everywhere and needs it to sleep. While at Target we found, what I thought a big teddy bear. Of course later that week when we went to Sams we found something just a little bigger.

For a while Maddy was saying Pee Pee and Poop and would say potty... so thinking my child is a genious, got her a potty and potty books. For three days she used the potty, then she was done. She still sits on the potty and we read, but she does it for fun, not for functionality!

Besides having a week of cold, rainy weather it has been beautiful here! Today was in the 60's, in November!!!! So we've been enjoying the weather by going to the park. She loves running around, goes down the slide on her own, and is even doing the stairs on her own using the handrails! Here are some of my fav pics... The first one is her yelling "Quack Quack" at the ducks. Everyone was watching and laughing.

Here she is up in a tree. Not only does Maddy look like Ethan, she has inherited some of his quirks...

Last time we were at the park she picked up a stick and started swinging it like a lightsaber and saying schoowa (lightsaber noise). Ethan was so proud! She is definately her fathers daughter!!!

Visitors

So way back in September; Dave, Dianna, and Lucy came for a visit. It was great!!! Maddy LOVED Lucy. She stills says her name and shows me pics of her. We did some great Iowan activities... farmers market, Amana Colonies, Pork Tenderloins, Iowa Popcorn, and Nauvoo. Sadly we didn't have time to go into the Temple, but we did do some of the touristy stuff. By the end we were all tired. It was great. Thanks Dianna, Dave, and Little Lucy for making it all the way out here!!! These are some of the best pics from Nauvoo.

Oh and for funzies... Here's a rockin' rock band session we had. Maddy enjoyed the drums... every time she sees them she gets excited and says tap, tap.

Halloween

In the build up to Halloween we carved pumpkins. At first Maddy was into it... but once she saw the sticky guts she was done!! You can see the look on her face, ha ha. There's also a video, I'm working on getting that one posted.

Fortunately Eth's parents came and distracted Maddy so we could finish. My pumpkin is the monster, Eth's is the Mummy. Turned out pretty good!!!

A few days later we had the ward trunk or treat. The games were a little to hard for Maddy, so she got a lolli and her face painted. She LOVES lollipops now. She can even say lollipop and sucker. She met up with her friend Alexa, she was a very scary lady bug!!! I love the first pic...classic

On Halloween Maddy was the cutest giraffe ever! She did fairly well trick or treating. She held her bucket and walked most of the time. But really the liked just looking up at the sky and shouting "Moon! Stars!"

She pulled a nice haul, which we ended up giving away since we had a TON of trick or treaters this year. We did however keep all the lollipops!

Hello, just a quick video update. Here are some things we've been up to... reading, playing pony rides, etc. I'll update again soon with pics and stories. Hope this holds you over till then.