Grasp

Mackenna's newest thing is grasping, and holding onto things for a longer period of time. She is also controlling her muscles better, so yesterday I decideded to give her a rattle. I hold it out in front of her, and it's so funny to watch her slowly bring her hands together to hold it. Then she sucks the heck out of it!

I probably say it a hundred times a day, but SHE IS SO CUTE! I do it so much, Bridget will come up to her and say "Hi Backenna, you're so cute!" Love that too!

A few sizes too big...

While Josh was waiting in the Sacramento airport to come home, he found Sac State shirts on clearance. So he got matching shirts for he and Bridget. So far, for some reason Bridget hasn't wanted to wear it so he put it on Mackenna! This girl can make anything look cute!!

Date

After Josh being gone for 10 days between Washington D.C. and Chico, when he got home a date was definately in order!! We decided to leave Mackenna with the sitter so we wanted to do something fun, and out of the ordinary that we couldn't normally do with the girls! Josh came up with going shooting, and I was excited to go to a real gun range. Between living in California and Utah, we just always went shooting out in an open field!

I also shot the 9 mm hand gun for the first time which was fun, but really hard to shoot. I had more fun shooting his little rifle.

Unfortunately I didn't get any pics of Josh shooting, but him shooting a gun isn't such a rare event! We had lots of fun, and Mackenna did great so we will be able to have more dates in the future!

My daughters

Sometimes it's still crazy to say I have two kids... Lately Bridget has wanted me to take pictures of her with "Backenna" as she calls her. Here are some of the recent ones.

giving her a check up

Saturday Hike

Last Saturday we had some warm weather and we wanted to spend some quality time together as a family before Josh left for 10 days, so we decided to go on a little hike!

We went to Castlewood State Park, we had only been once before a year ago but we really liked the area. There are always lots of nice and friendly people there!

As we were walking on the trail, Josh had his phone out and a family was passing. The mom offered to take our picture, so sweet!

Bridget was definitly worn out! She slept the 40 minute car ride and another two hours at home!! We all had a great time!

New Years in Iowa

The Friday after Christmas we headed up to Iowa to visit my sister and her family. Her kids couldn't wait to see Mackenna and we love to visit them! Mackenna was living the good life and always being held by someone!

Even Lydia wanted in on the action of holding Mackenna! Anytime one of the kids would take her away, she wanted her right back! It was so funny!

This was Bridget after getting her dressed in all the millions of pieces of snow clothes. She reminded me of the kid on The Christmas Story-I don't even know what she was crying about!

All ready to go play in the snow with Mary Anne!

Bridget & Mary Anne were pals all weekend. They are a little over a year apart, and made the perfect sledding buddies!

Christmas morning

When Bridget came out to the living room Christmas morning, she was shocked and pretty confused to see the presents under the tree! Though she doesn't quite understand Christmas yet, she didn't care! All she knew was that she had presents to open, and jumped right into them!

Eating some of her Chritmas candy! Yes, this was before breakfast. But I really didn't want to tell her no, and she got to it before I could hide it!

Playing with her new doll from a friend, and cradle that Grandpa made and Grandma made the bedding

Playing with her new puzzles

Later in the morning, a family in our ward invited us over for brunch. We came home, and both the girls took nice LONG naps! That night we had some friends that don't live near family either, over for dinner. They each have a girl around Bridgets' age, so our house was VERY loud! But they all had a blast running around and playing with toys. It was a great evening, and I'm so glad we have good friends here to spend the holidays with! Cute one of Mackenna