Ice fishing

Uncle Andy took the kids ice fishing on his new pond that he stocked this past summer, here they are scooping their holes out, ............... we were out for about an hour and didn't catch one fish....... i hope they are still alive.

Andy, Claire and Andrea
They all decided they had enough fishing and decided to go body skating
or just lay on the ice
slide down the bank of snow onto the water on top of the ice....... they were soo wet when they were finally done

Vacation in Florida!

Here come the Rupp's.  We had a little bit of a rough start to our vacation last Tuesday, we were supposed to fly out of Chicago at 11:00am however, we missed that flight due to a 4 hour drive to Midway, yuck!  All in all we finally made it to Mimi's at about 10:30pm the trip could have been so much worse but the pnuts were wonderful.  So here is JD enjoying some much deserved ice cream.

Ella all content with her straw.

Every morning JD would crawl in bed with Mimi for some "nuggle time" (snuggle time)

they played cards.......

they made music and read books....

Thursday morning we took a trip to "Jungle Gardens"  I had my phone call from work to let me know that my position was retained and what a relief that was.

Here is dad and Bean getting ready, she didn't keep her glasses on to long.

Here we are and JD held his first bird, he was sooo brave and even held it twice.

he wasn't quite as brave here, Mimi had to protect him....

he was fine as long as someone was rite beside him, the flamingo's were rather friendly as long as you were feeding them however, not so keen on the idea of you petting them.

Rick, JD and Mimi doing the FL ....... flamingo:)

giant treehouse
JD and the gators

On our last day, LouAnn's friends invited us over to enjoy the beach and pool on Longboat Key, it was a beautiful day for the beach.

Rick and Maynard...... and JD
LouAnn and Carolyn
Surprise!!!!!!! Liz made the long drive down to spend a few nights with us, it was soo much fun.  We don't always get to spend much time together but whenever we do, it's easy to catch up and I always feel like there hadn't been a lapse in time at all.  Thanks again for making the trip, love yah
Okay, so our little Miss Bean did not enjoy the sand on her feet, so she spent her time on our laps or in the stroller snoozin, maybe next year.

it was great watching JD and Rick have so much fun at the beach

they had a great time looking at all of the seashells

Mimi and Bean
Ella is almost 9 months here so I thought I would try to get some shots, she was sooooo full of smiles.
doesn't this one just make you laugh :)

Ella's 8 1/2 month's

Here is the mont of milestones, lots has happened in the last couple of weeks, so here goes........ Miss Bean turned 8 months of the 2nd of January and started to crawl and within and week I was quickly turning my head and saying, "where is Ella?", then just a week later she started to say daddadaddada, too sweet and you know of course who loves that.  Not that the crawling and saying daddada was enough she had to go and start pulling herself up to things.   Then just this week she started to say mamamamama which makes me soooo happy.  We feel so blessed that she is growing and progressing, but I have to admit that it is a little bittersweet, it all seems to be happening so quickly, and I know its just a matter of time before I blink and she'll be 2.

Oh no, I'm in jail....


She loves JD's toys, and of course he just often seems to want to play with the one toy that she seems to be playing with, I'm sure this is just the beginning of them sharing so well. (Ha Ha)

a couple of JD funnies!

So, I'm walking out of Ella's bedroom and Ella had just woke up from her morning nap and Jd was eating lunch, as I'm walking out with Ella, JD looks at Ella and says, "Bean, are you eyeballing me?"

Rick just told me just the other night that I was talking on the phone and Rick was in the office and JD walks in and says to Rick, "Big shocker daddy, mommy's on the phone again"

This just reminds me everyday to choose my words wisely because he might not repeat them today or tomorrow, but it will come back in a couple of weeks or a month.

Sledding!

We've had so much fun sledding this year, Rick made a bank at the bottom of the hill and Rick can put him on the sled and push him down the hill and he'll spin around and he loves it.  Then  Rick gets a workout pulling him back up the hill.

Here we had went down to the golf course and JD was afraid at first so Rick and I used his sled for a while until he was forced to go down with me and then of course he loved going down the hill, but somehow he wasn't fond of the walk back up the hill.