Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving everyone! We're still being lazy and digesting the yummy food from yesterday's holiday! We have so much to be thankful for this year:

...Our wonderful little boy, Landon. He has truly been a blessing to us this year! We can't imagine life any other way now.

...Our new house. We are so blessed to have moved into our gorgeous new house this year. What an unexpected surprise for us and we enjoy it every day!

...Our super supportive family. We have been blessed with huge amounts of help from our family throughout this year. From living with Darren's Dad and Deanna for the month of August, to Darren's Mom watching Landon for us the month of May, to the whole Hegle family helping out with the big move! We can't tell everyone enough how much their love and support means to us!

...Our friends, both near and far. We cherish the times we are able to spend with our friends, even more so now that we see them few and far between!

Enough of the sappy stuff! So, yesterday at Lorie and Tim's we decided to take a few family pics outside by the pond. I must say that Ashley is a much better photographer than the ones we had a JCPenney lately! Here's the one we chose for our Christmas card:

Another 5 generation picture! Landon is much bigger this time around. We are so thankful to have so many Grandparents in our lives!
Here's to another great Thanksgiving! Looking forward to Christmas and all the craziness in the weeks ahead!

Just Call Him "Fang!"

We just have to laugh at how funny Landon's newest tooth looks! He's got two on the bottom, which he's had for about three months now, but he's got a new one on top that came through a few weeks ago! It's not one of the middle two, which is kind of odd! Dr. Fandel says it's very common. He looks like a little vampire! We're hoping for some new ones to pop through soon.

9 Months of Joy!!!

Landon turned 9 months old this past week, and it's still hard for us to come to grips with the fact that our little man is growing up! We went to see Dr. Fandel last Wednesday and here's what we found out:
Weight 21# 10 oz. 69th %
Height 29 3/4 in. 91st %
Head 47 3/4 cm 97th %
So, basically we have a really tall kid with a big head. Dr. Fandel told us not to worry about his drop in weight percentile. She said it's very common once they start moving around!
Boy has he started moving around a lot! His army crawl has evolved from a sort of side to side flopping motion to a full on army crawl over the past two weeks. He will get up on his hands and knees but hasn't figured out how to make that work quite yet. Landon also loves to pull himself up on anything he can find, especially people. I'm so glad that he hasn't figured out how to do that in the crib yet! We are really enjoying seeing Landon's personality develop...he's quite the funny guy! He loves to play "I'm gonna get you!" with Daddy. He screams with excitement when Daddy starts to come towards him. He just learned how to clap his hands on his own and loves to play patty cake with his feet! We just can't put into words how much we love our Little Landon Barry!

Skol Vikings!

Last Sunday we celebrated another Vikes victory with some of Darren's Hamline Law School buddies! Landon was a good boy, sporting his Adrian Peterson jersey!

Happy Halloween!

We had a wonderful time celebrating Landon's first Halloween! On Friday night I took Landon trick-or-treating around to the Annandale businesses with Jess, Chad, Lilly, Loren, Ashley, and Jackson. Landon seemed to think he was really a monkey and tried to hang upside down the whole time we walked Main Street! My arm was so sore afterwards! Notice him in the picture...

Jackson the Lion, Lilly the Pumpkin, and Landon the Monkey!

Landon's First Halloween!

Carving pumpkins. Landon dug his hands in a few times, but lost interest right away. All he wanted to do was chew on the top of the pumpkin.


Carving his first pumpkin

Landon and Daddy heading out trick-or-treating!

The Grossman's stopped by for a treat. so here's Grady the Dinosaur, Landon the Monkey, and Quinn aka Bugs Bunny

Landon and Mommy

Our pumpkins! The monster one on the right is Darren's very first pumpkin he's ever carved...pretty impressive!

Landon and Daddy sitting on the front step waiting for trick-or-treaters.

We had 128 kids stop by!

Our 8 Month Old Little Big Man!

We just can't believe that Landon is 8 months old already! This has been the fastest 8 months of our lives! We have been so busy with our new house and me going back to work that we feel like we've missed the last month of Landon's life! He has two teeth, rolling and scooting everywhere, and so much fun! He loves to laugh, talk, and play with everything in sight. He's so curious and interested in everything he can get his hands on. His next dr appt isn't until next month, so I am excited for that to see what his growth has been. Out of curiousity sake I stepped on the scale with him today and it looks like he is about 22 lbs!!! That's the average size of a 12 month old, according to my books. (Grandma Rita tells me to throw all those books out the window...she gets so annoyed by them.) He loves daycare and the kids that go there and especially Jenny, his daycare provider. That makes me feel so much better knowing that he loves her and is happy there. Landon and I go to an ECFE class every Tuesday night at Discovery Elementary and we have met some very fun and nice families there as well. We look forward to seeing Peyton, Owen and Eli every week! We have just been keeping busy, trying to stay healthy, and enjoying each and every day that we are blessed with our little man!

Our new house...some of it anyway!

So I finally have some pics of the new house to share! We're not quite done getting everything unpacked and put in place, but we're making progress. I keep telling everyone that I lost that initial motivation and excitement once school started, so it has been slow going ever since!
So, here's a start...

This is our family room. This was a bright yellow color, but we went with a safe beige color and we really like it.

Landon's "toy room" which is just part of the family room. We'd like to get some shelving to put there to organize the toy mess! You can see the kitchen through the railing at the top. I love that I can see down into the family room from the kitchen...one of the selling points for me!

Another view from the family room looking towards the kitchen level. The doorway goes down to one more level that is yet to be finished. Someday maybe another bedroom and a rec room. For now, LOTS of storage!

Spare bedroom. The bright yellow has GOT to go. That's my project for over MEA break...get that room painted. You practically need sunglasses to go in there right now!

Master bedroom. We have a walk-in closet and our own bathroom attached.



Landon's room. Same color blue as was in his room in the old place, but you can actually see wall space now! Amazing.

Landon's bathroom. Monkeys! Our nickname for him is our little monkey, so thus the monkey bathroom. Needs to be painted...add that on to my list of to-do's.

Kitchen. We painted the red and I love how it turned out.

Informal dining room that attaches to the kitchen. We have a deck off that door and goes down to the yard where the patio comes off the family room. We have a formal dining room, but no table yet.

Bathroom #3- by the family room. Also needs to be painted.

Our office...still getting used to the color! It's a little bright for my taste.

Laundry room, which looked huge until we got our new washer and dryer delivered. Now it looks tiny!

So, sometime soon I will post pics of the rest of the house...our bathroom, bathroom #4, living room, dining room, basement, etc. Just a warning...it could be awhile! A LONG while!