Home for the Holidays

Ted has been very busy lately! It is officially Christmas time at the Downings! More to come soon...

So Much to be Thankful For...

We had a wonderful Thanksgiving holiday. I can already tell that all of our holidays are going to be so much more special with our sweet little one. Everything has so much more meaning.

Sally and I spent last week in Denton while Ted was in Vegas with work. We all had a great time! Ted had fun "working," and Sally and I enjoyed visiting family and friends in Dallas. We celebrated Thanksgiving with my family last Sunday and then we came home for a couple of days and headed to OKC on Wednesday to celebrate with Ted's family. It has been a wonderful couple of weeks!

Pictures are VERY out of order...


Thanksgiving 2009


Red-headed cousins...Parker, Allie and Sally.

Sally just loved her buddy Parker!

Grandmums and Grampa and all the grandkids

Jill, Jenni and Ted ready for church on Thanksgiving day.

Thanksgiving in Bolivar. It was so fun to spend time in the country.

Nana and PopPop and all their grandkids.


Sally and her cousins on the Huff side.


Rob and Sally. She loves her cooler, older cousins!


Random picture from last week. She looks so busy in this picture. Pay no attention to the messy room...she had been very busy playing that day!!!


Lauren Margaret and Allison came to play while they were visiting Tulsa. It was so great to see them and the girls had a great time playing!


Ted and Sally playing with Sadie (I thought I got her in the picture) at Andress and Patrick's. Sally loves dogs right now. She has this completely fake laugh that she does when she sees them. Hilarious!


We also got to see Piper and Taylor while we were in Dallas. It was so fun to see Piper and Sally together and catch up with Taylor. I love seeing how the girls are developing.


We also got to play at Ava and Kristen's house. Sally pulled Ava's hair so hard that Ava cried!! Oh my goodness, I felt so bad! Sally and I are working on showing her love for her friends in different ways! I also really enjoyed spending time with Kristen. I always feel so refreshed after spending time with her.


The girls showing each other how fun the diaper bag can be!


We got to have a wonderful dinner with Megan, Eric and Rob. Sally loved playing at their house.

True to the Aggies...

Well, the Aggies didn't show up against OU...but Sally still loves her team(s). I think things went downhill for the Aggies when Sally had to go to bed and take off her cheerleading outfit.

Girl on the Move

Once she figured out that she could crawl, it was on!!! She is all over the place now. For a couple of hours I thought I could just keep her in her room. Ha! Nice thought!



"Hey Daddy! Here I come!"

Working hard.

Must stop and rest...

"I made it!"

The girl of perpetual motion.


"Can I help you? I'm crawling here!"


On a side note, Copper has figured out what Sally is doing when she sits in her chair...


Sally loves it that her best buddy is visiting her.

Copper is trying so hard to see what she's eating without touching the high chair! Once Sally figures out that she can feed Copper we are in for it!

7 Months Old AND...

CRAWLING!!!

Sally is now 7 months old. This morning she started crawling!!! She has been doing the army crawl for a few days, but this morning she crawled across the floor twice! She crawled three or four steps to Ted and then she did it again to get my phone. She's not crawling everywhere yet, but she sure is on her way!! I did the best I could with pictures, but they don't do it justice-- I just love the determined look she gets on her sweet face.

A few specifics about our 7 month old princess:

- she has 2 teeth now! She got her 2 bottom teeth about 2 1/2 weeks ago. Teething brought some sleepless nights, but all-in-all, it wasn't so bad...we love teething tablets!

- she loves to eat! so far she's had: sweet potatoes, carrots, butternut squash, green beans, peas, applesauce, pears, prunes, bananas, and avocado. She loves rice cereal and oatmeal. She loves green beans now too!

- she loves puffs! My mom started giving them to her last week and now she's addicted! She is so good at getting them in her mouth. We had to buy some puffs and eat them as we went through Target the other day. I tried a little shopping trip a little too close to feeding time...but the puffs did the trick- she was happy as a clam!

- she copies a chewing motion and then cracks up laughing. (I'm working on getting this on video)

- my mom also taught her the "bad cough" game...Nana coughs and asks Sally if she has a bad cough and Sally answers her with a "cough." Hilarious!

- she's getting to be a much better sleeper...we've been doing some "sleep training" the last few nights and she is doing much much better. She still goes to bed very peacefully and she is making it until almost 4 am until she needs a snack. Progress, people, progress!

- she "sings" while her daddy plays the piano for her. Beauty and the Beast is her favorite song.

- she is quite the stinker during our playdates...she regularly takes toys from her friend, Andrew. It usually makes him pretty mad (understandable!!) so we nicely give it back to him and replace it with another toy...we're working on sharing!

-she's still a giggle box....one of my most favorite sounds in the world!

I can't believe that she is already 7 months old...and she is the absolute light of my life...I could never have imagined the blessing of this little princess.

Happy Halloween 2009

Sally was a lady bug for her first Halloween. Thanks Aunt Kim, we loved it!! Poor Sally, we had to miss the OU tailgate because she is still recovering from an ear infection. We had a great day though; Nana was here, we had a successful garage sale and we dressed Sally up and visited some neighbors before sending our little bug off to bed!


Love bug...

Copper was worried that there was a bug in her house!
"Mommy, I'm getting very sleepy, can we hurry up this Halloween thing?"
"Yay pumpkins!"
Our friend, Andrew, came down to take some Halloween pics! Wasn't he the most precious pea pod?!?!
Andrew looks worried on this one...makes me laugh every time..
Sally's Halloween dinner...orange everything!

Precious Punkin

We have been anticipating Halloween for weeks now!! This is from last Saturday when we started our Halloween week.
Our fabulous tree! The leaves are already gone!

Hmmm...can I eat these flowers? Thankfully she decided not to eat a flower, but she did manage to eat a leaf.

Our precious punkin!

"You talkin' to me?"


Ted had gotten Sally up and dressed for the day and they were starting to have breakfast when I got up... Daddy took such good care of our girl when I was sick last weekend! (Not that he doesn't always take good care of our girl!)