Funny Little Girl

So for this story, you need a couple points of reference.  First of all, we talk about the hospital sometimes with Sophie, just how we will go there to have baby Molly and people also go there when they're sick.  Secondly, you need to know that my doctor is Dr. Parker and Sophie has been with us to see him a couple of times during this pregnancy.

Okay, so now for the funny thing she said today.  Sophie hit her head when she got in the car today, she then proceeded to tell us that she needed to go to the hospital and that Dr. Parker would make her feel better.  Haha, it was so funny, well at least we thought it was!!!

Christmas Time is Here

We have been trying to come up fun things to do, in the evenings especially, with Sophie.  The night we decorated our Christmas tree, Travis wanted us to dress up in our Christmas best, ha!

Then one day, Sophie made some Christmas crafts.  She had a lot of fun with these.

Another night, Sophie wanted to dress up as a princess, so Travis dressed up as her prince and they had a dance in the living room.  Our girls are lucky to have such a great daddy!

We've made gingerbread houses a couple of times.

We went to our Christmas parade, it was only 17 degrees, but we had fun!

Sophie and Travis dressed up as super heros another night.

We've had a lot of fun.  Some nights we make hot chocolate or apple cider and watch a Christmas movie.  Other nights we go riding around town to look at Christmas lights.  This has to be one of Sophie's favorite activities.  She always says, "look mama," or "oh goodness."  It's cute!

This is Sophie after church on Sunday.

Snow Day

We had so much fun playing in the snow today.  We weren't able to build a snowman today, the snow was just too powdery, but we had fun anyways! 

We even made snow cream!

Thursday's Beautiful Sunset

On Tuesday night, we helped Travis with something for youth group, Sophie was excited to paint.

Today, I took Sophie to the library for story hour and she got to make a turkey "hat."  She had to best time there today and did so well participating. 

Homemade Christmas Ornaments

I'm excited to try some of these homemade Christmas ornaments.  I like this one and a lot more on the Martha Stewart website:  http://www.marthastewart.com

23 weeks

I will be 23 weeks pregnant tomorrow.  Little Molly Lin will be here before we know it!  Sophie talks of her little sister often and is so excited.  She already asks if she can take a bubble bath with her, it's so cute!

Cold Day Fun

A while back, our friend Lori gave Sophie this felt activity book and I pulled it out for the first time today.  Sophie absolutely loved playing with it and creating different animals and faces.  

I also let her draw with markers and have stickers.  We had a lot of fun!

Travis' Ordination

Last night Travis was ordained in our denomination after completing 3 years of Master's work.  I am so proud of him and his accomplishments and so thankful that God has allowed him this opportunity.  We are so blessed here in Gillette with such an amazing church family and we are so thankful for those who came out last night to show their support for Travis.

Time Change and Christmas Trees

One may ask what these two things have in common, time change and Christmas trees, well they have a lot in common if you have a two year old who wasn't made aware of said time change and still got up at what would be a reasonable time if it was before we fell back an hour!  With all that said, Sunday and Monday Sophie woke up early, for her, so we had a lot more time in the morning than usual to do things.  We filled our morning with reading, playing, snacks and a little TV and by that time, it was only around 10.  So I might be crazy, but I decided to let Sophie put up her Christmas tree to have something fun to do.  She has been talking about it since right after Halloween, so I put on some Christmas music and we had the best time decorating.  Now I cannot wait to do the rest of the house.  She loves her tree and had such a great time decorating it.  On a side note, I let Sophie stay up later last night and I am happy to report, she got up at a more normal time for her this morning!

That's a 4 foot tree people, notice how tall our child is!!! 

The finished product, Sophie loves to see it all lit up.

Halloween

We had such a fun time this year at Halloween, Sophie is at such a fun age.  Sophie liked carving pumpkins, but when I first put a knife in her pumpkin she freaked out!  After she realized what we were going to do, put a happy face on it, she was fine and even helped clean out the pumpkin for baby Molly.

Our finished products.

Sophie was so excited to go trick or treating.  We attended the trunk or treat our church put on.  Travis participated in this, so Sophie and I went there first.  After she made one round, she wanted to go again!  We stayed for a while to hang out with daddy and then I took Sophie to a few houses of people from our church until Travis was done.  When Travis was done, we headed over to another churches trunk or treat.  Sophie loved trick or treating so much that she asked the next morning if she could go trick or treating again that day!

Story Hour

Today I started taking Sophie back to the library for story hour since it is getting cooler out.  They had firefighters there for a special guest, but they freaked Sophie out and we had to go look at books and movies during that time.  After they left she was much better, but she kept saying, "I was scared of the firefighters."  At the end, she got to make a firemen's hat and we ended up having a good time at story hour.

Trick or Treat

We were just going to dress Sophie up as a cheerleader this year for Halloween, since she already has a cheerleading outfit, but she kept saying she wanted to be a princess.  I went online to look for costumes/ideas and decided to make a costume for her since costumes can get pretty pricey.

 Below is a costume that I used for inspiration when creating Sophie's.  I found it on the Family Fun website.

Below is a picture of Sophie in my creation of a princess costume.  She loves it and it was so cute to see her dancing around in it!  She was ready to go trick-or-treating tonight!

Baby Girl #2

We cannot believe we have been blessed with another healthy baby girl!  She'll be here before we know it too.  We are all so excited and Sophie is going to be such a great big sister.  Two girls, we can't believe it!  

Spearfish Canyon

Last Thursday we left Gillette and headed for the Black Hills of South Dakota to stay in a cabin in Spearfish Canyon.  We had so much fun together.  We took Sophie to a couple of the waterfalls in the canyon and she absolutely loved them.  She wanted to see more waterfalls!  The leaves were beautiful and definitely got you in the mood for Fall.

The reason we decided to take this little mini vacation was to go to Spearfish to see our good friend Scott Simmons as he was in town for a Wesleyan Youth Convention.  It was so great to see him and catch up.  Sophie instantly became attached and keeps wanting to know where Scott is and what he's doing.

Here are a few pictures from our trip.

growing, growing...

Sophie has grown so much over the summer and everyone always talks about how much she's grown since the last time they saw her, so I finally decided to measure her.  She has grown over 2 and half inches since May!  She is now a little over 38.5 inches tall.  We are going to have one very tall girlie on our hands, better work on her ball handling skills, she's not going to get stuck in the post position just because she's tall, haha!  :)

Something that I forgot to post last time is that Sophie is now using the potty!!  I had been trying to convince her for a while, but she wasn't having it, so I just decided to pray that she would have the desire to even do it and one day she said she needed to go and the rest is history!  I'm glad God cares for the little things in life too!  I'm also glad I'll have a small break from changing diapers!

On that note, I'll be 17 weeks pregnant this week and on October 6 we get to find out if we are having a boy or a girl.  We're all so excited and can't wait to see what the baby is!

Where Did Summer Go?

Ok, so I know I haven't posted since June 25th, but we have been so busy and some new and exciting things are happening in the Shannon household.  Let's just get you up to speed...

Travis and Sophie dressed up for church on July 3rd.

At the 4th of July parade downtown.  Sophie loved it!

Sophie and her buddy Cameron on the 4th.

This Summer we made a lot of trips to our city pool.  We had a lot of fun.  This time, daddy even got to join us!

Sophie in our camper at youth camp.

Playing in the pool at camp.

In July, my sister Vanessa, her husband Chad and their little girl Shelby came to visit.  We went to Yellowstone...

...over the Beartooth Pass...

...the National High School Rodeo...

...the Rec center...

...Bear Country USA...

...and Mount Rushmore!  We kept them busy :)

At the beginning of August we took Sophie to the county fair.  She got to ride the carousel...

...and the Ferris Wheel.  She had a blast!

At the end of June we found out that Sophie is going to be a big sister, we kept it a secret until recently and baby number 2 due March 9th!!!  Sophie is excited about being a big sister.

At the end of August and the beginning of September we got to finally take a mini vacation down to Colorado, just the three of us.  

We took Sophie down to the Denver Aquarium.  She really liked all the fish, but her favorite thing there was the TIGER!!

This past weekend, we put a tent up in the basement for Sophie to play in, she loves it and says she wants to go camping in the Big Horns.

So what have you been up to?