Six Months Old!

This cute little girl turned six months on May 21st! Wow, I can't believe it! Pretty soon she'll be one years old. Time has gone by so fast, just like everyone tells you:) Madison is showing her personality more and more everyday. As you can see from these pictures she looked really excited in the beginning and then let me know when it was time for a nap. "No more pictures mom!" as she hid her face in the blanket:) She is doing a great job sitting up and she loves, loves, loves, eating food. The whole time she eats her baby food and rice cereal she says mmm, mmm, mmm, and always has her mouth open ready for the next bite. She has become quite social and loves to scream these cute girly screams, especially for dad. She loves to laugh and is learning how to make new noises everyday. We are having so much fun watching her grow!

Who is Anthony Wayne?

When Jake's parents were here visiting in Toledo, his dad kept asking us if we knew who Anthony Wayne was. The Anthony Wayne Trail is a nice express way a few blocks from our house that we use almost everyday. I never really knew who Anthony Wayne was until we visited the Fallen Timbers Monument here in Toledo. Apparently the Fallen Timbers Monument metro park is a very significant battle ground in the history of the Revolutionary war. It took place back in 1794 and is called the "last battle of the American Revolution". "Mad" Anthony Wayne, as they call him, was the general in command of the legion. The battle took place among the trees just north of the Maumee river. Here is the link for those historians who would love to read more http://www.fallentimbersbattlefield.com/. It was a fun family outing! There were some really pretty trails and Jake had fun taking pictures of all the wildlife. It is still so weird to me how many deer there are in the middle of Ohio's metro parks! I guess living in Utah you are used to the deer being in the mountains.
We especially had fun going on this bridge that runs across the Anthony Wayne Trail. The evening ended with a beautiful sunset behind the newly constructed Fallen Timbers Mall. The sunset luckily is brighter than the glowing letters of the Dillards store sign.

I Love Our Zoo!

The Zoo is just a ten minute walk from our house. Madison and I often visit there on our afternoon walks. It is so much fun to look at all the animals and we especially love the aquarium! I am so glad I have a baby to go to the Zoo with because I think I enjoy it a lot more than she does and I would feel silly going by myself all the time:) She loves to look at all of the colored fish and we had a lot of fun watching the gorillas throw dirt at each other. Today, in the jungle area, we even found the sloth! I have looked for the sloth many times on our visits and today it finally moved! It's hiding in the bushes.

Sewing is so much fun!

Thanks to a very talented friend, Emilee Wells, I have been able to learn some new skills. She sews so many cool things and we were lucky to have her share some of her skills before moving this last weekend. Emilee, you will be greatly missed!
At the sewing activity and I learned how to turn the pattern on the left into the skirt I am wearing in the bottom picture! And... the greatest part is that the material came from a sheet at Goodwill (Ohio's version of D.I.) I felt like Maria on Sound of Music when she made dresses out of curtains.
Since it was the first skirt I have ever done it took quite a long time. Jake was so great to take Madison to his Guatemala Medical Mission meeting and another meeting on campus so I could have some time to work on this fun project.
The past few months I have been experimenting with sewing a few things but this is my greatest accomplishment so far. I am working on a dress for Madison and I will let you know how that turns out.

Like Mother Like Daughter

Jake took this picture on mothers day and it looks like Madison decided to pull the same surprised face! I had a wonderful mothers day and woke up to a wonderful breakfast prepared by Jake and my favorite flowers with a note written by Madison and Jake. It was so cute! Later that night he made a wonderful waffle dinner. What a fun day. I love being a mom!
Madison is such a good baby and so adorable. She has her sad moments but overall she is so happy! I don't know how I ended up with such a good baby since I was a "motherkiller". I just cried all the time
and when they took me to the hospital to see what was wrong, and found nothing, they let me stay there overnight to give my mom a break. Sorry mom, I don't remember those days. Thanks for all your love and patience in taking care of me.

Dancing With the Stars

The Saturday before Mothers day Jake and I had a fun date night! One of Jake's medical school friends and his wife so kindly offered to watch Madison for us. We found out how kind and brave they were when we dropped Madison off and the wife said that the last time she had watched a baby was in high school. Luckily Madison is a pretty good baby so we did scare them away from any future plans in parenthood.
We got dressed up, went out to eat and then headed to our Church building where our ward had organized a couples dance. It was so cute and cheesy to see all the couples dancing to their favorite slow songs:) When Jake and I were dating we did a bit of country dancing and so we decided to pull out some old moves. Jake really wanted to do the move where I do a back flip off of his arm. I know, it sounds scary! Especially since we haven't tried it in so long. I have had a back surgery and a baby since the last time we tried that. Who knows what could happen? And Jake... well you may remember his recent back injury from a few weeks ago. Well, Jake finally convinced me it would be o.k. and he wouldn't drop me. I made him go with me outside to do a few practice runs before we tried in front of everyone. A friend reminded me that if anything were to go wrong we had lots of doctors and med. students at the dance who would be able to tend to our injuries. The practice runs went great and we were able to take the move onto the dance floor. It really is amazing that I can flip around like that since I am so tall! Jake, that just shows how strong you are:) Thanks Jake for the fun date night and for helping me be so brave! Dancing with you is so much fun. I had a few sore muscles the next day from laughing so hard and from pulling out so many old dance moves but it was totally worth it!

Surprise Trip To Utah

I am a little bit behind in some of my blog entries so I will try and catch up:) Last month I planned a surprise trip to Utah for the blessing of my new little nephew Tanner. My sister Becky and Jake's parents new I was coming however everyone else had a big surprise when I showed up at the birthday party of my niece Brooklynn. As I stood outside the door of my sister's home I called my niece to sing happy birthday over the phone as is our usual tradition, however this time I asked her to come to the door. When my family heard the message they were so confused and then excited and surprised to see me at the door. It was so fun! We had a great time catching up and spending time together. Madison also had a lot of fun spending time with Jake's family. His parents were so great to pick us up from the airport and help me out with the surprise. Here is the web album link with the pictures of the trip. http://picasaweb.google.com/jleonsnow/SurpriseTripTpUtah/photo?authkey=O3YW-C1faxg#5201826308426434850
Jake had to work at the hospital so I had another chance to practice flying on my own with a baby. I did it on the way home from SLC over Christmas but I still get a little nervous. Madison did great except on the decent into Denver which was very bumpy. She must have inherited my motion sickness, poor thing. Luckily I had a blanket over me and her at the time so the throw up mess was easy to clean up. It was funny because last time we made that bumpy decent in Denver I was pregnant and the one throwing up on the landing. Too bad Madison can't ask for the barf bag yet:) On the way home we did experience an extra four hour delay in one of our layovers which put us to arrive in Toledo at 3 in the morning. It seems like that is the tradition with my flights to Toledo. When Jake and I were dating there was always some delay that ended in Jake picking me up at the Detroit airport in the wee hours of the morning.

This picture is of Tanner and Madison. Tanner was born on Leap Year! So cute in their matching pj's!

Madison and Friends

Madison loves to be social and play with friends. She loves to sit in her little play seat and feel like one of the big kids. Jake wants me to say something funny right now however it's late and I just have a hard time joking about my baby (what if people think I am serious). What he wants me to say is... " Don't worry though, we do let her out of her seat once a day ;) " (the thought of that just makes me so sad) And now Jake doesn't want me to put that because it isn't funny anymore with the explanation. He is so frustrated (in a funny way). I think we can blame it on the Jazz. They lost tonight and that is why we are up late right now. It's hard living in the Eastern Time Zone with a sports fan:)

Great Minds Think Alike

You know you are following the latest fashions when you all end up with similar outfits at a baby shower:) How fun!
I must confess however that I changed into my matching shirt at the party since it was hosted at my home. We couldn't miss out on such a fun photo opportunity!
If you scroll up and down on the blog, our shirts look like they are flashing. Cool trick!:)

Two Sleeping Babes

I couldn't resist capturing this moment.

I Love Spring!

Jake, Madison and I have had a lot of fun enjoying the spring weather in Toledo. The trees are so beautiful and everything is so green. We are hoping that the hot humid part of summer doesn't come too fast:( In the above pictures we went to visit the 577 foundation in Toledo http://www.577foundation.org/. It is a beautiful historic home in Toledo filled with lots of fun gardens. We took Madison down a trail to the river in her stroller. As we headed down the trail we soon realized it is a snuggly and shoe trail instead of a stroller flip flop trail. We carried the stroller down most of the way since she was sleeping. Hopefully it wasn't too much of a bumpy ride.
Jake had fun doing a Madison and Jenny photo shoot. I think he did a great job! What an artistic eye. He had a lot of fun capturing my urge to go play on the playground on our latest walk around the park. It was a perfect time to release my youthful desires because there weren't any kids around. No lines at the slide! I had forgotten how much fun playgrounds can be! What fun:)