Merry Christmas!!

This is a video of Christmas Morning at the Alarid house. Taylor was very excited to see what Santa brought her and a little worried that he ate all the cookies! The video is a little long, but so cute! (Also, it's dark at the beginning but gets lighter quickly.) Merry Christmas!

Happy Birthday Taylor!!

Our sweet little Taylor just turned 2! She was so excited during the week leading up to her birthday. She talked all about her birthday party and singing to her and who would come to see her. I think she truly had a wonderful day! Thank you to everyone who shared in this happy day with us!

Happy Thanksgiving!

We had a wonderful Thanksgiving with a lot of our family this year. Eric's brother's and their families were all in town and we had all of the aunts, uncles, cousins, and grandparents at Mimi's house for turkey day. Here are some pictures that Pam took of all of us that night. She did a great job, especially considering the chaos going on around her. (The kitchen sink started leaking in the middle of picture taking and all the men were trying to be plumbers!!)

The Tee Pee

Thank you Michael & Ann Thompson!! Taylor loves the tee pee you sent! She asks us to put up her "tent" and likes to look out the window at us. I'm sure she and her friends will enjoy many hours of pretend play with it!

For Aunt Becky.....

who's been begging for more pictures....here's a little of October with Taylor.

Eric and Rachel at the F-2 Reunion after the K-State game.

Anna, Kinley, Taylor, and Luke at the Houston zoo.
(in front of the bears)

Crashed out! Sometimes eating is just too much of a workout!

This was the first time Taylor had pigtails!! Isn't she cute??

Tay decided to pose for me. She is just so proud of her rainboots. She has even learned how to put them on all by herself. And if she's wearing boots then she MUST wear a hat as well!

Playground Pics

We took Taylor to the playground during our off time with the hurricane and met up with the Bartkowiaks. Taylor and Luke have so much fun playing together!!

Taylor's First A&M Game

We took Taylor to her first A&M game last weekend against Miami. (We lost :( ) But she had a fun time and it was nice to do something with just the three of us.

Crashed

Taylor has been learning to live without her pacifier this week. It's seriously like breaking a habit. I took this picture of her because it was the the day after Eric had gotten her to bed without it for the first time. I tried to get her to take her nap without it and she just went back and forth between playing and crying in her crib for 3 hours. Every time I went to check on her she had some reason that she needed to get out of bed and the two times I did pick her up she just started laughing at me! So, after 3 hours I just let her get out of bed to play. She eventually asked to watch Pooh Bear on the tv so I put a movie in for her. 5 minutes later I came in to check on her and she was passed out! We have since had better luck with bedtimes although she does still occasionally ask for her "paf".

Tay Tay Look Like Daddy!

We took this picture tonight before Taylor went to bed. She looked so much like her Daddy that I had to post this! She even told me, "Tay Tay look like Daddy." They're so cute!

A Helping Hand

Taylor attended her first Hurricane Relief effort today. We drove with other members of our church to Orange, TX to bring supplies and a hot lunch to the community. The church of Christ in Orange was hosting the lunch and was a distribution point for the supplies. A sister congregation in Bridge City was also there since many of them lost their homes to the storm. We had a good afternoon and Taylor enjoyed putting on a show for everyone!

Playing on a mat! (Don't worry - she's not sleeping)

Power to the People!

Thanks to all who have called to check up on us! We are okay and even have our power back on!

Here's an update on our fun filled weekend: Ike decided to visit us very early Saturday morning. At about 1:45 am I woke up and couldn't sleep due to the loud wind and my constant worry about tornadoes. (Fortunately we didn't get one of those) We lost power at around 3:30 am and eventually decided to move to the guest bedroom about an hour later. Our bedroom was getting pounded by the wind gusts and our guest room was a lot quieter. Taylor decided to join us around 6 am and by 6:45 she was up and ready to play. Of course, the house was pretty dark, being boarded up, but we played anyway.
We were without power until around 2pm on Sunday. We did have a generator though and that was so nice to have!! Eric's dad had rigged up a connection to plug the generator into a dryer outlet so we were able to "backwards power" the whole house. We only had so much wattage that we could use so we had to pick and choose what we used. We were just glad to have some ceiling fans and to be able to plug in our refrigerators!
We have been extremely lucky too. We don't have any damage to our house and we have our power, internet and tv all back up just a day later. We spent the day cleaning up the debris and the pool and driving around to check on Eric's mom's house and his office. (They're both fine too) We saw tons of trees and power lines down and know that a lot of people are having a much harder time. Please keep all of them in your prayers as they work to recover from this storm.

Hunkering...

Here are some pictures of what Eric has been up to today... We are getting ready for Hurricane Ike to get here tonight. Most of our windows are boarded up as a precaution against flying things (since we have a lot of trees around us :) ) So, it is really dark here in our house now! Eric also came up with a way to try to keep Taylor's playground in place. I'll try to update more later for those of you who want to check on us :)

Great Granny's Birthday

Aubrey, Taylor, & Adrienne reading books.

Kaylee, Adrienne, Aubrey, & Taylor

Somewhere there's a picture of Mommy sitting in this very same seat!

The family at Granny's birthday lunch.

Granny & Rachel

We had a great visit to Paris, TX to visit Granny for her birthday. We got to spend some time with Aunts, Uncles, and our cousin Kaylee. Happy Birthday Granny!

Non-toxic and washable?!?!

I don't think you fully appreciate Crayola's efforts until it is your table being colored on and your child who decides the black paint tastes best! This was Taylor's first painting experience and she had lots of fun making her masterpiece.

Paper Dolls

Taylor basically has the best Daddy ever. Here's what I caught him doing the other morning...cutting out paper dolls for Taylor to play with! How sweet is that? He went online to Noggin's website and found a dress up area for "Max & Ruby" (one of Tay's fav shows). He even went so far as to laminate the pieces so that she couldn't tear them up. Now she's been having fun putting the princess outfit on "Ruby rwabbit".

Model Baby

So, Taylor has decided she likes the camera and likes to take "pick-cheese". Here's some of her hamming it up for her mommy paparazzi.