Including what might be the best belly laugh to date!

That’s it pretty much what we are doing these days…hanging out and enjoying Allie. We are also trying to sell our house but that is a subject for another post. So, here are some “just hanging out” photos of Allie J.

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A few days after Christmas, we had quite a bit of snow on the ground. So we decided to put to use the snow pants that Santa had brought. Allie braved the snow for about 7 minutes–it was pretty cold–but she had a great time.

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For slower connections, pictures are here.

I know what you are thinking–how many pictures did they take of Allie at Christmas?! The answer, not as many as you think. We were simply too busy having a great time to take too many pictures. But here are some from Christmas at the Luellen’s (Anna’s grandparents) and from Christmas morning.

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Link to album for slower connections.

Hard to believe.

She is looking very “old” to me these days—getting more hair, running faster, trying to jump, talking constantly. But I know she still needs me. Needs me to scoop up the last bite of food. To pick up things she’s dropped in the car. To read a book. To color her name. So, I’ll take it because I am sure that soon, she won’t need me. Or at least, she won’t think that she does.

So here is the two year old….blowing out her candles. She needed me for that, too.

We traveled to the Dilgers for Thanksgiving but came back on Saturday which allowed for a small birthday celebration, some Christmas preparations and a visit from Grandma and Grandpa.

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Slow connection album here.

First off, it’s hard to believe that we have been doing this blog for over two years now. I hope that you enjoy reading it and seeing all the pictures we take of Allie. Maybe one day, we will take less pictures. Probably not.  Just wanted to talk about a few things, updates, etc.

1) It has been a hard couple of weeks for Ryan. His Grandma Dilger passed away last week and we traveled to his hometown for her funeral over Thanksgiving. Then, Wednesday this week, his PhD adviser passed away as well. It was not unexpected in either case but to lose two people who have helped shape his life so close together certainly is tough. Please keep the Dilger and Baker families in your prayers.

2) We have solidified travel plans for Christmas. We will be in Noblesville December 19-21 and then travel to Mariah Hill for December 22-23 and head back home for Santa to come on Christmas Eve. We look forward to Christmas parties at both the Days and Dilgers and catching up with lots of you there.

3) I noticed while visiting the Dilgers last week, that certain parts of this site are very slow to load on slower connections–especially the galleries of pictures. We are spoiled from living in college towns for over 10 years and are used to fast connections. To hopefully make picture loading faster for those of you on slower connections, I will be including a link to an alternate set of pictures for you to view. When you click on the link, it will open a new window and take you to Google’s Picasa site. They are the same pictures, but hopefully will load faster for you. Also, you can download pictures from this site if you ever want a certain picture. Let me know if that speeds things up for you.

4) Comments! Man, I love to see your comments. Thanks to Mel, Mel, Stef and Laura–our most religious commenters. It is always good to hear from people who think that Allie is just as cute and smart as we do.

Okay, on to the Allie pictures. There is one new video and a new set of pictures below.

The whole month of November (and some of October) was mainly centered around birthdays. From mommy’s birthday in October right up until Allie’s birthday last weekend, we heard this song a lot. Here is Allie singing Happy Birthday to Thomas in her own way.

Just some pictures from when we cleaned up leaves a few weeks ago.

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Album for slower connections is here.

This is a long one but since this blog also serves as Allie’s baby book, I wanted to show this here. This is pretty much how the conversation goes ALL THE TIME at our house.