Yes, it's been forever!

Due to pregnancy and sleeping a lot, I haven't updated you all on the awesomeness of Charlotte! So here are some cute pictures from the past few months . .

We got invited to go to an awesome pumpkin patch and they had the best baby goats in their petting zoo!

Our Halloween party--Peter is the whomping willow, I am Harry Potter, and Charlotte is an owl. Our friend made the amazing backdrop out of a sheet!

Lottie happy with her trick or treating loot--this is after we let her eat a pack of her M & Ms.

My two faves ready for church. (Thanks to Dustin and Lisa for the darling coat--it still fits from last year!)

One of our absolute favorite families came to visit for Thanksgiving. It was so fun and we love love love their new baby Chase.

The cousins had fun being buddies all weekend.

And someone is not too fond of Santa. Hopefully we will get a better picture soon . .

In some current news . .

Our little Lottster went to her 15 month check up today. Some funny facts--she has grown 3 inches in the last 3 months which would explain her eating more than her body weight every day, she is still in the 20th percentile for her weight, and is in the 95th percentile for head circumference. How she manages to walk without falling forward on that huge noggin, I do not know.

The doctor and I also talked about any accomplishments she has made or any worries I have.

First the accomplishments:

She can do the sounds for a cat, dog, lion, dinosaur, elephant, cow, snake (kind of, out of her nose mostly), monkey, and we find out more everyday.

She says mama, dada, papa, squirrel, and snack.

She plays peekaboo and head shoulders knees and toes.

She will give us a goofy smile on demand! (we will try and post video of this soon!)

Worries:

She likes to bang her head against the wall (I was assured this was pretty normal)

She is hungry 24/7--explained by how much she has grown!

All in all she is a healthy happy toddler and we are so lucky to have her.

Lottie and the Horse

Plus lots of other things we finally caught her on camera doing!

She got going on it so fast this afternoon she almost tipped it forward!

Random Pics/ Art Prize/General Conference

This is one of my favorite pictures from when we were working on the house:

She would find whatever we were working on and try to help. So she helped us paint!

General Conference. In a word, awesome. It was such a great weekend and our sweet Charlotte was so good and played with toys almost the entire time. She also wanted to join me and Peter in our cuddlefest.
She really likes to carry purses around lately and if she can't find a purse, she will find a grocery bag. Right over her shoulder it goes!
Her favorite activity--Baby Signing Time. That kid is obsessed! Not sure if that is a good thing or not . . We have even had to set a time limit.
Art Prize! We went up the weekend before conference with Ben and Kim and Dawn and Adam.

So Art Prize takes place in Grand Rapids, MI and thousands of artists submit their artwork and it is on display all over the city. Almost any type of art is accepted and there were such neat things to see! There is a huge monetary prize at the end for the winner (not quite sure how huge, but enough to make it worth it).

Kim carrying Lottie around. So cute of both of them! She was such a sweetie to cart our baby around.

I think this was all made out of driftwood? Not sure. Only picture I got but it was really neat.
How Charlotte spent most of the day.

So kind of sad, Charlotte was really good all day and didn't complain about being out and about. On the way home however, with a full mini van of people who don't have kids, she screamed nonstop. And I mean, nonstop. We felt so bad for everybody and for her! But she is always an angel and just must have hit the end of her rope. Hopefully our friends will want to see us again!

Charlotte went for her 12 month doctors appt and about an hour after, I noticed she was running really hot. I took her temp and it was over 103! So after freaking out and calling Peter and the doctor, we went back and lo and behold, she had her very first ear infection.

It was so sad, all day and evening she would just hold her baby doll and lay her head down on you. The only way we could get her to sleep that night was to keep her in our bed with us. (I'm not going to lie, it was kind of reassuring to have her little sick self in our bed!)

Birthday Party!

Some updates on our little tot and the fun things she has been doing lately:

-she can do a cat, dog, duck, and owl noise

-she carries a purse everywhere over her shoulder

-she can fold her arms, point to our noises, and knows where its tongue is

-she can do sign language for more, milk, and all done (sort of)

So because of everything that was going on with the house, Charlotte's birthday party was a little late.

Here are some pics from the days events:

Charlotte's first birthday present of the day. A super cute dog balloon that she can take for walks!

My horrid first attempt at fondant:

Getting sung to:

Cake time!

She did a good number on the cake!

And finally, bath time with her little buddy Jaxon.

It was such a fun day and I can't believe that she is already one!

Charlotte turned 1!

More pictures and fun to come later, but for now here is the absolute cutest video we have of her to date:

Love it!

Our House!

It is official! After many months of waiting, Peter and I are proud homeowners! We had put our offer in back in February or January and that is also one of the last times we had been inside the house before closing . . . so I was a little nervous. But other than massive greenery in the front everything was as we remembered it.

Here is the side view where we have enough trees to block any sort of neighbor:

The front of the house--so beautiful! We are excited to see what it looks like when we cut some of the bushes back and take a couple of the trees out.
A front view from the street:
Our back yard! By far the selling point of the house. Right where those trees start there is land owned by the city that includes a fun trail and an open field where we always see tons of deer.
The day we closed on the house!
Now the before pictures of the inside of the house. This is our family room/dining room. Don't you just love the oak trim everywhere? Haha.
Kitchen--some sweet linoleum and wall paper border.
Our front entrance. Again, don't you love all the oak?? And some more awesome wallpaper.
Another view of the kitchen . .
Our living room,
Guest bedroom
Guest bath and my helpers
Master bedroom--still can't figure out their placement of the fan? But it is humangous! I still feel like I will get lost in there.
Master bathroom. Super sweet wallpaper. Still haven't figured out what to do in here . .
Charlotte's room
Upstairs playroom
View from upstairs hallway
Stay tuned for some of the pictures of the after . . .

Let the wild rumpus start!

It's official. Charlotte is a walking, soon to be running, fiend. I left to go up to girls camp for then night and while I was away, Grammy and daddy gave Charlotte a graham cracker in each hand. Not wanting to drop either cracker, she decided to walk! Of course, she couldn't have decided to do this during the 12 hours a day I am usually with her :).

The proof:

I think our world will be changing mighty quickly. Currently, she just looks like a zombie walking everywhere with both arms out.

Charlotte and the cat

The cat apparently has been going through some womanly changes and it has made her super chill with the baby. Which is great for us--not so great for the cat. As you can see in this video, Lottie thinks she has found a new pillow.

Harry Potter!

In case you were wondering, yes, that is Hagrid.

And yes, I am married, with a child, and still dressed up to go to the midnight premiere of Harry Potter. Meridith, Trish and I all decided to go and we had so much fun! I love love loved the newest movie and pretty much cried through the whole thing.

Amanda and I had to celebrate the event while we were together in Vegas and this is the closest we got. I wish so much we could have gone together to the last one!

Is oatmeal a finger food?

Anyone that knows Amanda (my sis) knows her penchant for eating most food with her fingers. I think that Charlotte may have inherited this trait. We have had the hardest time lately getting little Lottie to eat anything other than yogurt or cheerios. The other day I was trying to feed her some oatmeal for dinner and she managed to get ahold of the bowl and was just grabbing handfuls and shoving it in her mouth and on her face. But hey, at least she is eating something, right?

She went straight in the bath! She clapped a lot of the way up the stairs and sprayed oatmeal with every clap.
Also, she had oatmeal sneezes for about the next hour. It was an interesting evening trying to keep her clean!

Teeth, Walking, and all sorts of big girl achievements

I think I will still always call our little Lottie a baby, although I fear she is encroaching upon toddler territory. In the last 2 weeks, our sweet baby has gotten four teeth, has taken her first few steps, and has gotten quite a bit of hair. She is like a whole new person!

For further proof, here is a video of some of her activities:

We are having so much fun every day with her and amazed at the little person she is becoming.

The one thing I would like her to learn--to say mama. She just says dada all day long :)

The Wedding San Francisco

Earlier in June, the whole Andrew family made the trek to San Francisco for a beautiful wedding. Peter's sister, Meridith, married an awesome guy (Kevin) from there and it was a perfect day. It was so much fun to have so much family there and to have an excuse to party it up. We are also lucky enough that they came to Michigan for an internship and we get to hang out with them all the time!

Here is Meridith and two of the little flower girls . .

The bride's side of the family:
I LOVE this face. Okay, both of these faces.
Overlooking the city from the Oakland temple.
That night there was a fun dinner at an amazing golf course and the photographer took these beautiful shots of Lottie.

So pretty much we owe her big time.

We spent a few more days enjoying the city and here we are at the bay. We went to Alcatraz (which I kept calling Azkaban, whoops!), road the trolley, ate some delicious mexican food, and Charlotte even had fun by somehow ending up in the hotel bed with us every night.