Richard & Michelle: Happy Thanksgiving!

I can't believe it's December. And I can't believe Riley is 22 months. She's growing up and becoming quite a little person. I sometimes can't keep up with her. She is just a little tornado of destruction some days.

Riley is talking up a storm. She is always chatting about something or another. Most of the time we have no idea what she is talking about but she just keeps going.
Some notable words she's learned are: noise, snow, daddy, Christmas tree, and Santa (she says nananana)
She flat out refuses to even try to say mom or mommy or mama. She got a Little People Nativity set from Grandma and Grandpa McRae (Thanks!) and I showed her Joseph and told her that he was baby Jesus' daddy. So she said "daddy". Then I showed her Mary and said it was baby Jesus' mommy. She just looked at me and then shoved a wise man in my face.
She is obsessed with the Christmas tree. She always blows kisses and waves if we leave the house or if she goes to bed. She loves it.
She keeps taking the ornaments off the tree. Within 24 hours of having it up most of the ornaments migrated north so she couldn't reach. She's very tall and our tree is only 6.5 feet tall. So most of our ornaments are on the top 1/3 of the tree. I still can't believe what she can reach. She's way too tall for her own good.
She now has a baby and she loves it. If she's in a super sad mood and crying I can ask where her baby is and she'll look for her and laugh while she cries. I'm not sure what's so funny about the baby but she loves her. She always feeds her whatever snack she happens to have. I figure it's a good opportunity to learn about sharing. Although it will be different to pretend to share with a baby when you get the whole snack back and with a friend who will probably appreciate her willingness to share and actually eat the snack.
She loves playing in the snow. We've had a couple of snow storms and we've gone out to play a couple times. It's super cold though. I'd rather stay inside where it's warm.
She still loves apples, apple juice and apple sauce. She refers to them all as "apple-gee" I'm not sure where the gee came from.
She has some epic tantrums. I'm not sure where that temper came from but I'm pretty sure it's a McRae trait.
She loves spending time with her friend Lenay from downstairs. She loves when she comes over and they share some fruit snacks and play with her felt tree or race cars.
Her favorite commercial is the Kmart Joe Boxer commercial. She screams in delight when it comes on and squats down to dance with them. If you haven't seen the commercial just look it up on youtube. You can search Kmart Jingle Bell Commercial. You'll know it when you see it.

Our whole household suffered from colds the last few weeks. It started with Riley who didn't get very sick and spread quickly to me (I almost died. It was awful and lasted forever) then touched Richard a little bit. We thought we were finally almost over when it hit Riley again for a couple of days. I think we are finally in the clear though. Richard has been working in Bountiful a few days a week still and will start school again in January. We spent Thanksgiving with Bruce and Marie and had a blast. It was just the 5 of us and was really enjoyable. I watched football with Bruce while Richard worked on his truck and Marie cooked a fabulous dinner. Riley just ran between everyone doing her stuff. She got to facetime with Grandma and Grandpa Kearns too. I've been hanging around keeping busy with Riley. I've been wrapping Christmas presents and trying to keep the place clean from Riley's disasters. Happy December everyone!!