Thanksgiving

Hi family and friends!  We hope that you all had a great Thanksgiving this year. 

We sure did.  We went to Bran and Diedre’s house for some fabulous Sloan Family Fun.  We had a great time doing many things including: eating, laughing, playing games, going to the movies, a baby blessing, and we even had Christmas while we were there.  Here are a few pictures from the events. 

Our family picture on Abigail’s first Thanksgiving. 

We couldn’t resist, Abigail had to have her own version of Turkey.   She was not a fan.

Christmas!  On Friday the tree went up and Saturday morning was Christmas in November.

Uncle Barton and Uncle Brandon “helped” Ethan put his Kinex set together that Grandma gave him for Christmas.  They were in heaven.

Dr. Josh and (future) Dr. Barton showed the kids how to do extractions and restorations on Mr. Playdough head.  The kids were intrigued.

Abigail had lots of attention from her cousins. 

Meet Abigail’s newest cousin Bennett.  He is so cute.  They are going to be great buds!  We can’t wait to see him again.  I need more time to cuddle him now that I don’t have a tummy bug :)

Last but not least, here is a picture of Momma Sloan with all 14 grandbabies.

The Fairest of Them all…

Mirror, mirror on the wall, who is the fairest of them all….Can you guess what theme we went with for Halloween this year? It was so much fun to celebrate Halloween with Miss Abigail. Here are a few pictures:

We hope that you all had a safe and fun Halloween!

In celebration of the Halloween season, we carved pumpkins with our good friends Josh and Jenna. Josh and Jenna moved to Lexington the same weekend we moved here. We have both had a baby, were split by ward boundary changes, and have had busy school schedules but we have still been able to carve pumpkins each year together. Here are a few pictures of this years event;

The guys busy at work cleaning out the pumpkins

“Here Daddy, let me clean this off for you!”

We couldn’t resist!

Last but not least, the final results:

What happened to my little baby?

People told me to take it all in, that babies don’t stay little for long.  Boy, were they right!  I can’t believe how fast she went from this:

to this:

 

Abigail is growing up so fast!  The past six months are a blur in my mind, but a WONDERFUL blur. Being a mother is incredible.  She melts my heart every day.   Here are some of her recent developments….

She is eating solids! 

Not the best picture, but she wore her first ponytail! (Trust me, it is there :)

She is getting good at sitting up. So good that she highly enjoys: sitting on the floor, playing in her activity center, and swinging.  And she is so close to crawling! 

  One of her biggest accomplishments is sleeping without being swaddled.  I would have been shocked if someone told be a couple month ago that she would be sleeping without being tightly swaddled by six months.  This girl LOVED being swaddled tightly.  So much that she had a hard time sleeping any other way. 

Last but not least, she gained an Uncle!  Meet Uncle J!  He is the one on the left (I had been waiting on a wedding picture to post instead but I’m too impatient with the photographer.  Plus I thought I’d better finish this blog post before the baby starts walking :)

Uncle J is fabulous, a great addition to our family.  More pictures of that event to come soon :)

Our Road Trip!

We had been talking to my brother and his wife for a while about meeting somewhere to vacation together. Well, we decided it was time to do it!  So Barton, Miss Abigail,and I packed up the car and headed to our Nation’s capital, Washington D.C.!  It was SO much fun!  My brother (Spence), his wife (Wendy), and their daughter (Elliana) are so much fun to be with.  My adorable cousin Melanie, who is currently nannying near D.C., was also able to spend a lot of the time with us.  It was amazing to see the sights and be with such delightful company!  The following are some pictures from our fantastic trip!

Here is the U.S. Capitol building.  It was beautiful!  We went on a tour of it….

 (Warning, if you ever do visit the U.S. Capitol building don’t think “Hmm, let’s save money and fill our backpacks to the brim with lots of snacks, sandwiches, fruit, and water bottles.  That way we will have stuff to eat all day long while sight seeing.”  You will only be disappointed while throwing it all away because you can’t bring any food into the Capitol Building.  But then again, you will probably make a school group very happy with all of those yummy granola bars :)

We were able to see the following monuments.  It was very neat to think of all that these great men did for our country:

This is one of my favorite pictures from our trip.  Why?  Because of it’s subject, Miss Elliana.  This little girl melts my heart.

You can’t visit D.C. without seeing the White House (even if it is from a distance):

The Arlington National Cemetery was very, very touching.  It was incredible to see all of the headstones of those who died while protecting our country.  I was especially moved during the Changing of the Guard at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.  I am very grateful to live in this country.  I am grateful for those who are serving, those who have served and for their families. 

 

 

 

 

 

On Sunday we went our seperate ways at the grounds of the Washington D.C. Temple.  What a perfect way to end a fabulous trip!

First Camp Out!

A couple of weekends ago some of our friends got together for a camp out.  As a protective mother I watched the weather and called the Forest Ranger to get a full report on mosquitoes.  Between the weatherman and Forest Ranger’s reports Barton and I decided that it was a great weekend to introduce Ms. Abigail to camping.  It was SO fun!  We also took our nieces and nephew and we had a blast.  Our only two complaints were: 1.  There were mosquitoes!  The Forest Ranger reported that he hadn’t seen a single one.  Well they must have been waiting to have their big hurrah for when we got there.  As mentioned already, I am very protective.  I kept the baby under the blanket for most of the evening.   2.  I wish that we could have gone for longer!  We arrived Friday night and left Saturday morning. 

Overall it was great!  We can’t wait to do it again. 

Here are some pictures from our fabulous outing….

Our happy family

What is camping without stuffing yourself with yummy goodness of s’mores! 

Jonas enjoying the fire! 

Abigail loves hanging out and being held by Scott and Julie (Or as us cool people call them, Jott and Sculie!)

Abigail cuddling with her daddy!

Family

I can’t believe that we have been on our own for 3 weeks now! It was SO much fun to have a lot of family come and share some sweet time with our new bundle of joy. If you know me at all, you know I was in HEAVEN! I just absolutely love being around family. Here are some of the pictures we took with everyone around…..

First a shout out to my wonderful momma! She is amazing! She is the most optimistic and happy person I know. She always has a smile on her face. I was so blessed to get to spend almost 7 weeks with her! My daddy and her are so good to us. She was planning on coming a week early to help get things ready for the baby but when my water broke early they immediately changed her ticket and she came that day! She was so incredibly helpful. It was so much fun to hang out with her all of the time. She is such a selfless and charitable woman.

Next to come was my beautiful little sister Rebecca:

And my amazing daddy:

Most of the time my family was here was dedicated to moving us to a bigger place. We weren’t expecting to move that weekend but I was so thankful for their help. They are all such hard workers. In between the move we were able to fit in a little time to show them Kentucky.

Barton gave us all a tour of his school:

One of our favorite things to do when we go on vacation as a family is check out historical sights, love it! This is us at Henry Clay’s Estate:

Last but not least, you can’t leave Kentucky without seeing any horses :) This is us at the racetrack where they were exercising some horses:

Next to come was Bart’s family! It was so wonderful to have Cari’s baptism the same weekend as Abigail's blessing!

Here is the whole group:

Baby Abigail finally got to meet her fabulous Grandma Sloan! We were so happy to have her come and stay a few days with us. I know that she would have stayed a lot longer if her work had permitted her to. We can’t wait to see her again!

Baby Abigail also met Aunt Diedre, Uncle Brandon and two of her cousins . They were able to stay a few days with us and Grandma Sloan. It was a lot of fun to hang out and be with them all again.