Happy Thanksgiving....Gobble, Gobble

Happy Thanksgiving everyone! We hope you all had a relaxing and fun holiday! It was a busy Thanksgiving week at the Heiple house! On Monday, we had some visitors stay with us. Rob, Jess, Kolbe, Samuel, Luke, and Abe (our sister, brother, and nephews) came for a sleepover. Olivia and Joey loved spending time with their "cousins" (as Olivia called them). They played outside, played the Wii, and on Tuesday, they went to the Lincoln Museum.

On Wednesday, we traveled up to Metamora to celebrate with the Heiple clan. This year we celebrate Thanksgiving with the Heiples and Christmas with the Dressler/Sennotts. So while we were up north for Thanksgiving we also celebrated Christmas. As always, everyone was VERY generous and Livi and Joey got a lot of great presents!

On Friday, Olivia, Joey and I decorated our house for Christmas. Livi LOVES to decorate and Joey LOVES to undecorate. Then Friday night, after Jason got off work, we went out and got our Christmas tree. Livi and Joey had fun decorating it. Joey kept saying "WOW" with every ornament and was "helping" to put them on. This year it was Joey's turn to put the star on top of the tree. To our surprise he was afraid of the star and had daddy do most of the work. Once the star was on the tree, we were officially done decorating and could sit back, relax, and admire our work!...and quickly fall asleep from the exhaustion of the week.

The Little Engine that Could

As promised last week, here is a small clip of Joey walking. It is still not his main mode of transportation, but he is walking more and more everyday! He is our little engine that could!!!

The Pitter Patter of Little Feet

Joseph Crane Heiple is walking!!!!!

That is right, our little Joey took his first (consecutive, unassisted) steps this week on Tuesday. He takes more and more steps everyday, but he is not doing it all of the time. I think the farthest he has traveled is 20ft. before making himself fall. It is so cute to watch him walk. We have yet to catch it on video, but we will work on it. These are pictures of him at grandma's house walking back and forth between us. Hopefully I will get a video posted this week!!!

Bitter Sweet

Our next stop on our trip up north was to Grandma Dressler's house...it was packing weekend!!! The count down has begun til grandma moves down south. It was a bitter sweet weekend. We loved spending time with mom, Jim, Great Grandma and Grandpa Sennott, but it was hard packing up the house. It was hard to pack up the memories we made in the house, but exciting that mom would be moving 20 minutes away. Olivia and Joey had a great time "helping" us pack boxes. At times they helped unpack the boxes and packed themselves in boxes. Joey was not impressed with all of the boxes around the house, and actually seemed to be scared of all the boxes.

After two days of packing, the Heiples packed up and headed home. Before we left Olivia asked if we would ever spend the night at grandma's house, and sadly I had to tell her no. We said good-bye to Olivia and Joey's room (formerly my room) and hit the trails.

Harvest Time!!!

This weekend Olivia, Joey, and I traveled north to visit Grandpa Dressler, Uncle Dave, Grandma Dressler and Jim. Our first stop was out at Uncle Dave's farm. Olivia wanted to see the corn that she planted this spring and help grandpa and Dave harvest the corn. Livi and Joey had a blast. They were able to drive the combine, honk the horn, and explore. Unfortunately we were not able to be outside a lot because Joey was still getting over his cough (which lasted 13 days!).

After combining, we went out to eat with grandpa and Patty. It was so nice to be able to sit back and visit with everyone!

Our Big Girl!

These are Olivia's very first school pictures. Above is her individual picture and below is her class picture. I hung them up in the house today and I keep trying to figure out where time went. I can still remember the day we brought her home from the hospital and now she is 3 1/2 and in school.

This is a picture of Olivia at school today. They are studying space and everyone in class got to fly with their jet packs.