New Strickland on the way!!

In early December we were surprised to find out that our family of 4 would be growing to 5! Little Strick is due to arrive Aug 15th, 2011. There will be nine years between baby and big sister Angie, so we're hoping to have lots of help from the big sisters. This is a bad copy of the 8-week ultrasound picture taken with my cell phone, but I thought it looked really cute. Auntie Amy says it looks like a gummy bear, or maybe a turtle. Either way this little bearturtle seems to be able to eat like Daddy, because I find myself hungry practically all the time!

We are all thrilled about this coming addition, even though it means I lose my office space. =) So far things are going well. I'm moving past the "feeling nauseous all the time" phase and starting to feel better and have more energy. We should be finding out the baby's gender in early April, so stay tuned!

We're Back!

Uh... wow... I was surprised to see how long it had been since my last post. No excuses. I've decided that it's time to get back on the bandwagon. Lots is happening in the Strickand household, and I prefer to update my family and special friends through here instead of only on Facebook. Obviously, there's too much to cover all at once, so I'll just post a little tidbit here and there. Here's to hoping I stick with it this time. Cheers!

Can you spot the real kitty?? This was the girls having fun with their "cats" and also with the camera. I had no idea they'd taken these pictures until weeks later. Pretty cute!

Sofie Milestone

We hit a milestone with our puppy, Sofie today! This was the first day she's been able to stay all day in her crate without any potty accidents. For those of you with puppy experience, you understand what an awesome thing this is. I was ecstatic when I got home to find her still clean and dry. No messes to clean up! Woo hoo!!

She is currently 5 1/2 months old. From what friends have said, this is about the time we expected her to start being able to do this. She is much more solid with the housetraining as well, with only an occasional accident, usually as a result of us humans not paying attention to her subtle body language and signals.

We are trying to train her to bump a bell with her nose that we have hanging from the door knob, but so far she doesn't seem to be making that connection very well. With time, perhaps she will pick it up.

NaBloPoMo

In honor of National Blog Posting Month, I am commiting to getting back into the habit of posting to this blog on a regular basis. Thank you, LP, for posting this on your blog so that I'd hear about it. =0)

Halloween 2009

Halloween was a lot of fun. The weather couldn't have been better, we met some great new people, the girls looked awesome in their costumes, and there was no sibling fighting (thanks to Ally spending most of the evening with her friends).

Ally went Trick-or-Treating with her friend Samantha from across the street, and her new "very good friend" Nathan from school. N's parents took on the threesome and drove them to two neighboring subdivisions, choosing to follow in the car rather than try to keep up with the running group of candy monsters.The three of them came back with at least 8-10 lbs of candy each!!

Ally was dressed as the vampire Jane of the Volturi, from the Twilight Series. Obviously, Angie dressed as Dorothy from The Wizard of Oz.

Angie stayed behind to eat some pizza, but was soon invited out to join a group of about 10 little munchkins that visited our house and just about cleaned out our candy bowl. We turned out the lights and joined the mob, puppy dog leading the way. No, that is not lipstick on her lips... we think she found some red frosting on the ground somewhere... hmmm....

This is Angie's buddy, Cooper. He lives in our neighborhood, and is also in Angie's class at school. He invited her to join his little clan after she'd given out candy to all of them.

Ma and Pa Strickland stopped by for a few minutes to see the girls and to share some goodies.

State Fair 2009

We had a great time at the fair, as we always do. It was quite chilly again this year, but fortunately not windy like last year. We spent most of our time on the midway with the girls, and sampled lots of tasty fair food. Here are a few pics from our day.