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Our playgroup took the kids to Brookside Garden's train exhibit. The kids loved watching all the trains go by.

These two sure do love each other! Molly kept talking about how "Keira was wearing boots just like me!"

Leah enjoyed watching the choo choo trains too.

The exhibit had an I Spy list. Simon was in his own little world working on it with one of the employees.

We've had so much trouble getting pictures of Leah standing still that I just had to capture the rare moment!

We braved the first minor snow and got our Christmas tree. It was our first time getting a "cut it yourself tree," though they actually cut it down for us. It was great browsing trees with a light dusting of snow on them.

Clark's Farm even had Santa on duty. Leah was scared of him, but Molly hopped in his sleigh to say hi.

That evening we decorated our Christmas tree. Since the tree hadn't been manicured, Chad had to invoke the "tree diet" and trim the tree to make it fit! Molly was an ornament hanging machine. She was especially excited to find our Disney-themed ornaments.

Leah wasn't into putting ornaments on the tree in the beginning. She hung onto this Minney Mouse ornament for a long time and had lots of fun decorating and dancing to Christmas music.

She did eventually catch the Christmas spirit after watching her sister adorn the tree.

To begin with, almost all the ornaments were hung 3 feet from the ground. Chad encouraged Molly to hang them higher, and then she decided she wanted to hang them all "really really high." So, Chad became the Daddy ladder.

Molly is quite proud of our tree.

I know I'm a bit late in posting these, but I wanted to share Leah's 1 year portraits.

After trunk-or-treating, we went over to Simon's house to trick-or-treat in his neighborhood. Simon, Molly, and Keira are ready to go.

Leah and Matilda are ready to go as well, electing to ride in the wagon instead of walk like their older siblings.

Best buds holding hands. So cute!

The big kids were pros at trick-or-treating since they had practice together last year.

Simon was generally 10 yards ahead of everyone, but Molly did take the lead briefly in order to get to knock on a door.

We made the kids pose for this picture before they were allowed to dig into their candy!

Halloween got started early with trick-or-treating at Grams and Pop's house.

Per Molly's request, Leah was a banana. So, here's our cute, little peeled banana.

Everyone posed for a quick pic before heading to our next Halloween destination.

We then headed to church where they had lots of Halloween games for kids. Molly showed off her basketball skills.

Leah got in on the playing as well.

Simon and Matilda came to the party too.

Molly picked all of our costumes. She first decided she wanted to be a monkey, then that Leah had to be a banana to accompany her. Then, she decided that Chad and I would be trees for her to climb on (banana trees, to be specific). We borrowed Molly's monkey costume, but I made the rest. We even took the prize for best family costume.

After the games, we went outside for trunk-or-treating.

This led to lots and lots of candy.

Leah is turning One,

Flutter by and join the fun!

We celebrated Leah's birthday with family and friends last weekend. Leah wore her Mommy-made party dress and a festive butterfly bow. Despite still being sick (we discovered later this was the roseola virus), Leah shared some smiles at her birthday party.

Upon arrival, each child at the party got a butterfly wand.

The bigger kids enjoyed playing with the butterfly shaped bubble wands.

Despite big sister's enthusiasm, Leah wasn't so sure about being sung to.

After a good nap and a snack, Leah was ready to open a few gifts.

There's our happy girl! Leah loves her new Dora ride-on toy, and often thinks it's cool to ride backward.

And for those interested, all the personalized party printables were bought from Bird Crafts.

Leah has taken a liking to Molly's baby doll, so for Leah's birthday Molly gave her her own baby doll.

Unfortunately, Leah woke up with a fever on her birthday, so she was not her usual happy self that day. Getting this gift was one moment of being cheerful on a generally down day.

Leah's started taking steps. She's not fully walking yet, but she'll take a step or two. I happened to get her longest jaunt so far on video a few days ago.

We finally decided that Leah's comb-over look wasn't working for her, so it was time for her first haircut. Here's the before picture.

Here's the after picture of Leah's hair sans-old man look. It's a bit hard to see what it looks like since it's wet, so...

Here's Leah the day after her haircut, with dry hair. Much better. I think she likes it!