November

November was a very eventful month for the Connell family. We started the month off with Rory’s first birthday party. I can’t believe that my baby is already a whole year old. Her party went well. She got loads of great stuff.



When it came time to dive into her birthday cake she didn’t know what to do at first. She just poked at her cake for a while until I put a few yummy morsels into her mouth. Once she tasted it, she got a huge smile and began eating with gusto. It was really cute.

This picture makes me laugh. In this picture Rory is about to blow out her candle and delve into her cake. I didn’t put her into her chair and when I look over I see her just sitting there in her beautiful white shirt (one of my favorites) with no bib. I panicked a bit. In this picture you can see my hand up saying, “Stop”. I am scrambling around trying to find her bib. Everyone was wrapped up in the moment, so no one heard me. At one point she actually has her hand in the cake and I am holding her arm to stop her until I can get a bib on her. I didn’t want to be an annoying mom, but I could just see all of the brightly colored frosting just ready to irrevocably stain her lovely outfit. I just wanted the moment to be perfect and it was not going to be perfect for me without a bib. In the next picture you can see that I did finally get her settled with her cake and bib.




Thanksgiving was pretty uneventful this year. Unfortunately, Duane had to work until 6:00pm on Thanksgiving. Rory and I spent most of the day hanging out with Emma at our house. When Duane got off we had dinner with my Mom and Doug and Stan and Breda. We had dinner at Stan and Breda's house this year. Breda cooked and it was a lovely meal. The last few years we have had dinner at our house, so it was nice to relax this year. For some reason we did not take any pictures during dinner, but I did take a few earlier in the day when we were just hanging out. I thought that I would include a few of those.

Rory stayed Thanksgiving night with Grandma and Grandpa so that Duane and I could get up early to face the Black Friday sale madness. We had a blast! All of the stores were crazy busy, but everyone was very polite. We got a lot of our Christmas shopping out of the way and found amazing deals. The whole experience was festive and fun.

Rory has a mad and passionate love for our dog Emma. She loves to hug and snuggle with her doggie. When we send Emma outside to go to the bathroom Rory stands by the door pointing until Emma comes back inside. If the curtain is open and Rory can see the dog she points and laughs and plays with Emma through the glass. I took some pictures of her pointing at her Emma through the sliding glass door. I think that they are cute, so I thought that I would share them.