It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas!

It's so exciting the closer it gets to Christmas, there are so many "firsts" for Lydia. This was her first time playing in the snow!

Ahhh, the taste of freshly-fallen snow!

It was Lydia's first time seeing Christmas lights when Mitch put them up on our deck. She loves looking at them! :)

We found a little Christmas elf in our box as we put up our tree! 

Lydia loves the texture of the branches and all the sparkling ornaments! Also, when she gets excited, she flaps her arms and legs around so fast, it's hard to keep holding her! She is one happy baby!

She helped hang ornaments on the tree, including her baby ornament we used last year to announce our pregnancy.

We love hanging our favorite ornaments each year--Mitch's Karl Malone and my glass flamingo!

Merry almost Christmas from the Steeds!

Lydia had a great first Thanksgiving, but she sadly couldn't eat any turkey. Still no teeth yet! 

We went to Kaysville and enjoyed the holiday with the Steeds up there.

Lydia went bowling for the first time while we were there. Well, she watched us bowl, haha!

She also got to ride on "Iko, iko caballito!" This is the horse Mitch used to ride on as a child. :) 

She also fell in love with Mitch's sister Hannah's old baby doll and was laughing more than she ever has before! It was the best! I'm glad Mitch caught it on video!

Here is Lydia's six-mont birthday picture! She turned six months old in November, and we can't believe how fast she's growing!

All ready for church!

Fall Flashback:

Squaw Peak on Oct. 30- we hiked it in 2014 and it took 5 hours and was SO worth it!

The Provo Temple on a lovely evening in the fall

Wymount in the Fall: SOOOO beautiful!

So I didn't post a lot of our fall pictures including Halloween and our family photo session, courtesy of Summer Harper Photography!

 Summer always does such a fantastic job, and we LOVE these family pictures!

Steed heart family collage:

We unfortunately couldn't go to the exact same spot (workers were blowing the leaves away) so the hill and lighting were different, but we love it!

It was also Lydia's first time playing in the leaves :)

Thanks again, Summer for the pictures!

Another fun fall activity was Lydia's first Halloween!!! Mitch isn't super big on dressing up, and I was thinking in the middle of the night in early October of what we could dress up as for Halloween that Mitch would agree to do. I suddenly thought of The Lord of the Rings, and that Lydia could be The One Ring! I said, 

"Mitchy, what do you think of The Lord of the Rings for our Halloween costumes?" 

"Can I be Gandalf?" he answered. :) I was overjoyed! 

My sister-in-law, Mary, was kind enough to send us her Gandalf and Galadriel costume in the mail! 

I ordered a yellow inner-tube on amazon and cut out black felt letters for the elvish words on the ring. I used freezer paper to write the words on and cut the felt as explained on this website. 

I then hot glued them on the fabric-covered inner-tube!

So, we took Lydia out recently to dinner at the Brick Oven Pizzaria, and she sat in a restaurant high chair for the first time:)

We also went shopping and she sat in a shopping cart for the first time! She prefers shopping this way much more where she can see everything!

She also has a new toy from the Nielsons who were so kind to give us lots of hand-me-down toys. Thanks again for the AMAZINGLY AWESOME giraffe! She loves grabbing it by the face and sucking on its nose. :)

Lydia has a new coat too; I found her puffy coat at the D.I. and we love the panda ears! Every time we put it on her, we quote Kung Fu Panda.

Recently we decided to make waffle cones! Mitch found a recipe he liked and made them on the stove, since we don't have a waffle cone maker. They turned out SOOO good! I've never had ice cream in a hot waffle cone, and it was pretty fantastic! We may get a waffle cone maker for Christmas. :)

Lydia keeps getting more and more of a personality each day, like loving to look at herself in the mirror and socialize by her changing table. Here she is in front of it in her flamingo pajamas!

She also won't let us drink from a cup in her presence now without trying to drink from it herself or pull it out of our hands! :D 

"Sorry Dad, no water for you!"

She also sneaks out of bed each night to find my beats headphones to listen to Christmas music. Just kidding! But she likes listening to music with them, especially the Piano Guys! She LOVES them! 

We feed her solid foods now once each day and she is enjoying trying new foods.  I can place a strawberry in front of her and she picks it up and sucks on it and chews on it so hard that she breaks off little choking-hazard-sized chunks! Then I have to take it away and give her boring baby food :) haha

Lydia's happiest time of the day is the morning, she smiles so big and laughs and is as cute as can be! Here she is playing in her crib with her little stuffed friends early one morning.

Our last Lydia update is that she can finally push herself up onto her hands and knees, but she can't crawl forward. She pushes herself backwards, gets stuck and then cries for assistance! Yesterday as we held her hands, she started to take steps around the room! More pictures and videos of that to come. :)