Maya and Nolan's blog: November update

Here are some pictures of what we have been up to this weekend. Maya and Nolan are doing great! They are beginning to chew foods a bit, which means table food is right around the corner. Nolan has started standing on his own for 5-10 seconds at a time. He has taken a couple of haphazard steps on his own, but nothing we would call officially "walking." Maya is pulling up from her belly to standing and is determined to keep up with Nolan as best she can. They are starting to fight over toys, run each other with their walking toy, and fight over Mommy's attention. But mostly, they laugh and play together, which I am so thankful for!

Here is a picture of them playing together...they are so cute in their little diapers!

On Friday night, we had the "Snyder" family over for a birthday dinner for Grandad. Gwyn, Kevin, Lana, Janae, Grandad, Darin, Maya, Nolan, and I all put our party hats on for the evening. We had our family favorite, porcupine meatballs. For dessert, I made an angel food cake with a lemon glaze that was my Gran's specialty, and my Grandad's favorite. We had a great time. Happy Birthday Grandad!

After dinner and dessert, the Dills stayed for some cards. Janae helped Kevin and Darin score some points at spades. Hee hee!

On Saturday morning, Gwyn and I went to a cake decorating class at the Culinary Center of Kansas City. The class focused on decorating with fondant and was a wonderful learning experience. We had a lot of fun and tasted some delicious cake too! We started with a sheet cake and after 4 hours of listening and putting into practice what we learned, I ended up with my cake, below. I tried to be meticulous, so I ran out of time for some extra finishing touches, but I think it turned out pretty well. Gwyn's cake is in the background. The cakes tasted as good as they looked!

Today Darin, the kids, and I went to the Schmanke family "festival" in McFarland, KS. It was the first one for the kids, and was fun to show them off to the extended family. I think someone has a picture of the whole gang, but I would estimate there were 30-40 people?

The kids were tuckered out from their big day of socializing, and wanted to read books this evening. It was the first time they BOTH sat in my lap for 15 minutes while we read stories over and over again. Maya loves reading, but Nolan has about a 1 book max. It was fun to snuggle my babies and read to them.