The Help...

My Rori Kate loves doing laundry.

she sorts (kind of).

she folds (sort of).

she just has a good time.

with this girl around who needs hired help?

but then, the saying is true, you get what you pay for.

there is a bit of an flaw with this help.

sometimes, well sometimes...

sometimes she eats the laundry

But we'll keep her! Even if she does eat shoes.

And also, I promise, we do feed her food along with her baby shoes.

She's not the outdoorsy type!

She's Not the Outdoor-sy Type! We, of course, happen to think our sweet little girl is about as perfect as they come! Haven't found an inperfection yet! However, if her future husband happens to be looking for an outdoor loving girl, he may disagree! We made the recent discovery that our Rori Kate is not a big fan of grass. Won't even touch the stuff, until we sit her down on it. Then, she refuses to put the other foot down! Listen baby, i come from a long line of summer time means lots of barefoot walks on the green grass, people might start to question the maternity of this child... (does it work that way? like paternity only the opposite?)

Here are some pictures of her doing the "Not Touching the Grass" dance I video-ed but I still am not able to upload video properly! One of these day I'm gonna get this figured out!

Dear Life, please slow down!...Thanks.

I complain too much about being too busy and never getting time to sit down and enjoy family. The truth we involve ourselves in all the activities for a reason, i do really enjoy those activities! I think maybe more than anything we need to slow down. I find that as every single major event is taking place i'm always saying, "As soon as this is over..." I am making a vow here and now not to do that. i refuse to wish time away. instead i'm going to slow down, but probably not much.

Sincerely missed.
Since i've last posted we have experienced the loss of the strongest woman i've ever known. my nana went to meet Jesus at the beginning of this month with the fastest fall to cancer i personally have ever known of. i have learned a lot from this terrible experience, and the biggest thing i think of all is once again--Family is so important and TOP PRIORITY! I have really begun to get closer and closer with my nana who lived in OKC a better part of my childhood and have began to love her so much especially when little RK entered our lives and became our greatest bond, and the light of her life. She will be missed dearly a hole has been left in all of our hearts by our passing, but I'm so happy to rest in the assurance that she is with our savior, and she feels no pain.

What's new with RK?
On to lighter subjects...RK's momo and I spent the day replenishing her wardrobe as her 9 month mark is fast approaching and abruptly became aware of the fact that she no longer fits any of her clothes! Of course with the 9mo. mark approaching we have been through many a milestone:

-Pulling Up, which is probably the scariest thing for mama!
-Feeding herself little snacks
-Being the biggest trooper through BABYSITTER TRAUMA!
-Following mama where ever she goes around the house! And she can really keep up!
-first swim!!

What's new with mama and daddy?
-i am hard to work on the new children's ministry at church a task that i'm positive will prove to have my work cut out for me.
-nathan is doing a lot of speaking at the church lately and is preparing to be ordained soon.
-i am attending a tuesday night bible study with tricia, sara and megan soto and it continues to keep me very revived and trying to find the joy in all circumstances i'm loving it and the fellowship with those amazing girls!
-we joined the Y recently and are loving it! we are really enjoying seeing rori kate enjoy it!
-i have been putting a lot of prayer and thought in to being the best mom i can be, i think that's where all this slow down talk is coming from. i have decided through prayer that we are going to have a monthly family value and corresponding scripture to live by, i will try to post about this every month.
-my lovely Seester and I are going to start a side business, i'm so totally excited about it! i'm kind of banking that if we can really make it work i will be able to live my dream of staying home with little missy!


That's all for now, here are some new photos, of course:

And she crawls....rori kate has been doing this terribly unattractive form of a crawl where she throws her body forward, lands on her stomach pushes off and does it again until she gets to her destination. She has been doing this since mid december. I was beginning to tell people, "I guess this is just how she's going to crawl." (Thinking to myself "We need to start focusing on walking! This looks painful!") Well last night in the midst of iced in Oklahoma weather I was cooking dinner and such as nathan casually says with no excitment what-so-ever "well, you're crawling." I almost didn't even notice but I thought I might should look just in case and there she was up all 4s taking it one "step" at a time!!

Below you will find a post that i started over a month ago, as RK is now almost 8 months (tear) and as previously mentioned CRAWLING! (oh dear!) among other milestones! Clapping(YAY!) and waving (Bye-Bye!) and I think she said mama last night and really meant it, but it might have just been in the ear of the beholder (does the saying work that way?):

I know it's been a while and I really always intend to get on here more so here's a quick run through (as usual)

The Big 6 MONTHS:

Rori turned half a year old and it still astounds me. How can it be that time is going by so quickly? I just can't put my head around it. She is so much fun though! And getting very mobile. In fact, it was in the month of december that she began to do what some might call crawling. I say this because quite honestly I'm beginning to wonder if she will ever "crawl". At this point she get up on hands and knees and pretty much leaps forward. Hey kid, if it gets you from point a to point b i guess it's workin'.

Baby's First Christmas, and Babies first month of CRAZINESS:

i had a brilliant idea last year around this time, "i'm going to do a christmas play with the children's church next year. We will start early and it will not be a mess." ...well we started early and that is about as far as i got with that. i think we ate out every single meal we ate in the month of december, between christmas activities, tending to a 6 month old, church play, christmas shopping, daniel & kim's wedding, december was gone before my eyes even blinked. I didn't get accomplished half of the tasks i would have liked to have completed. i really wanted to have a handmade christmas, most of the gifts at least. i wanted to bake christmas goodies and package them up pretty. oh well, there's always next christmas. Amidst what i truly believed was chaos in comparison to our normal pattern Miss Rori Kate didn't seem to mind at all. She really loved christmas. Everytime i would light the tree up, her eyes beamed and she would squeal until i let her touch the limbs. I walked away for two seconds to come back and find her halfway across the room with each of her hands a hold of a limb as if they were reigns and she were guiding santa's sleigh. I wondered if she would enjoy christmas. Will she get it? Will she want to open presents?" The answer. YES! Aunt Jenni had beautifully wrapped (do i get points for mentioning the beautiful wrapping sister?) a larger box and she couldn't wait to get inside i wish i had video of the squeal she let out as nathan opened that box and she stood up on his lap and looked in with the biggest smile! Truthfully, I know she had no clue what was inside and i don't think she even cared, the box was the biggest present of all. SIDENOTE: now that the box is gone the winnie the poo is just as fun!

AND NOW...as many pics as i can put in!

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i understand there are weird things, but i've been working on this for a few days now. So for the time being: IT STAYS!

Updates Continued...

November.

WEDDING: we started november off with a wedding: david & lacy's it was beautiful and a lot of fun. we got a little lost and missed half of the ceremony but hey, they were too busy to notice anyhow, right? i will now proceed to post a video of my child at their wedding. the video has nothing what-so-ever to do with david or lacy. it only has to do with the 2nd most beautiful lady in the room that evening: miss rori kate! so sorry that i am obsessed with everything my kid does and i feel the need to post videos of my baby at other people special events.(side note: i don't know what i was thinking, obviously a video doesn't when the camera is held sideways in the same manner as a picture so before watching, turn your head to the right, haha!)
SANTA:we saw santa for the first time, and she was surprising less than impressed at first. surprisingly, because she generally loves everyone! but she warmed right up, i think it was the beard, haha. i'd post a picture but i'm sure the photo is copyrighted: professional photo and everything.

CAMPING:nathan and i enjoyed camping with josh, erica and ben. i say enjoyed, and yes it was enjoyable. however, it would have been a little more enjoyable had it been September and had nathan remembered to pack, well everything he was supposed to pack! Including the air mattress, i'm not one for sleeping on the cold hard ground. and i do mean cold! But i loved the fire and the conversation and the great company.

OTHER:there was also mom and jack's surprise anniversary re-wedding! the planning for which pretty much consumed november for me, this and the christmas play, which i will get to posting about eventually. and we ended with thanksgiving, which i really enjoyed this year, spending time with family is quite possibly my favorite pastime. here is another november pic,nothing to do with anything it just happens to have been taken in the month of november and is really cute! Right below here is another pic which wasn't actually taken in the month of november i just love it and thank it should be on here. and last but not least- thanksgiving picture. i love,love,love this picture. i think it tells quite a story. nathan's grandmother was really taken by rori! i don't know what it was but she wouldn't put her down! from the look on rori's face in the picture i would say she enjoyed her company as well.(rori loves anyone over the age of 60, this thanks to days spent with her Nan)!

below is a list of some first's for the month, mostly for my benefit but feel free to read!

Rori's first's:

-starting eating baby food, prefers momma to feed it to her. Free time is for the weak anyway! haha! -became very mobile(by means of rolling) -considers maci lou her best friend (the consideration was not reciprocated) -began making daddy a little upset by Loving-with a capital L- her mama! his turn will come...

The one reader that we have....says we need to update. And quite frankly, she is right (thanks sister)! In as few words as possible I will try to update you on the life of the Phillips' since October 23rd. (our last post) And in order to better serve you I will stop using capital letters now. for some reason i really don't like using capital letters. it's kind of a silly punctuation rule anyway if you think about it. also it is a little hard to hit the shift key and the letter at the same time with one hand, since i am currently keeping tiny fingers away from the keyboard at the same time. multi-tasking. i think actually i might petition to webster's to get a new definintion added to the word mommy. ya know something like:

mommy (mŏm'ē) noun 1. slang mother 2. excellent multi-tasker
getting sidetracked...

OCTOBER. okay we only missed halloween for october, i believe. we had a bit of a rough day. i took off work that day and spent the whole day visiting people who hadn't seen rori kate in a while and that was fun...well not really. in the carseat, out of the carseat, in the carseat, put on the costume, take it off, etc. Nate was late home from work which got us off to a slow start(sidenote: we couldn't be more thankful for him being late home from work that day, because it meant he had a job to be late home from) we did get to see little micah however and that was a nice visit. i unfortunatley didn't get a picture of the two of them in their costumes because it was a very brief occurance, it was like july weather and they both had december-like costumes, so needless to say, they didn't last long. if i had a carseat of my own you would have found me right next to them doing the same thing!

if i had a carseat of my own you would have found me right next to them doing the same thing at this point.

at rejoice's trunk or treat (one of the many stops of the day.) i just liked how she looked in this one.

are we ready yet?

mummy and monster baby

and i'm having toruble posting more pictures so i will do another entry for the happenings since october

Fall.

It's fall! A season we don't typically get to very excited about until now. It seems Nathan and i both come down with the fall allergies really bad this time of year. But now that it's cold, i suppose whatever fall thing we are allergic to must have died. So now we celebrate! We start breaking out the pumpkins, etc. i believe this weekend we will do our annual carving; a tradition started back in the ol' dating days for me and nate! Possibly our first year, my memory isn't quite what it used to be. Thus, i have already began to document Rori Kate's first fall with pictures! Can't forget it when there's proof. So..... I am just going to put one on for now and will come back later and do some more, I won't forget : ) Okay, maybe two!

pumpkin patch!! fun, fun, fun.

now if this picture doesn't describe a first fall i don't know what does!