Coldplay and Pretty Trees

This is what I usually find Madeline doing when it is all too quiet. She loves to look at pictures of "the baby" as she calls herself. She's pretty skilled at turning on the monitor and using the mouse to flip through. She still prefers looking at them with one of us though. She'll come over and say "hand" and that means one of three things: I want to look at pictures, I want to play on your bed, or I want to watch Elmo (which she is obsessed with now much to my chagrin).
I just cant wait to leave our house every day. These are the beautiful trees at the entrance of our complex. The pictures don't even do them justice.

Last Wednesday night Lance and I got to go the Coldplay concert in Atlanta. They are by far my favorite band and it was a great concert!
We obviously were sitting pretty far up.

Coldplay was great! I was so sad 3 years ago when they canceled their show in B'ham, but am so thankful we finally got to see them live. I really don't like concerts, so its a big thing for me to ask Lance if we can go to one. I must say, even though I loved it, I was still thinking of my biggest beef with concerts: "wow, this is so loud! I'm going to be deaf after this!"

I need to post some cute videos of M soon. Her vocab continues to amaze me. Every night we sing songs before bed, and a few weeks ago I threw in "Amazing Grace" in the rotation. She hates it! Every time one of us starts singing it, she puts her hand over our mouths and says "no, no, no." How can she not like "Amazing Grace?" I hope this is not a bad sign....

The other night, M was sitting in Lance's lap reading Cinderella. She's not patience enough to wait for us to read every word on the longer books, so she starts flipping pages. Lance goes with the flow and starts making up the story. The highlights were "Then Cinderella meets McDreamy..." "and then they get married and honeymoon at Sandals."

I keep forgetting to blog this but I took her passie away Oct. 7. COLD TURKEY! And it worked! She was only allowed to use them at bedtime and one morning after she got up, I just put them away when she wasn't looking. I thought I'd just see if it would fly. She never asked for it again, and didn't seem to care when she saw other kids with it either. It would take her a little longer to go to sleep, but maybe that's how long it was taking her with the passie, she just wasn't talking as much with it.

Homecoming

She was pretty excited about the fire and the huge blowup Big Al in the background. That was about it.
Playing with her friend Price at ATO house
Where we watched the parade. I was surprised at how long it kept M's attention
Our friend Becky Brewbaker



Went down to T-town for homecoming last weekend. We opted not to trick-or-treat since Madeline wasn't really into wearing her costume and I doubt we would have made it to more than 3 houses before we had to carry her, plus Lance and I would have ended up eating all the candy! We went to the bonfire on Friday night with my friend Danica, her daughter and husband, and JC and Kelly. We forgot our camera that night so all our pictures were junk due to Lance taking them on his blackberry. Saturday we hit the parade, sorority row, the quad, and the ATO house for lunch. M and I went home for a nap and Lance went to the game with Jeffery Beall. We had a great time. I hadn't been to the parade in ten years! It was a little lame in my opinion but it was more for Madeline then us. I was so surprised at Madeline's retention of names. We had lunch with the Bealls and on the way home M kept saying "Pice, Luke, go night night." I didn't realize she knew their names! Her vocabulary continues to amaze me.