Looking forward to the Holidays!

Our little princess. She loves putting on sunglasses and giving us big smiles. What a ham!

Dad sets up the Bates' Family picture studio. Unfortunately, I am not cooperating! See below...

This is my new "cheese" face! Yes, it needs an explanation!! You may have thought I was doing something else...heee hee...

Could we be any cuter together? Mommy says - no way!!

Hanging out with my church friends. Mommy & Daddy had their bible study class over for a barbeque. All of these girls like to play with me and hang out with me...lots of fun!

Girls rule.....

At the beach in Coronado. This is Kaley. She babysits me sometimes when mommy & daddy have date nights. I love Kaley. Her dad is the new pastor at our church. When she sings on the stage at church, I like to try to run upto the stage in the middle of her songs to say hi and play with her.

We are so glad they are here.

More Helping with the Laundry...

New Smile

16 Months Old....

This weekend Elizabeth turned 16 months old. Milestones are happening so fast they are difficult to keep up with.

For words: she is officially tri-langual. She has lots of words in English, several in sign language and a couple in Spanish. She even used two words together this week asking her daddy to pick her "up please".

She watches everything we do and wants to imitate us. Here she is in my slippers. She loves putting them on but gets pretty frustrated when she can't walk around in them.

Santa Claus will be here soon. Elizabeth is ready...

Here she is getting into the dishwasher. She spends most of her time around the house, going from item to item, drawer to drawer and examining it all. She loves to help out and will hand you each piece of silverware individually as you empty the dishwasher.

Helping with the laundry of course. Her first love is pulling the lint screen out and watching the lint fly around. Her second, having us hand her item by item the clothes so she can toss them in the dryer. Yesterday, I wasn't going fast enough and she was complaining. When I looked over, all I could see were her little legs hanging out. Ken went and got the camera but by then, she was already inside!

Football season has been so much fun this year. Here is Elizabeth in a little cheerleading outfit - rooting for the Steelers, Cowboys and Chargers. Miraculously, they all won yesterday. And yes, if you watched the Colts and Chargers, you will know that I am not exaggerating by using the word - miraculous. Must have been the outfit...

Cheering makes you hungry. One of Elizabeth's favorite foods is corn on the cob. So much fun to eat. She is now using her fork to eat. It's fun to watch her working so hard to stab her food. Huge milestone for her. She also had her first bite of pizza this weekend....

Memorable Moments: the nursery provider was not at church yesterday so Elizabeth stayed with us. She was having a blast greeting every one, singing and clapping. She fell asleep in my arms toward the end of the music. A few minutes later, there was a moment where the congregation started clapping over something. Well, sleeping beauty heard this and jumped straight up, looked around and smiled, gave out about 5 claps and then promptly fell to my chest and was out cold again. It was hysterical....

In other news, the business had steady months for October and November. In fact, we actually still have a profit for the year. Huge milestone. The industry continues in its state of upheaval so Ken & I are working hard to focus on how our business will prosper during these times ahead. Not easy but we are working hard on our 2008 business plan. Our goal is to stay in business because this flexible schedule is so awesome for Elizabeth and we both enjoy our time with her tremendously!

Love to all of you....The Bates Farm

The Giggle Box...

OK. She knows that she's not supposed to feed the dogs. The dogs know they're not supposed to be in the kitchen. But you can see how successful we are with those rules.

We're just happy to have such a delightful kid...

Happy Feet

Izzy has become quite the dancer. We've decided to call her happy feet when she just breaks out into some unscheduled little jig. As you can see, she's quite happy with her new skills.

Halloween Week

Karen got Izzy this awesome costume for Halloween. She's a little 1950's sock hop girl with her name even embroidered on her skirt. For the 3rd year in a row we were able to spend the evening with Darcy & her daughter Lexi.

The girls did great together, even holding a pose long enough for us to get some great pictures. Lexi was awesome at entertaining Elizabeth so we even managed to have some adult converstion time. Steve wasn't there because he's deployed to Iraq for the 2nd time as a reservist, so please keep him in your prayers.

Elizabeth must have walked a half mile by the end of the night. She really took to the whole trick or treating concept and was a pro by the 3rd house. She'd walk up to the front door by herself and just stand there, sometimes she'd even knock. When the people would hold their candy buckets in front of her she would take a piece and put it in her little bag. Then she'd take another, and another, and... She was so cute doing it most people just let her keep going. Then we'd tell her to say "thank you" and she'd get out a quality "anks" and walk away with a multiple "byes" said to her new friends. We're kicking ourselves for not getting video of it, but didn't want to make other people uncomfortable.

We went up to LA for Karen's cousin Veronica's birthday party. It's been nearly 3 months since anyone there has seen Izzy, and last time we were there she was barely walking. Here she decided to play under the coffee table.

They also have 2 (little) dogs, and as usual Izzy couldn't help but take one of their toys and carry it around in her mouth. That really grossed everyone out, but we did get the toy washed off so it wasn't too disgusting.

She's trying to climb on everything these days, but in this case she decided it was really just meant to be a seat.

Part of her climbing adventures is to climb up into her stroller and sit down. Well this time she decided to climb into the basket. What you can't see is the cross bar that is just about where her butt is. She managed to squirm in, but couldn't get herself backed out. It was really fun to watch her worm her way it...

But she made it quite clear she wasn't having a good time after about 10 seconds of being trapped...