NINE months!

Ally turns 9 months old today! Amazing how time flies. With the holiday season upon us, I keep finding myself thinking back to this time last year... I was big and pregnant, Matthew was deployed, and there was no Ally around to brighten our days yet. She's made everything about this holiday season more fun so far! We celebrated her 9 month birthday with a children's Christmas party at the squadron and her first visit with Santa Claus!

Here we are together all ready to go to the party. Ally wore her sweet Christmas dress and tights!

This year we have an angel under our tree!

Her first experience with Santa was not a very good one! I think it was the beard that scared her because she normally doesn't react like this with new people.

She was in much better spirits back at home so we had a little photo shoot.

My sweet little gal

Still chewing on anything she can get her hands on- including furniture!

What a little doll!

Later that day she discovered how much fun it was to make silly smooshed faces! I thought it was hysterical!

She's started making this silly face a lot recently too.

The smiley face is still my favorite!

The rest of the weekend was fairly uneventful. Matthew was away on his trek to Florida in Dee's car so Ally and I took advantage of his absence and did a little bit of shopping for his birthday which is coming up on Saturday. He'll finally be 31 too! We have lots of birthday and holiday activities coming up over the next few weeks so I'm sure the rest of December is going to fly by. Before we know it, it will be 2009! I'm going to do my best to not get too carried away with the activities and enjoy the remainder of 2008 while I can.