happy 1st birthday,marin!

i meant to write this on your birthday but just never did. you are now 1 year old! we cannot believe it. we spent part of yesterday looking at the pictures and video of when you were born. you actually weren't that interested-just wanted to push buttons on the computer. aunt susu was here, of course, with lots of presents. she made you a cake which you did really well at destroying. townsend decorated it. he was so proud. although he kept saying that it was his party too. the day after your birthday daddy and i took you to the doctor for your 1 year checkup. we really like the new doctor here in denver. you weigh 22lbs 3oz which is the 70%. you are 30in tall which is the 75%! and you still have a little head-30%. you are a very on-the-go kinda girl. always crawling or now walking around. you like to open doors, drawers, cabinets, etc. for some reason you like getting into the trash and pulling out what we have put in there. when we play peek-a-boo you get the best belly laugh going-it cracks us up. :) you love to eat! sometimes i can't put the food down on your plate fast enough. you aren't much into sleeping. you'll do it, but you usually make a little fuss when we put you down. we love your smile and are so glad that you are usually a happy girl. 3 years ago a doctor did tests on mommy and said that we would never have "you." but God had other ideas about that. we are so thankful for our precious marin ann.

hunka-hunka

some old pics of ellory before i started this blog. this was how she looked one morning when we got her up. her elvis tribute.

first campout!

our family loves to camp and we have wondered at what age will a child sleep in a tent in a sleeping bag? now that we live in colorado it is fun to think about all the camping and hiking we can do with the kids. norton decided to put up the tent the other night and see if townsend would sleep in it. i kinda had my doubts. townsend got to help daddy and as they put up the tent norton told him about having hot beverages, reading in the sleeping bag with the little lanterns hanging above them, and sleeping outside. townsend just kept getting more and more excited. so after the girls were in bed daddy took several of townsend's animals and his blankie and townsend and headed outside. i waited a few minutes and then took them some hot tea. just a little bit for townsend-after all he was sleeping in MY sleeping bag and i didn't want any accidents. when i got out there-this was around 7:30pm-they already had the lights out and norton said that townsend was ready to go to sleep! but when he saw the mug, townsend popped up ready for his drink. norton said that he was so cute. daddy would take a sip then put down his mug so townsend would do the same. even after townsend had finished his tea he kept picking up the mug each time norton would. the next morning i went out a little after 7am and townsend was still asleep! this is the kid who wakes up every morning at 6:09am. i'm thinking about putting his bed outside now. :) sooo-all in all it was a great experience. the next day townsend helped daddy take down the tent and as we put it back in the garage he was saying, "bye-bye tent!"

lesson learned-hopefully

the other day i had changed marin's poopy diaper in the morning and set it and the dirty wet wipes on the trash bin. intending to dispose of it all right after i got her in a new diaper. well, norton doesn't understand it and i guess i don't either, but in the minute it took to put on the new diaper i had already forgotten about the dirty one. later that morning i put marin down for her nap. i went in around 10:30am and these pictures show what i found. her little hands and clothes were covered in poo. as you can see from the picture, the trash is right next to her bed making it very convenient to simply pull anything sitting on top right into the crib. i'm actually pretty surprised it hasn't already happened. we'll see if i can do better.

marin dancing

all of our kids love to dance. as soon as any type of music comes on marin starts swaying from side to side. it's pretty cute.


marin dancing from Janis Herbst on Vimeo.

marin walks

yesterday, january 16th, marin started walking independently back and forth between mommy and daddy. i think we wore her out. we just kept turning her around and making her go back to the other person. she didn't walk as much today but i think she is finally going to start. she's been cruising for about 3 months now and i thought she would walk a long time ago. who knows? but we are very proud of our little bear.


marin walks from janis herbst on vimeo.

rapper elle

ellory seems to really like putting on daddy's hat backwards lately. and for some reason she will put on one shoe and stop there. she'll walk around like this for hours. :)

our kitty cat

you know how kitty cats like to sit in windows for hours and just look out? well, we have our own kitty cat-his name is townsend. he loves, loves, loves to look out the front windows of our new house and informs us every time a car or dog goes by. it's pretty hilarious.

snow day!

this morning norton and i woke up to a few wonderful things. first of all, townsend had not started calling out for mommy at 6:09am like he usually does. we walked up the stairs around 6:45am and all was quiet in the house. that was a huge gift in and of itself. but then to make things even more wonderful we looked out the windows and it had been snowing all night and was still snowing! the forecast yesterday said around 1-2 inches. well we were already way past that and it kept snowing until about 10:30am. it probably snowed around 5 inches. the kids started waking up at 7am and we let them look outside. then we bundled them all up and took them out to play. townsend and ellory loved walking around and playing with daddy. marin just hung out in daddy's arms. mommy took pictures. it was just a perfect start to the day.

aunt susu visits and the longhorns play!

townsend loves his aunt susu. whenever she comes he is all over her. if either of the girls heads over to her he runs and gets in her lap first.
townsend had fun with some stickers from his christmas stocking. daddy was the medium. my friend, rhonda, sent this cheerleading outfit. as you can see, marin was doing her part to get those horns to win the fiesta bowl.
aunt susu gave this outfit to ellory. she almost turned off the tv when it looked like the horns were going to lose in the last minute. but they didn't. go horns!

drama in hays, kansas

so we were driving through kansas-lots of fields and not many towns along I70. as we are getting to an exit for hays, kansas the car starts to make a funny noise. flat tire. we took the exit and there was a gas station right there. norton changed the tire but the spare was a little donut tire and we still had about an hour and a half to go before our destination for the night. it's around 4pm on a sunday. but there's a superwalmart right across the street from us so we head over there to get a new tire. everyone with 2 or more kids has a honda odyssey, right? there should be an abundance of tires available for such a popular van, right? wrong. apparently the 2008 odyssey has a new size tire and there was not one available in the entire town! the only honda dealer was about 2 hours away, going the opposite direction. guess where the closest place to get a tire was? denver. great. but how do we get there?? if we weren't so tired it might have seemed funny. anyway, we finally got a number for a mechanic who had a used tire that was similar enough in size to get us to denver. so we stayed in hays for the night and got the new tire the next morning.

on the road

travelling in the car wasn't actually too bad. the kids didn't keep their regular nap times but they slept on and off. townsend and ellory would watch an elmo or barney video and then be done. they would either chat together or just stare out the window. the hard part was stopping-either for a meal or for the night. making sure we had diapers, wipes, clothes, etc. being bummed when the restaurant didn't have changing tables and having to go back out to the car and change them one by one. it was just plain tiring. :) but we made it.

high point-kentucky

when we talk about going to the high points of states most people think we are talking about the exciting places in a state. nope-we mean the high point. the highest elevation in the state. norton has gone to 20 of them and i have done about 17 or 18. this was townsend and the girls' first one. the high point in kentucky is right on the kentucky/virginia border. you just drive up, park and walk about 200 yards to this tower thing. not real exciting but we got to check another high point off the list. it was very foggy, windy and cold so i took pics of the guys and then we headed down.

random pics

our first christmas all together 2008
townsend and james-sweet boys
hugging cousins
ellory is so gorgeous when she smiles-love it.

still christmas in north carolina

the whole clan of us!
all in their christmas finest! and very happy about it too. :)
this is what most pictures looked like. makes the first one look great, doesn't it??
don't know why ellory sees a camera and puts on her pouty face.
the girl cousins-i'm so glad they'll be able to see each other more.
elmo underwear. he actually received about 10 pairs of them. hopefully when we start potty training in a month or so he will be inspired to "not pee or poo" on elmo. that'll work, right?
one attempt to get all the grandkids together. james and townsend also received elmo pj's. townsend was in elmo heaven.
townsend, ellory and james all got elmo slippers! townsend loves them so much he even wears them to bed. :)
the herbst kids with gran.

Christmas in north carolina

the kids loved playing in all the leaves with pawpaw!

the moving van came on monday, december 22 and took all of our stuff and then we headed east to north carolina for christmas. the drive wasn't too bad-we considered it a trial run for the drive out west. the kids fell asleep around 7:45pm and when we got to gran and pawpaw's house they transitioned pretty easily to their new sleeping accomodations. uncle jim, aunt ann, and cousins james and julia were there so it was quite the full house. the kids all got along well and it was fun to be all together. we hadn't seen julia and the rolf's hadn't seen marin and the girls were almost a year old! of course now that we'll be just an hour away from them in colorado, we won't have that problem anymore. :) another great thing about moving.