Tanner is 6 Months Today.......Alli's 2 Year Stats, Tanner's 6 Month Stats

I took both of the kids to the doctor last Thursday, Tanner was having his 6 month check up and Alli was having her 2 year check up. As you can imagine, this was a fun day filled with shots, flu shots, and other excitement.

Tanner is 19.6 lbs. (87th Percentile) Height 28.5 (98th Percentile) Head size 18.3 inches (99th Percentile)


Alli weighed 26 lbs. (4oth Percentile) Height 37.75 inches (91st Percentile)

I would also like to post that last Saturday, Tanner started crawling. He started with the army crawl, but on Monday, he started to crawl for reals. He can be found crawling underneath the table, piano bench, and everywhere. He likes to go where the action is and usually ends up right next to me in a matter of moments. Alli didn't crawl until she was more like 7 and 1/2 months, so we thought this was pretty early for our little guy. He is really excited about it and he is really happy and smiles all the time.

We have really enjoyed the past 6 months with Little T. He is truly a blessing. Alli and him are started to play together, she constantly checks up on him in the crib to see what he is up to. They keep me very busy, but John and I feel like they are going to be great friends and have a lot of fun together. We are having a lot of fun with both of them.

Preview to Halloween....Dora and Boots

Alli can be found sitting on Tanner at various times throughout the day.

Tanner is the happiest little guy and looked so cute as Boots.


They were having fun playing together in their costumes.

Tanner is able to sit up on his own now, it is really cute. We just stay by him in case he decides to fall over.





We dressed our kids up last night for the ward Halloween party. They both looked really cute as Dora and Boots. Alli thinks it is so funny that Tanner is boots and she keeps playing with him and touching his head, sitting by him, sitting on him, and laughing and having fun. I was never a big Halloween person, but now dressing these 2 little ones up, I think it will become one of my favorite holidays. A special thanks to my mom for helping me find the different parts to Alli's Dora costume. To bad she refused to wear the wig that we got for the occasion.

Camouflage Christiansen's

Alli was kissing Tanner in this picture.
We still haven't gotten rid of the bottle as you can see.
Like father, like son.







On Monday, we went to a Halloween get together. Because our kids have 2 other events to wear their costumes to, I thought that we should go with a family theme for the night. Carolyn had sent this little camo jacket to Tanner the day before and he had a few other camo things to wear. John went through a camo phase so he had a coat and I had a jacket. We had a lot of fun dressing up, my favorite thing was how John and Tanner looked official with their black faces. It was a great time.

Alli's Birthday/Halloween Party

Alli loves her cousin Tyler. They hung out the whole day on Saturday.
Alli and her friend Jake AKA Larry Boy. Notice my dad's shirt in the back, he was dressed as Bumstead and he wore a fake bum. Some of the kids thought it was real so it was pretty funny.

Here is one tired little Dora the Explorer after her big party. She loves playing on this horse that my parents have.
Aunt Brenda.

The 3 Rockers.

Grandpa McKell helped to judge a few of the contests that we had at the party.
Grandpa Christiansen did some great magic tricks for the party. It was the highlight of the event. He brought his magic coloring book and some other tricks that he had up his sleeve.
Sara, Miss Piggle Wiggle AKA "Mi Mi" and Grandma Lucele the Story Princess.

Amber, Richie and Jake. Number 1 Sooner Fans. Carmell and her little princess Jess.
We had an exciting mummy wrap competition.
Uncle Brad and Uncle Bill did excellent at this.
Alli kept climbing up to get the sugar cookies.
Devin and Nathan had fun doing the mummy wrap.


This past weekend, we went down to Spanish Fork to have a Halloween Birthday party for Alli. It turned out to be a lot of fun and I was really happy to have everyone there for the fun. Brian and Chelsea weren't able to make it and Mike's family was sick, but everyone else was there for the fun. We played Halloween Bingo, stick the hand on the skeleton, mummy wrap, and hot pumpkin. We also had a special magician share some magic tricks and it was a lot of fun. A special thanks to my mom for all of her help for the event. Alli had fun dressing up as Dora the Explorer and I loved seeing everyone and their costumes. It was great.

Dora and Boots

She is so proud of her new toys.

Dora and Boots were kissing Alli.

Dora the Explorer has really hit our house this year. Alli loves them. Our awesome friends the Mosley's sent Alli some of the cutest things for her birthday, however, the thing that she loves the best is her new friends that she can carry all around with her, Dora and Boots. Dora wears these little blue flippers and Alli likes to put them on and then take them off.

Also, for Halloween Alli is going to be Dora the Explorer and Tanner is going to be boots. They were all dressed up at the big party on Saturday, but I didn't get any pictures of Tanner in his costume. They looked really cute and it was fun for Alli to see Tanner dressed up as Boots.

Grandpa's Roadshow

Here is he dancing at the end.
He was posing for pictures after the big event.
Getting ready to throw the ax.

When I get a little bit more time, I am going to try to post the video of Grandpa's Roadshow. We went and watched him last Friday, October 23rd. It was hilarious and he did a great job. Here are a few pictures of the excitement. Grandpa came out as an old man, they gave him an ax and he was supposed to cut down a tree, they blindfolded him and he went to cut it and turned toward the audience like he was going to throw the ax at them. Everyone went, "Whoa!" It was really funny. Then they all danced together and he was really moving well, especially considering that he is 91. His was

Happy Birthday Alli and Other Adventures

Tanner was excited about all of the fun, except the long car drive.
Alli was thrilled with all of her birthday adventures, she was jumping up and down saying, "Happy Birthday!"



Alli loves to spend time with John. The only problem is that she actually calls him John a lot of the time instead of Dad.
This tree seemed like a fun place to take a family picture.




Look at this cute little 2 year old.

Sitting on the tractor pretending to drive.
Alli fell asleep at the Olive Garden but the nice waiter still brought her a treat. To bad it was all gone before she woke back up. It was pretty hilarious to people in the restaurant that she fell asleep at her own birthday lunch.
Tanner is just the happiest little guy. He smiles all the time and is really expressive.
As you can see from the above picture, getting rid of the bottle isn't going so well.
Here is Alli with Mi Mi and Grandpa. She loves going to their house.

Here she is opening up the cute outfits that she got for her birthday.
This is Tanner and I standing in front of the place where we stayed in McCall Idaho. If you have never been there, I would recommend it, it is beautiful.


Well, this week has been eventful for us. John has been on fall break. He flew back in from Puerto Rico on Tuesday night late. Alli and I waited up until midnight for him to arrive. On Wednesday he went into work and then we left and headed for Idaho where we stayed with our awesome friends Karin and Dave Dance. They have a cute little boy Evan that Alli played with and another baby on the way. We knew them in Iowa and Dave is an attorney at a firm up there. They have a super great house in a great area.

We then went to Boise where John had an interview with the District Attorney's office there. He was impressed with the office and after the interview we went up to stay in McCall idaho where my parents have a time share type of thing. It was really fun. We swam a lot and relaxed a lot.

We came back home on Friday night and then this morning we started the fun for Alli's birthday. She was able to pick out some toys and then we went to visit her Christiansen Grandparents. They gave her the cutest outfits to wear to her gymnastics class that she is taking over at the Little Gym. They have been so good to her and she was really excited to go see them.

We then went to eat at the Olive Garden because she loves noodles. She ate so many breadsticks that she fell asleep in Tanner's carseat and wasn't up for any noodles. She and I both then took a nap while John watched Little T.

After we got up, we headed back to Wheeler Farms. This is such a great place. Alli loved the animals and loved feeding the ducks. We went there a week or so ago, but when we asked her where she wanted to go today she said that she wanted to go to the farm to see the cows and the tractor. I think she loves the farm because my dad is a big time farmer and he has taken her a lot to see the animals and he calls her on the phone and talks to her about the animals that she sees when she is with him. I think that he loves it that she is interested in farming. We also took a few more family pictures because the last ones that we took there didn't turn out the very best.

After we went to Wheeler farms, we headed to Target to let her pick out a present. We got this really awesome Dora house that she has enjoyed playing in. We topped it all off with this organic macaroni and cheese that they sell at Target. To me it looked gross, but Alli really seemed to love it.

Next Saturday is Alli's big birthday party. We are having it in Spanish Fork with both of our families that can come and Alli's best little friend from Oklahoma. It should be a lot of fun and I will post more when it gets closer.

We feel really lucky to have Alli in our family. She brings us so much joy and she is really growing up to be a lot of fun.

A Trip to Puerto Rico...A Bottle and a Potty

While John is gone to Puerto Rico, I am going to be staying home working on some milestones with my little Alli. Since she is almost 2, I think that it is time for her to get rid of her bottle(She only drinks water in the bottle), but we bring it everywhere and it is one of the ways that we make her happy if she is sad or that we want to get her to sleep. I may still use it at night and for her nap, but when she asks for it during the day....I am going to give her a "Big Girl" cup with a straw. I also hope that she will take her nap without the bottle, I will just try to wear her out today. I am also working on potty training her. I am not doing the best, but I have been determined to take her every 1/2 hour. I set the kitchen timer and when it goes off, I jump up and say, "Oh, I heard the potty timer go off." Then, I set her on the potty and see what happens. It has been one of the most adventurous things about having a kid so far.

We will see how it goes, if anyone has any suggestions on what worked with their kids for getting rid of bottle and potty training, I would love to hear them.

I will post more about his trip when he gets back but for now I better go because I hear the "Potty timer" going off.

Wheeler Farm

Alli loved the big pigs.
Alli loved the huge rabbit.

Giddy Up horsey.



If you live anywhere near Salt Lake...I would strongly recommend visiting here. Almost everything you can do there is free. We had a great time looking around and Alli loved seeing the animals. They had pretty much all the farm animals that you would want to see and ducks and geese. It is really set up great for kids and there are some great places to take pictures of your family. We didn't get the best pictures, but we had a lot of fun.

Gymnastics Class at The Little Gym

Alli loves to be a monkey on any bar that she can find.
She loves going through this tube thing and rolling on the top. There was a bigger kid in the tube and she rolled him all over the mat.



She loves bouncing on these balls. John and Little T were taking a time out from the fun.
At the end, they always blow bubbles and let the kids play with balls and bubbles. It is really fun.


Alli is really enjoying her little gymnastics class. I decided to take some pictures on Thursday because John decided to come so I thought it would be fun to take some pictures since I will most likely be there on my own for the next 13 weeks of class. She loved running around and seeing all the kids. I think that she will be more daring than I was at that age. When I was in gymnastics, I was kind of a chicken to do anything, but she seems to be pretty daring. It is really fun to watch her grow up and experience new things.