Dear Family and Friends,

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays! We’re so excited to send this holiday letter this year. It’s been a very eventful year and we’re excited to share it with you. In April, we had a beautiful baby girl and we named her Kennedi Ray. She’s been such a blessing to us and is the sweetest baby. It’s amazing to see how fast she’s growing up. Kennedi loves to crawl around, play with her toys (especially the ones she’s not supposed to have like mommy’s decorations and sewing machine) take baths, and our favorite-give big, wet kisses. She’s such a happy, fun-loving baby. Mike’s still going to school to be a civil engineer. He has hopfully 2 more semesters until he’s finished. After finishing school, he has a job with Thompson’s Engineering and then we plan to build a house and settle down. I’m finishing up my last year teaching orchestra. I have really great students and I enjoy my job, but I’m looking forward to staying home next year to be a full-time mom. We’re excited for the holidays and hope you all have a great holiday season this year. We love you!

Merry Christmas!
Love, Mike, Sharlie and Kennedi Winder

Long Over Due

It's been so long since I've blogged! It's been a crazy past few months and I have a lot of catching up to do. I started teaching school again, which has kept me insanely busy and besides that, our computer died! That was such a tramatic experience. It's now fixed, but I ended up losing EVERYTHING including pictures of Kennedi. It's taken me forever to put things back on and re-load everything. Our computer is in Kennedi's room since we live in a small apartment and every time I have have a few minutes to do computer work, she's asleep.

School is going well and we're surviving, but I'm so ready for this year to be over and to just be a full-time mom. I have the day off because of parent-teacher conference and I love staying home with Kennedi. She's growing up so much, I can't believe it! Here's a quick update on what we've been up to since July.

We took a trip to Bear Lake with my family for the week, and I took a ton of pictures, but those ended up being the ones I lost from the computer crash. Luckily the rest of my family took a ton of pictures too. We had a great time and the water was beautiful! I never realized how big Bear Lake was. It felt like we were at the ocean.

(I don't know how to turn it)

(She was so happy when she found out it was food!)

Kennedi started eating solid foods. Now she's a pro at it and she loves veggies most of all.

Kennedi learned how to sleep without her swaddle blanket. That was the best day ever! I thought she'd never grow out of being swaddled and now she sleeps better than ever! She can even put her own pacifier in at night. That is wonderful!

Kennedi's been rolling all over the place and then she learned how to scoot. It only took 2 days and she fully learned how to crawl! At just 6 1/2 months, our baby has grown up and now she's into everything! It's such a fun stage, but I was a little sad when I had to baby-proof the house.

Kennedi learned how to give kisses and it's the sweetest thing! She knows what it is and when you ask for kisses, she gives them freely! It's so precious!

On Friday, October 31, 2008, Kennedi turned into a ladybug! She looked so adorable! We didn't really "trick-or-treat" for Halloween because she's too young, but we visited my parents and my Grandma and Grandpa Raymond. She had fun playing with the candy wrappers, but it will be a long time before she finds out what's inside the wrapper!

Isn't she cute!

Kennedi found the laundry basket and wanted to get in it. She's much cuter than laundry-don't you think?

Kennedi loves to help mom-especially when she's doing crafts! Kennedi wanted to play with my hot glue gun, scissors and pins. Luckily, I was able to distract her with some ribbon. What a sweetie!

Trip to Provo

I'm so behind on my posts, but in July, we took a trip to Provo, Utah to see my friend Ami and her cute family. They had a baby in December and I'd never met the little guy, so we decided it was way past due for a mini-vacation. We had a blast! Of course Ami and I had to go shopping and the guys had to stay behind and babysit. Don't feel bad for them one bit-they got to play

X-Box while the babies slept. We have such good babies and such lucky dads. Here are a few pictures from that weekend.

Simon, Ami and Jacob's baby, wasn't sure how he felt about Kennedi, but one thing's for sure. She has fun hair bows to grab!

Things quickly escalated and Simon decided he wanted to hold her hand instead.

We had a great time!

Winder Family Reunion

On July 25th, we spent the weekend with Mike's family up in Spencer, Idaho. My sister-in-law's family has a cabin so we took advantage of that (thanks, Dawn). It was so much fun hanging out and spending time with the family. They have the most gorgeous view that looks down into a creek. We hiked out way down there and spent some time in the water. Even though it was pretty chilly water, Kennedi loved it! I was surprised because she likes her bath water pretty warm, but she had a blast.

What a Beauty!

We took Kennedi to get her 3 months pictures today and I couldn't be happier with the results. I think Katie did an awesome job, don't you!?! I can't believe how grown-up she looks. We don't have all of the pictures back yet, so here's a sneak preview.

(Don't worry, I'll post more when I get them back next week!)

We also got family pictures, but she's more fun to look at!

100,000 miles

My car hit 100,000 miles yesterday. It was a depressing moment for me. I had to take a picture and have a moment of silence for my wonderful car.

I hope it makes it another 100,000 miles.

The Newlyweds

My younger brother, Kade got married on Saturday, July 12. His new wife is such a cute girl-her name is Amy. It's weired when your little brothers and sisters get married. I feel really old! It is fun, though to see them start their new life together. Here are a few pictures from the reception. The lighting wasn't very good, so I'll re-post some more when they get their professional pictures back.

I was in charge of all the flowers and it was quite an ordeal. We ordered them from Sam's club and they were supposed to be delivered Wednesday morning. They never came and at 10:00 Wednesday night, I decided I better call fed ex and see where they were. They were sitting in a warehouse because they couldn't find our address. I about had a heart attack! I couldn't believe they would leave fresh flowers in a warehouse overnight. Luckily when I picked them up Thursday morning, they had put them in the fridge. I quickly took them home and put them in fresh water and then in my fridge. Well, the next morning, I opened my fridge to find a bunch of frozen flowers! I was so mad! Overall, they turned out fine (just like Mike said they would) and I overreacted for nothing. Here are a few pictures of them.

Kennedi looked so cute at the reception, but she was so tuckered out by the end of the night that we wrapped her up and put her to bed. You would've thought she was the one that got married by how tired she was.

Boucy Baby!

We put Kennedi in the bouncer for the first time and she loved it!

Her legs aren't quite long enough to do any major boucing, but she can at least touch the floor and move from side to side. She love to sit up and be indepenant.

Independance Baby!

I love the 4th of July and it was so much fun dressing Kennedi up in her red, white and blue. We spent the morning out at my parent's house and then went to the parade. Menan always has a huge celebration and it's fun to see people that we haven't seen for a long time. Kennedi was happy for most of the day, but she sure got wore out running around in the heat.

Happy 4th of July!

What a pair of cool kids!

This was Kennedi's first time to see fireworks and as you can tell, she's very excited about it!

Okay, so she actually slept through the entire show, believe it or not. I thought is would scare her, but she was so tired that she missed the whole thing!

All in all, we had a great day!