fall, sweet fall.

as i sit here this chilly morning drinking my cup of pumpkin spice coffee, my heart is very thankful. the month of october has been a very welcomed one for us. we love the fall. the cooler weather has been such a relief for us after a sweltering summer. we spend every sunday after church in our pjs watching football and spending time as a family. i light candles that smell like pumpkin spice and vanilla cookies. nick's football season is *almost* over... it has been so much fun, and at the same time we are excited for much more family time! bella's first halloween, which meant an oh-so-cute costume and plennnnntyyy of pictures. and i've been busy making plenty of chili, soup & comfort food along with apple crisp and pumpkin bread.

some highlights from our month:

the littlest cornwell
bella is growing faster than ever. it seems as if she is changing by the day! she is five and a half months and is just so fun. we began giving her rice cereal about a month ago and it started out pretty rough. our sometimes-high-maintentence-little-girl haaaated it the first few tries. but we stuck with it, and like a champ she has turned a big corner. she gets VERY excited now to eat her cereal, which includes lots of kicking and squealing. one of my favorite parts of the day. she has been sleeping on her belly now for about the past month, which was scary at first, but now it's routine. i'm very happy to say that the four month sleep regression is (knock on wood) behind us, and lil girl is sleeping consistently through the night once again. she's enjoying her doorway jumper and (still) thinks her daddy is the coolest guy to ever walk on this planet (and she is right). here are two videos... one of the first time she ate rice cereal... and then one nick took last night. ahhhh... progress.

family time

football season is coming to an end, which is bittersweet for us. nick has really enjoyed coaching and bella and i have had tons of fun going to his games along with a small posse that usually accompanies us (nick has a lot of fans). we attempted to get some family pics on the field after the game one night. as you can see, not so successful. we were really thankful to have a day off together this past friday, which included a trip to a local pumpkin patch. we managed to get plenty of pictures... and some family ones actually turned out this time. bonus. currently, sunday is our family day and we really enjoy our time together. which usually includes laying around and watching football. and yes... bella loves the nfl.

costumes&candy

ok, so for our munchkin this year, halloween was really just about the costume. not so much the candy. but i found this a-dorable flower costume this year at old navy on sale and had to snag it. mom confession: i actually found it at the galleria old navy in dallas but they didn't have the size i needed... so i asked them to help me find one in bella's size. apparently the flower costume was a popular choice this year for 3-6 month olds because the only one available in the whole metroplex was at an old navy in plano, about 20 minutes away. as i made the trek to track down the super-cute costume for my daughter who doesn't even know the difference, i called my mother on the way to tell her that i've officially crossed over to the crazy side. oh well. it made for cute pictures, right? *sigh* we got to hang out with family halloween night, which made for some more cute pictures with bella's cousin, wyatt (aka mario) so cute!

me&the mr.

we've decided that we need to take more pictures of just the two of us. now that we have a munchkin, she tends to take up most of what's on our camera. but as we continually tell bella even though she has no clue what we are saying, we love god first, each other second, and her third. just to set the record straight from the very beginning. i once heard a professor say in college that the best gift parents can give their children is a love for one another. oh, how we agree. so here's to the start of an effort to take more husband&wife pics. love. this. man.

can't believe november is upon us. as they say, it's the *most* wonderful time of the year.