Vaughan is just getting to the point where he can start to recognize letters and numbers on his own, so I figured a little help from some fun counting bean bags would make learning a little more entertaining. I found a really great idea/tutorial at Chez Beeper Bebe and I decided to give it a try.

I used some fat quarters that I got at Hobby Lobby to make it easy to color coordinate all the bags and numbers. I also used navy beans to fill the bags and I added buttons to the backs of my bags to help Vaughan learn the numbers. If he doesn’t recognize the number by looking at it, he can flip the bag over and count the buttons.

My machine embroidery skills leave A LOT to be desired, so after I got through about half of them and decided they looked pretty bad, I opted to do a simple hand embroidery stitch on the remaining five bags. I guess it all worked out in the end, but if I were to do this again, I would just skip the machine embroidery and do them all by hand.

As I have for all three of Vaughan’s birthdays so far, I took this set of pictures of Rheya to remember how she was a one year old.

Here are a couple of other cute shots…

Yes, Rheya is a year old! Wow, that year went by entirely too fast. She’s starting to take a few steps on her own, she’s understanding lots of what we say, and she has even picked up on a few signs so she is starting to communicate. It’s amazing how quickly children learn and grow!

We celebrated her birthday with Nana, Grandpa and Grandma…and a few gifts, some dinner and a cake. Yum!

Here are the cakes I made.

She dove right into the cake. She picked it up with both hands and managed to get quite a bit in her mouth.

Happy birthday, sweet girl!

Another year older. This isn’t a “big” one…just plain ol’ 36. Always fun to have cake though!

We celebrated my birthday with my mom (since hers in on Groundhog Day) on February 6th and then celebrated again with Rick’s mom on February 13th. Lots of partying!

And here we are at Barb’s house doing some more celebrating!

Vaughan just looked so cute today that I had to snap a couple of pictures!

Well, both kids ended up with a nasty cold that seemed to go on forever and a day, but they have finally come through it all and are feelin’ fine. This was the first day in well over a week that I got a real smile out of Rheya.

Here’s Vaughan showing me that he’s three years old!

Here’s Rheya doing some cruisin’ on the couch. She’s close to walking now!

Vaughan’s hair was getting out of control. While I really wanted to see what it would look like if we let it get a little longer, it was pretty obvious that it just doesn’t work. So, after a particularly crazy hair day, we decided to cut it short again!

We made another trip down to Ft. Collins to Cool Beans Playhouse and Cafe. The kids had a great time and their panini sandwiches are delicious!

As has been the tradition since Vaughan was born, we took this family picture tonight (New Year’s Eve). Here’s wishing you all a happy and prosperous new year!

We had another great Christmas here at the Woodard house. We actually had four Christmases starting the weekend before with my sister and her family, then moving on to Christmas Eve at Rick’s mom’s house, then Christmas morning at our house and then followed by Christmas night at my parents’ house. By December 26th, Vaughan was sure there were going to be more presents to open! Here are a few pictures of the festivities!

Christmas with the Funk family at my parents’ house…

Christmas Eve at Rick’s mom’s house…

Christmas morning at our house…

Christmas night at my parents’ house…

We hope you all had a fantastic holiday!