Merry Christmas!!

I love the month of December. It's the one month I don't mind the snow and cold as much because it just goes with Christmas. I love the parties and the Christmas music and especially my two cute girls in their new Christmas dresses!

Look at my smiley girl!!

My sister took these photos and did a GREAT job...as usual!

We were Mary and Joseph in our ward Christmas party and Abby has been talking about Mom as "blue Mary" and Dad as "big red Joseph" ever since. Baby Claire was Baby Jesus and we tried to make her look as boyish as possible. :) She was great! Abby wasn't actually in the nativity scene, but she wanted to be in the picture.

And one more of cute Christmas cousins...

Merry Christmas!!

My Two Little Monkeys

Aren't they so cute?!?

We (really it was just me holding out) also broke down and let Abby out of her "cage." As you can see, she is thrilled!!

A Week in Paradise

Eating these...

and drinking this...

is how we got to spend our Thanksgiving in Hawaii!!!

Don't worry though, we got turkey too.

We were able to spend a fabulous week in Maui with my entire family. It was awesome!! I was going through my pictures last night and all I have is pictures of us on the beach. And that pretty much sums up our week! We did go to the pool a couple of times too, but no photos of that apparently.

The kids didn't need much to be entertained...some sand, some water, they were good to go!

We even got my grandma in the ocean!

I love this picture of Abby...she is quite the bird-chaser!

Claire was quite comfy in her pea-pod. She certainly had the best set-up on the beach!

Oh look, I did get a few photos not on the beach! Here we are at the Banyan Tree in Lahaina. The kids had a blast climbing on it.

Thanksgiving Day was wonderful too. We also celebrated my grandpa's 75th birthday on that day (which was the reason behind the trip), and I always love to honor him. We had a great dinner at a hotel in Lahaina and all of my grandparents' children were able to give a special tribute to our grandpa. It was a fabulous and very memorable day!!

Claire loved her first Thanksgiving. She was exhausted just watching everyone eat!

I have been looking forward to this trip for a long time, and while I'm sad it's over, we had such a wonderful time and I'm so grateful for the memories we were able to make. Both of the kids were champion travelers, but I think we'll just stay home for a while now. :)

Oh, and one more thing...

GO UTES!!!!

A Big Weekend!

We had quite a weekend around here. Halloween was great, but I was very slack on the picture taking. Claire didn't get a technical costume, but she still looked cute! We had our fun annual Halloween Party at my grandparents' house and then did a little trick or treating. It took the Abs a while to get from house to house because she was always eating the candy she got.

She was a princess this year, of course! Her costume was darling, but she wouldn't pose for me at all. I couldn't even bribe her with candy. My sister was able to get some pics eventually, but this is the only one that I got.

"Great Halloween!" (As Abby would say...)

We also had Claire's blessing yesterday. It was a great day! My sister took some AWESOME pictures of her in her blessing dress, but I'm saving those for her birth announcement and will post them after I get those done...which hopefully will be soon! Here's a few of my own amateur shots though...

I totally stole this picture idea from my sister's blog...her baby was blessed just a couple of weeks ago. Thanks Jac!

Sadly, this was the best picture we got of all of us. We really did have a great day though. We had so many family members there to support us and to celebrate Claire. My parents were kind enough to let us all gather in their house, since the weather didn't cooperate and our house is way too small for everyone.

It was a wonderful weekend!!

Small Joys

Even though I am more tired than I have ever been before, there are many things throughout the day that always make me smile! For example, I seriously forgot what it's like to set a baby in one spot and come back a few minutes later only to find them in the same spot. I am fully enjoying the lack of mobility of one of my children! Abby has been really good with Claire. She says she is "so tiny" in a high-pitched voice about twenty times a day. She is fascinated with her little hands and feet. I realize she still may rebel at some point, so I'm just enjoying this nice phase. Here they are watching "Dora" together...

I know Claire can't really see that far, but it still looks like she's enjoying the show!

Abby is still up to her usual antics and is quite entertaining. She changes her clothes about twelve times a day and recently decided to give Claire's clothes a try. I found her with these size newborn pants on...I'm amazed she was able to get them on! I hope they're not too stretched out now!

And here's a couple more of my sweet baby. She is growing so fast!

Another great joy in my life now is MILK. Anyone who knows me knows my intense love for cold cereal. Well, I wasn't able to drink milk my entire pregnancy because it made me sick. I got some chocolate milk in the hospital and chugged that in about two seconds. And you can bet that I've been making up for 9 months of lost cereal in the last couple of weeks! I pretty much just leave a bowl out on the counter and put it in the dishwasher at the end of the day. Otherwise we'd be out of clean bowls in, oh, a day. I love to pour a big old glass of milk and drinking the milk at the end of the cereal has never tasted so good!!

Sweet, sweet milk...how I've missed you!

She's Here!!

Before...

and after...

Thankfully Abby is happier in the second picture!

We are so grateful that baby Claire is here and that she is healthy. She is so sweet and perfect...I don't even mind her wake-up calls! I really could stare at her all day and marvel at the miracle that she is. Abby loves her too (sometimes a bit too much), and we are all just trying to adjust to this whole two children thing!

Too Funny

I've been going through pictures this last week and organizing them on the computer. Someday I'll actually get them printed, but that's another story. Anyway, while doing this organizing, I realized that I have tons of pictures of Abby in funny sleeping poses. She's entertaining even in her sleep! Here's the latest one I captured a couple of weeks ago...apparently the book was just too good to put down!

On another note, we are so glad that the zoo decided to build a carousel! We are still loving riding the horsies like Mary Poppins!

And on yet another note, we are so glad that Baby Emma is here!! My sister had her baby on Monday, and I would love to post a picture of her, but I kept forgetting my camera at the hospital and only have a picture on my phone. But trust me, she is a muffin!! I'll get pictures of her soon...

California Fun

We just spent a lovely week in California, fully enjoying the beach!! Just as I thought she would, Abby LOVED the sand and the ocean. She was a little timid of the water at first, but it didn't take long until she was running into the waves like it was a swimming pool. She loved to play in the sand, but didn't necessarily like being sandy, so she spent most of the time running into the water to wash off the sand, only to run back into the sand and get covered again.

She just had to relax after all that playing!

We went down to Corona del Mar one night to look for seashells, but the bubbles we brought were a much bigger hit!

Look...I came too!!

Along with all that water play, we also went to the zoo, watched the fireworks at Downtown Disney (and shopped around a bit), and rode the "horsies like Mary Poppins" at the Spectrum. We definitely had fun!!

Thank you Grandma Jackie and Grandpa Bruce for being such great hosts yet again!!

Our Latest

I really don't realize how much time goes by between my posts...I'll be the first to admit that I'm not a great blogger! Oh well. This past month has been good...nothing too massively exciting has been going on in our lives. We've just been LOVING our new A/C in the hot weather! We even got our power bill the other day and it wasn't too bad! We've spent a lot of time at the pool or outside in the sprinklers as well. Here's a couple of action shots from those favorite activities...

Good thing I took this picture in one of the few green spots in our lawn!

This is the new favorite way of wearing her life jacket...whatever keeps her head above the water!

We had a fun 4th of July holiday. We spent the morning at the neighborhood parade that I grew up with and swam and BBQed that evening. I didn't take many pictures that day (I left that to both of my sisters with the nicer cameras), but here's a couple at the parade...

Things are always more fun with the cousins!! They were quite the patriotic bunch!