Five Months Old

Charlotte turned five months old last Saturday, sorry it's taken me a while to get her pictures up, it's been a busy week! So here is what our little angel has been up to this past month!

I have two pretty, little, teeth on the bottom of my mouth and sometimes I like to bite mommy and let her know how much I love my new teeth!

I started waking up two or three times at night because my teeth hurt and I was in a new room, but I'm getting better now.

I started eating rice cereal and I LOVE it! I like to attack my spoon and eat as much as I can. Mommy can't give me a whole lot in one day though because it hurts my tummy.

I love to watch my big brother dance and play and I laugh out loud when he dances around the room for me!

I can push up all the way on my arms and roll over both ways. I can sit up by myself sometimes too!

I move around a lot when I'm on my tummy, I like to put my head down and push off with my legs to "scoot".

I can grab my toys now and I can grab other things too, like mommy's drink or daddy's straw or the plates on the table.

I can put myself to sleep, all mommy has to do is lay me down and I will go to sleep, mommy likes that a lot!

Everyone says I'm such a happy little girl and when I smile my whole body smiles! Mommy and daddy say that they are so blessed to have such a sweet little girl!

Explanation

So I was in a rush when I was posting about Christmas and didn't explain the pictures that well...sorry. Christmas is a HUGE deal in our family, for some families it's birthdays or Easter or whatever, for us, it's Christmas. There are so many traditions it's a little ridiculous, but I wouldn't change it for anything. Basically, it goes like this...the tree goes up the day after Thanksgiving. The lights go up outside the house and the inside is fully decorated. Every year my mom says the next year won't be as big, but then every year it looks like the entire living room is taken over with presents. We hang up all the stockings for all the kids (and spouses now) and all the grandkids. I had to show a close up of Charlotte and Channing's stockings because they're just so cute.

On Christmas Eve, we all make cookes and decorate them and each kid picks one out to leave on the plate for Santa with his glass of milk. This year my mom had made reindeer food so Timothy and Tyler sprinkled that out on the lawn. We watch a movie, this year it was the Polar Express and the the kiddos go to bed. Timothy and Tyler had to share a room this year, Timothy was so excited! In the morning we all get up and wake up mom and dad. They have to go downstairs first to check and make sure Santa came, turn on the fire place, and turn on the Christmas music. Then we all run downstairs and watch the kids go crazy checking out their Santa gifts. Santa does not wrap presents in our house and each kid has a spot in the room for their gifts and stockings. We open stockings first and then my dad wears the Santa hat and passes out the gifts one at a time. We take turns opening them, youngest to oldest. We always eat orange rolls for breakfast and when we were younger, Brittany and I would always go up and try on our new clothes and have a "fashion show".

It is such a meaningful day for all of us. Check out Heather's blog for a video of the morning. Kevin had set up his camera and taped the entire morning and has it on there in fast forward speed and it's hilarious to watch the mound of presents get smaller and smaller. I just love the family traditions and how we all just do them without complaining or even thinking because it's what we've done as long as I can remember and it's just not Christmas without these crazy little traditions!

We did have a great Christmas this year, the best part for me was all the snow on the ground! I missed the white Christmas last year because we spent last year at Brandon's parents' house and I remember the last year that my brother was home for Christmas before he got married it snowed on Christmas Eve and we were all excited and then when we woke up in the morning all the snow was gone. We almost always had a white Christmas growing up in Michigan and it was just so picture perfect.

In other news...life in Texas is ok so far. We are all unpacked and getting settled. We found a church that we like and Brandon is enjoying his job now that he has a computer and can actually get some work done! My mom left last Thursday and I came home and booked tickets for the kids and I to go back up there and visit next month. Then my mom and sister are coming down late February to visit us here. I love having visitors - hint hint! We decided that I have to go back to work in March so I'm trying to enjoy these last couple of months home with my kids. We also decided to go ahead and try to potty train Timothy while I'm home with him. Today went pretty well for the first day, we only went through four pairs of underwear so not too bad I guess!

Here are some more pictures from the last month, I'll post about Charlotte's fun fifth month later...not my favorite month so far, but I still love her!

Christmas Recap

This will probably be more pictures than anything else, but I imagine that's all anyone cares about anyway. We had a great Christmas. We actually stayed at my parents' house the weekend before Christmas because they were planning to have a "going away" party for us, but the snow and weather was so bad that only one family made it out there and we ended up having to stay at their house until Monday morning. So we got back to our house Monday and did some MAJOR packing and then Wednesday morning we went back to mom and dad's for Christmas eve. We spent Christmas eve making cookies and enjoying family. We watched the Polar Express and left cookies and milk for Santa and sprinkled "reindeer food" in the front yard. It was a lot of fun.

Christmas morning was great, Timothy was SO into it this year! Santa was very generous and left him a train table with lots of tracks and trains and a tool bench and lots of other little goodies. Brittany got him a car steering wheel game thing and I think he played with that all morning. Grammy and Grumpy got him a new tractor to ride on in his new big back yard. He's a little scared of it, but he's getting the hang of how to steer and change gears. Charlotte got lots of pretty clothes and baby dolls and toys.

Anyway, so here are the pictures...enjoy!

We're Here!

Well we've been here for almost as week now, but it's been so busy with unpacking and all the things that go along with that so I haven't had a chance to get online and blog much. I love our new house, it's so pretty and, thanks to my wonderful mom, almost all of it is unpacked already! All that's left os a box in Charlotte's closet and a few boxes of books and movies that I can't unpack until we get a new entertainment center. I need to get going hanging stuff up on the walls and we need to put Timothy's new bed and dresser together but other than that, we're good!

Timothy is doing ok with all the new-ness...he had some "going to bed" issues, but he seems to be ok now, and he loves all the space to run around and play, he has a big toy room now and a nice back yard. He kept getting lost in the house the first couple of days, he took off running once and then stopped and said, "he wait, where's my bedroom?", it was pretty funny. He liked his Bible class on Sunday morning and he did really well.

Charlotte is fine, thankfully at almost five months old you don't notice change too much. She has cut her two front bottom teeth now and I'm hoping we get a break between these and the next ones. She's been so sad, in so much pain, and not sleeping well at all. We got a full 12 hour night on Tuesday night, but I think it was just a fluke! She's really started to grab for things now though, I have to watch out when I'm holding anything because she immediately grabs for it!

Not much else going on, we're going tonight to buy Brandon a new truck and I have a HUGE to-do list to keep my busy for the next week or two! We got a new computer so I haven't set up our camera on it yet, but I have a lot of cute pictures to share as soon as I get around to doing that! Anyway, just wanted to update that we are here and all is well. Happy New Year!