Christmas 2011

This year was so much fun, Charlotte and Timothy were both so excited for Christmas and we had a blast with them.  We actually had a decent night's sleep on Christmas Eve and out of the 8 adults and one teenager (still scary to think that about Tyler) that were at my parents' house Christmas morning, it was Timothy and Charlotte and Caroline that were still sleeping and had to be woken up to go open presents!  Timothy was super excited but it took Charlotte a little longer to wake up.  Once she did though, every present was a huge deal and she was so excited.  Caroline played a bit and snuggled a bit, the first Christmas is always sweet but tiring, she only wanted to be held so we were thankful to have plenty of aunts and uncles and Tyler and Grammy around to help out!  We're excited to celebrate New Year's Eve this year with our Young Adults group at church and hoping the new year brings us more opportunities to bless those around us. 

Rolling out cookie dough to make Christmas cookies, such concentration!

Decorating the cookies...I think he went through a whole tube of frosting and a whole thing of sprinkles on just one cookie...Santa needed some help eating all of that sugar!

Leaving cookies by the fireplace for Santa

And leaving reindeer food on the lawn for the reindeer

One last picture before bedtime :)

All of the "kids" posing on the stairs before opening presents, we wait there while Grammy and Grumpy go "check" and make sure Santa came :)

Charlotte playing with her legos ("wegos") in her princess tent

Caroline pushing around her new walker

And Timothy having a bounce on his trampoline, he told me wanted to ask Santa for a trampoline so we had to have a talk about how Santa knew we didn't have a yard big enough for an outdoor trampoline and Timothy said that a little on to jump on inside would be OK...thank goodness :)

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to all!!

Holiday Fun

We've been so busy this month that it's been hard to find time to actually sit down and write out a post about it all.  Some of the fun things we've done are...breakfast with Santa at church.  This is the second year we've done this, last year we had about 30 people and we more than doubled that this year!  The kids love it!  The day after that we went with the family to go ice skating in Tacoma.  Timothy loved it, as usual, and I thought Charlotte would be fussy and scream bloody murder as soon as I tried to put skates on her, but she actually loved it (as long as neither Brandon or I held her hands)!  Since then, we've enjoyed having Timothy home every day on his winter break and baking like crazy!  Brandon and I are going out tonight and then we'll head over to my parents' house tomorrow for Christmas!!  Merry Christmas to all and Happy New Year!!!

Ten Months Old

I don't know about anyone else, but I am super impressed that I'm writing about this before Christmas!  Anyway, Caroline turned 10 months old on Tuesday and I actually took her picture today...I thought I'd capture her straight from her bath, all warm and fuzzy in her jammies :)  So at ten months old...

She has two teeth and I think she might be working on some more.  She drools a lot and she chews on everything!  She can pick up food now and get it into her mouth so she plays with puffs and little pieces of bread a lot.  She loves yogurt more than anything else in the whole wide world!

She learned how to dance and her favorite song is Jingle Bells.  She also like Party Rock Anthem, but I didn't really want to admit that.  Brandon has it on his phone so she likes to hold onto that and dance with it.  She gets really excited.

She still loves to clap and she's figured out how to wave.  Sometimes it sound like she says, "hi".  She mostly says "mama" and "dada" and other baby talk babble.

She's much more steady on her feet now and can pull up on anything.  She tries to be brave and let go but hasn't quite figured out how to stand up on her own yet. 

She's sleeping like a champ, we usually get two 2-3 hour naps during the day and she sleeps around 12 hours at night.  She's only nursing 4-5 times a day now which makes me a little sad since she's the last one, but on the other hand, I'm getting ready to be done with that too!

She's staying with her first official teenage babysitters tomorrow night, so hopefully she'll do well!  Brandon and I are very excited for our date night!

She's still such a sweet happy girl and the only time she really gets loud or upset is when she's in her high chair and we don't feed her fast enough!  I can't believe the next monthly update post will be in 2012 and she'll be a month away from her first birthday...I'm avoiding thinking about that right now!