Finally Pictures!!

Brandon finally found and downloaded the software for our camera on the new computer so I'm trying to catch up on pictures from the last month. These are mostly from Christmas, but the last few are from life after Christmas...crazy to think it hasn't even been a month since Christmas, it seems like it's been so much longer...probably because the days are going by very very slowly for me, wonder why? :)

All of the stockings were hung in a row...from left to right, Heather and Kevin, Stefan and Stacia, Lindsay and Brandon, Brittany and Mike, Tyler, Hadley, Timothy, Linden, Channing, Charlotte, and Gibson...can't wait to see Caroline's up there next year!!


I tried to get a shot of the kids in front of the presents on Christmas Eve, but this was the best I could do...it seemed like there were so many presents, but I guess when you consider it was for 12 people (yes, Caroline got a couple gifts this year already!!), it doesn't seem as crazy, right?

This was the best shot I got of them together...such cuties!

Working on their Christmas cookies

Charlotte just wanted us to put a plain cookie on her plate and then drizzle a bunch of icing and a few piles of sprinkles and she just ate it all like that, she wasn't really into the decorating part...

Leaving reindeer food in the front yard, we had just finished saying, "don't dump it all in one place" when I saw Timothy had just dumped all of his out in one place...oh well!

Playing cards after the little kids went to bed...I don't remember what game they were playing, but it looked like they were having fun! We did have the world's longest UNO game before this one, it seriously took FOREVER!!

Timothy's gifts from Santa, a big boy scooter and a Buzz Lightyear Helmet and pads...and he's wearing his Transformers sunglasses with it all, pretty cool guy, huh?

Charlotte's toys from Santa, a baby doll bed and highchair, a new Disney princess Barbie and some dollhouse accessories.

The new racetrack, they both love it!

Charlotte playing with her shopping cart and Bitty Baby

Putting together Timothy's new favorite game, I think we all got to play!

Post-Christmas, in our new house, all dressed up, she comes down from her room almost every day in a princess dress with all of her necklaces and bracelets on...I love having a daughter!!

And Timothy doesn't miss out on the dress up play either, he found his boots and Brandon's cowboy hat and a day doesn't go by that he doesn't wear either the soccer jerseys that my dad brings him from all of his international travels or his Sonics or Celtics basketball jerseys...the other day he had on the Sonics jersey, a soccer jersey, and a t-shirt on top of it all...

This "minion" came with our Despicable Me dvd and Charlotte has decided it's name is "Friend". She takes him everywhere, this was her singing to Friend and rocking him after she read him her Ariel book.

Timothy being Timothy...gotta love that boy (and note the Sonics jersey)!

And Charlotte being Charlotte...all dressed up and playing with her dollhouse!

Bedtime

See? Two posts in one day, I am a woman of my word :)

So anyone that has had the privilege of being around my children for very long has gotten to see Charlotte yelling at her brother. I know, you're thinking there's no way that sweet little girl would yell at anyone, but believe, she is such a little Miss Bossy!

So tonight, they're both in their beds and Brandon and I are sitting downstairs listening to the monitors. Timothy starts to yell about something and we immediately hear this on Charlotte's monitor (which interrupted her nightly singing, another tradition):

Timothy! Be quiet! Stop yelling! It's time to go to sleep and not have chocolate milk! Stop yelling and be quiet, OK?

And then she went back to her nightly singing...I promise you, this girl sings in her sleep. Every night before she goes to bed, she sings for quite a while and it almost always includes "Twinkle Twinkle", "Nite Nite Charlotte", "Jesus Loves Me", "God is So Good", and sometimes she throws in "Wheels on the Bus" just for fun. She will seriously just start randomly singing in the middle of the night, usually followed by some mumbling and a few "OK?"'s, she's a funny girl. And she does love her brother, she just also happens to love yelling at him, it's a constant battle around here :)

Bad Blogger

Holy moly I've been a bad blogger lately...to be fair, our old laptop finally crashed and we had to order a new one (which still doesn't have our camera software on it yet, so I haven't been able to download pictures), then it was Christmas, then we were packing up all the stuff we had at my parent's house and on New Year's Day we moved into our new house...since then we've been crazy busy unpacking and setting things up and waiting (as patiently as possible) to hear when our actual closing date will be so that we can paint and finish up the kids' rooms before Caroline makes her grand entrance into the world!! So, yeah, I've been busy :) Here's a quick re-cap and then I promise I will *try* to do a better job of blogging, at least until I have this baby and then I'm sure I'll regress to being a bad blogger again...sorry...

Christmas - our family was so spoiled this year, every single one of us, it was a great Christmas, all the family was together, none of us (except Timothy) slept on Christmas Eve, we all opened presents together Christmas morning and then had a yummy lunch and basically laid around all day being lazy, it was perfect! The kids have played with their presents almost every day since then and certainly use mine (a new iPod touch!!!!) every day. Brandon got a new golf bag and a new driver, so he hasn't had a chance to use it yet, but I think he liked it.

New House - we are all moved in and I've unpacked everything (except the mysterious box that we can't find that has the rest of my fine china and tablecloths in it). The kids' rooms are all set up and ready to be painted, and as soon as get our new washing machine (since ours conveniently broke), I can get all of Charlotte's old clothes and blankets and things washed and put away for Caroline. We're hoping to hear this week when we'll be closing on the house, and the owner's have asked that we wait and paint after we close...this has really been the house buying experience from you know where. In short, never buy a DOD HAP house that's for sale, no matter how good a deal it may seem, if you want more details, let me know. Thankfully though, the owner's agreed to let us move in and pay rent for this month at a ridiculously low rental amount so at least we're in and unpacked in the event that baby comes early.

Kids - Timothy started back to school on the 5th and thankfully has gotten right back into a routine. He's adjusting well to the new house, he just doesn't like to go anywhere by himself in it yet, so we're spending a lot of time together going up and down the stairs, to the bathroom, etc. Hopefully he'll get used to it all soon and feel more comfortable. Charlotte loves "this house" and told me when we were moving in that it was "really really fun" which sounded hilarious since she can't pronounce her r's or l's very well yet and they all come out sounding like w's (I'll let you figure that one out on your own)...she loves the new toy room and her princess room. She was very happy to re-discover all of her dress up clothes and spends most of her days in her purple princess dress with her "Tinkerbell wings" on her back. Caroline is still growing well and right on schedule. I was a little discouraged to hear at my last check up that I was measuring about a week or so behind my due date, but I know she'll come when she's ready. I did have a little scare yesterday, I had slipped down a few stairs trying to get the kids out and in the car to take Timothy to school yesterday morning, I mainly fell on my foot, and it's really sore today...but by last night I was having some stronger than normal contractions and back ache so I finally gave in a called the nurses line and they had me come up to the hospital just to check things out. I think I was only there for a little over an hour, and everything was fine. I only had one contraction while I was there and Caroline was doing fine, so thankfully they sent me home without doing anything more. Always a fun time around here :)

So, coming up this month, we'll be painting the kids' rooms and whatever else we can get painted before my due date, we have to hang some new blinds and basically do a lot of that kind of stuff around the house...Timothy has a lot going on with school, and other than that, we're in full "get ready for new baby" mode over here! I have a normal check up next week and then weekly after that, so I'll try to keep the updates coming on here, or at least on facebook...so Happy New Year bloggers, you can expect lots of baby pictures this year from our family!

60 Days to go....

But who's counting, right?

10 more days and we'll be in our new house, which gives us about 7 weeks to unpack, set up, paint, and wash baby clothes...

Oh yeah, and 4 days till Christmas, woohoo!!

Polar Express 2010

We were blessed this year to be able to ride to the North Pole again this year. The kids had so much fun (and the adults too). Charlotte had a blast singing Christmas carols and eating her treat but immediately sat down and hid when Santa came into our train car. Timothy had fun looking at the lights and, of course, getting to see Santa. Both kids enjoyed dancing down the aisles! Here are some of the pictures, we've been so busy with Christmas activities, it's been hard to find time to blog about it all, but I'll try my best! Be sure to check out facebook for videos of Timothy's Christmas program at school.

Thanksgiving 2010

This year we spent Thanksgiving at Brandon's parent's house in TX. Brandon had saved up vacation for quite a while, so we were able to go for a nice long visit. We had a great time catching up with family, watching the kids play with their cousins, catching up with friends from college, celebrated Christmas with family, and we made a trip to the North Pole too! Here's a few pictures from our visit, I'll try to post about the Polar Express soon and then on to what we've been up to since we got back!!

Snow Day

A lot has happened in the past few weeks, so I'm going to attempt to blog about it all in the order that it happened! Three weeks ago, we had a really bad windstorm that knocked out power for about 15 hours, it was cold and windy and not a fun night! The lights went out around 9pm Monday night (conveniently at bed time) and didn't come back on until the next afternoon. I already think my parent's house is creepy enough at night, especially without a fan or something to drown out the noise...but with all the power out there was no fan noise, no monitor noise, no nothing...just the sound of the wind outside, knocking down tree branches and making a big huge mess...again, not a fun night!

So we recovered...and moved on and Timothy wasn't too traumatized by the lights going out, and then that Saturday, Brandon and I spent the day in Seattle while the kids hung out at Aunt Heather and Uncle Kevin's house (thanks again) and while we were finishing up dinner (at the Space Needle - how awesome is my hubby!!), Heather called and said that their power had gone out...poor kids!

Then on Sunday it started snowing and it snowed and snowed and snowed!! I had a doctor's appointment Monday morning, and I decided to keep it, the snow hadn't accumulated too much so I figured we'd be fine. I dropped Timothy off at school and took Charlotte with me. We had to park in a garage across the street and down about a block from the building I needed to be in so I bundled Charlotte up in the stroller and we faced the cold and (light) snow. I had to stop by the lab first to drink that yummy glucose test drink, went upstairs, talked with my doctor - and I'm not sure I've mentioned this yet, but I LOVE her, she's been so great - but the downside of the visit was that their computers kept crashing so it took longer for her to print off a couple of things that I needed, we made it down to the lab in time, thankfully they weren't busy and got me in right away, took plenty of blood (woohoo) and then we had to go back up to the doctor's office to make the next four appointments (still can't believe it's already time for bi-weekly visits) and then FINALLY we were ready to go! We bundled up again and headed out into the cold and a good 3 inches of snow that had fallen in the two hours we had been inside!!!

Poor Charlotte was covered by the time we got back to the car and I was trying really hard not to panic...it was a little ironic since my doctor had just given my a prescription for panic attacks!! I've never really driven in the snow and I was so scared. We slid a little until we got to a clearer road and then it took me over an hour to get back to Timothy's preschool to pick him up. Thankfully, Brandon left work early and beat me to the school and got Timothy on time and then we followed him home, normally a half an hour trip that took close to two hours!!

Once we were home, the snow was beautiful, Charlotte took a good nap, Timothy and Brandon played outside and had a snowball fight and it was a great day. The next day...all that pretty snow had turned into a solid sheet of ice and the temperatures weren't supposed to make it out of the 20's for a few more days...so Brandon and I decided to pack up our stuff early and head to a hotel across from the airport to stay for the night to make sure we wouldn't miss our flight Wednesday morning. We were very thankful for my dad's four wheel drive and the nice warm hotel room and we were incredibly thankful that the airport wasn't packed and crazy on Wednesday...more details about our trip to TX to come, including another ride on the Polar Express!