Christmas

I hope you had a great Christmas. Ours was pretty good, but I think the girls and I are enjoying the fact that Nathan is around for the week more. I couldn't come up with a good way to load all the pictures on the blog, so here is a link to pictures. You can go through them easily by selecting the slide show option in the upper left corner of the page. Enjoy!

at least 7 out of 9

UPS rang our door bell on the 23rd, for the third day in a row. I asked the runner (as the truck had a runner to go to the door to assist the driver) if he went to a lot of houses everyday before Christmas. He assured me they didn't. They came to our house at least seven of the nine days before Christmas and often had multiple packages. This is what happens when you have no family in town :-)

Three out of four

If you count Easter, 4th of July, Thanksgiving and Christmas I've successfully gotten sick three of the four holidays. Nathan asked me today not to get sick on New Years. I have previously been sick on the 4th of July and New Years (if you go really far back) so hopefully I'll stay healthy for New Years and not repeat this accomplishment again.

six..

Six teeth in less than a month. Evie has cut her fourth tooth on the lower front of her mouth. That means she just doubled her tooth count in less than a month. That's crazy! I never remember Hannah doing anything like that. Three of the molars aren't all the way through yet, and at the Christmas eve service she was chewing on her fingers a lot of the time. Poor kid. Hopefully she'll have a break for awhile before cutting anymore teeth.

reading to Evie

Hannah loves to read to Evie. She did great reading the wheels on the bus and I got it on video for your enjoyment.

Row, row, row your boat

Row, row, row your boat is one of Evie's favorite songs right now. She loves holding your hands and "rowing" most of the time she's facing me and will throw herself back with a good amount of force, in the video she's doing it with Daddy...

Christmas Tree

I finally put the Christmas tree up Sunday night after the girls went to bed. Hannah came down Monday morning and said "Mommy, we have a Christmas tree!" all her friends already had theirs up, so she was excited that we now had on in our house. My sister sent us some wrapped gifts, so they went under the tree that day. Without prompting, or seeing anyone do it previously, Hannah picks up one of the gifts and smells it, she then turns to me and says "It's chocolate! I smelled it, it's chocolate"

Christmas Party

Yesterday I took the girls to a Christmas party with a bunch of our friends from the library. They had a good time. Santa was there and gave out presents, Evie ended up with a Corduroy talking bear, that reads the story Corduroy. Hannah LOVES it...the only problem is it's not working consistently. Evie didn't mind that Hannah took the bear after she had only seen it for a minute or two because there was too many other things to get into. Evie loves just getting and opening the presents, so it all worked out well.

Evie getting her gift

Hannah with her gift

Running around having fun.

Getting taller

Hannah will put her cups on the counter when she's not using them. This keeps them out of Evie's reach and fairly safe. Well, yesterday Evie started copying Hannah. She could get the cup up there...

but couldn't quite reach to get it down again....

It became a game of her putting it up, and then saying please and I'd get it back down for her.

Peanut butter orange?

We've been receiving reports from people who received the fudge and the peanut butter fudge was too close to the orange fudge, and that the orange won out flavor wise. Sorry about that. We'll try a different packing strategy next time!

Christmas Party

Last Saturday we went to the Paragon Christmas party. It was at the old Hobby airport terminal, which has been made into a museum. The girls were the youngest by a lot, the next kids there was seven years old, but they did really well. Hannah followed around Elizabeth (the seven year old) a lot of the time and was staying out of trouble, and Elizabeth loved it! :-) Always a good thing. I got to run after Evie for most of the night, but we brought her high chair, so she did sit down and eat, which gave me a chance to visit a little during that time.

Hannah and Elizabeth enjoying gingerbread cookies and balloon animals

Stacking blocks

Evie pulled out the blocks last week and started stacking them. Fun stuff :-) She did a tower of three, not bad for a first attempt.

Efficiency

Evie is currently cutting three molars. That makes five teeth in less than a month. Can we say NOT FUN? I mean, I appreciate the fact that they're all getting done at once, but really, do you have to be that efficient? On Sunday during service she screamed in the nursery the entire time. This is my "mommy? who's mommy? I'm going to play, I don't need mommy" child. She never (ok, well almost never) cries in the nursery and most certainly not for the entire time. She has also been ever so cranky at home, but this too shall pass.

Christmas picture attempt

We attempted to do pictures to send out with our packages of goodies, but they didn't turn out so well. The one we actually sent is from September, but here are some of the attempts, I thought you might enjoy them.

I like this one the best, but Nathan wouldn't let me send it.

Baking complete

We finished the fudge yesterday, we did six different kinds, all very yummy! At least in our opinion. Nathan's favorite is the chocolate orange, made with orange zest from the oranges in our back yard! This morning was spent packing up the fudge to mail out. 17 packages of goodness. :-) I dropped Nathan and Hannah off at Lowes for build and grow (I had done the last three on my own with Hannah and Evie and found it a good way to get the kids out of the house so Nathan could do homework) and they enjoyed that while Evie and I went to the post office to mail the packages. It was nice and simple using the small flat rate boxes. The person at the counter asked where I found so many flat rate boxes, I guess they have been in high demand and short supply, but I must have stopped by the post office at just the right time to pick them up. After sending the boxes we went back to Lowes where Hannah and Nathan were finishing up. A good, but busy morning trying to get everything done by noon.

the baking has begun

I started our Christmas baking yesterday. I made three batches of fudge. One didn't turn out as good as the other two, so it's going to Nathan's co-workers. We've decided to try and simply our lives and are just doing fudge (I think) this year. I'm not sure if it's really simpler, because a good batch of fudge takes about an hour to cook, multiply that times six or seven batches and I still have a lot of baking ahead of me!

did you do that?

Mommy: Hannah, we don't play with our food
Hannah: Did you play with your food when you were a little girl?

She's not even THREE yet, she can't be asking these kinds of questions!

Potty training....I think we've finally got it

After much fighting and bribing (rewarding) I think we're finally there. Hannah has been pooping in the potty for about two weeks now. The keys? No clapping, no saying yay, no excitement when she does it. When she poops she still says "mommy, don't clap or say yay" she's a funny girl, it's all business. But needless to say, I am very excited, because for the past week it's been going very smoothly. YAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! There are many lessons learned and many things I will do differently next time, hopefully the next time will be easier, but for now I'm thankful we've accomplished the goal. I know there's still practice and work ahead of us, but I think we're over the hard part. :-)

Jingle bells

Jingle bells was on the radio tonight and Nathan decided to take the girls on a "one horse open slay" ride in the play room

Nathan got my camera to work again! :-)

A final and it's over!

This semester is almost done! Nathan has finished his take home final and has the in class portion one Wednesday and then he'll be done!!!! I'm looking forward to have him around for dinner more and maybe even getting some Christmas stuff up, or at least doing some Christmas baking :-)

Teeth

Evie has cut two more teeth in the past week. When she cuts teeth she doesn't like to do just one. Her upper right molar and a third one in front on the lower left. If you're keeping track that means she has four upper front center, three lower front center, one molar on the right and one on the left. I think she'll be cutting her other two molars soon because I can feel them in the gums, which will be nice, because molars help a lot when eating food. :-)

Cinnamon buns & a new job

Yesterday we made a double batch of cinnamon buns. This was for Nathan to bring into work. Last Thursday he turned in his resignation, and today the leads in his group were finding out he's leaving. His boss said multiple times "no, you can't leave" while talking to him last week. He will be greatly missed, but has an exciting new opportunity in front of him. Starting January 11th Nathan will be working for Paragon Space Development Corporation on the next generation space suit design (he is currently doing space station support at Boeing). Paragon is a small company and looks like a really good place to work. I'll get to meet his co-workers this Saturday at their annual Christmas party! Anyway, cinnamon buns have been a big hit at Boeing in the past and today was no exception. We tried cranberries in part of them and those were really good. The batch and a half (we kept some at home for the girls and I) that he brought in were gone by the end of the day. :-) Tomorrow he'll bring in what's known in our house as Special K, but is also called scotcharoos, as they have their weekly team meeting and the rest of the team finds out he's leaving.

SNOW!!!!!!!!!!!

In case you hadn't heard, we had SNOW today. Some has stuck. See how I would have had lots and lots of pictures, but I dropped my camera at the beginning of the snow and I can't get it to work, so I have NO pictures. The flakes were HUGE! it was beautiful. We went outside and Evie was just walking around with her hands trying to catch as many flakes as possible. And neither of them wanted to come in. It was a lot of fun. It snowed for about two hours, we have a little you can still see on the grass, but it's raining now, so it's melting pretty fast.

If any one has suggestions of a good point shoot that has a rechargeable battery (mine has been going through batteries like crazy and it's driving me nuts!) or any other suggestions on a good camera it would be welcomed.

The beach, sledding and bubbles in the yard

We did all of that this morning in the playroom. The past few days the girls have had pretty drippy noses and today I wasn't feeling to great either, so we decided to stay in this morning and have some fun. I have added on to the box house the girls have and you can pull them apart just enough to have a nice courtyard, that's where we had bubbles. We pulled the cushions off the couches and had a blanket on the floor, Hannah decided we were at the beach, both girls had a lot of fun jumping on the cushions as well :-) I also pulled them around the house on a blanket "sled" which always gets smiles and laughs.

At the "beach"

The two room house

Evie's latest tricks

I decided to take a video of new(er) things Evie can now do, such as spin around, high five and "jump" which isn't really a jump, but she goes up and down and says the word jump :-) Here it is if you want to see:

Baking Power

Yesterday Hannah helped me make waffles. She helped put the ingredients in and measure them, we went over what each one was as we added it and reviewed everything that went in again after we were done. When Daddy came down she told him about making the waffles, I told him she knew what went in them and so he asked her what was in them. She said sugar, flour, vanilla, egg and oil, not bad we prompted her for milk and then Nathan asked if she put baking powder in, she said "YES! Baking power!" :-)

Climbing to new heights

I was making dinner tonight and Hannah was watching me. So who was watching Evie? No one of course! Hannah turns around and says "Evie's on the table!" I look over and sure enough she is sitting in the middle of the table picking up the various objects that were in the middle of the table and examining them. She can pull out the chair, climb up on that and then get onto the table with ease. I had seen her attempt it once, but stopped her before she actually made it on to the table, but knew it would happen eventually.

Oranges

Today I went out a picked the first orange of the season, we had it for breakfast. The girls LOVED it. Both of them devoured it. I had a couple pieces, it was pretty good :-) You have to like the fact that oranges come from trees and not the the store, I just think that rocks.

the girls playdate

If you want to see what Hannah and Evie were doing while we were on our date last Saturday check out my friends blog: http://flachman.blogspot.com/2009/11/fun-with-hannah-and-evie.html there are some great pictures of the girls there.

Grass stain

Hannah got her first grass stain on her knees a week and a half ago (11/17). Just wanted to report, as I sometime wonder if she knows how to play. I remember tons of grass stains on my clothes when I was a kids, so I was wondering when we'd move from food stains on to something more interesting :-)

Please!

Evie learned a new word this weekend. Please!!! She has had thank you down for awhile, it was a three syllable word, now it's down to two, so it's improving. But the please you get the sign and "eeze" it's very cute and she totally understands if she wants something she has to say please. In church today she wanted some toys out, she goes up to the container she wants open and says and signs please. And when I was getting her dinner just now before I put the food down, without prompting she signed please. :-) I like when my kids can communicate!e

Black Friday

Did you go out shopping on black Friday? When I woke up at 2 am I thought, hey, if I feel better, I can go out shopping since I'm already awake. See how feeling better didn't happen for six more hours and I definitely didn't go shopping, maybe that's why I didn't feel better sooner, because at some level I knew I really didn't want to shop? Anyway, my stomach did not like me and made sure I knew it. This is the second holiday this year I've been sick. I was sick on Easter as well. I have to say, I definitely didn't put on any weight from Thanksgiving dinner and my abs still hurt from the workout they got. :-) I hope your black Friday was better than mine!

Happy Thanksgiving!

I hope you had a wonderful Thanksgiving. Our morning was challenging, but our afternoon was fun with our friends the Barnes. We enjoyed lamb, with all the other more traditional Thanksgiving sides!

Rocket Park

On Tuesday we went to rocket park, where they have the Saturn 5 rocket housed along with a few others. It's free and different from the norm, so the girls had a good time. Not something we'll do often at this point, as there wasn't much for them to do besides run up and down the building, but when it's really empty that's not a problem. I did get some pictures, so here they are.

Evie looking cute outside while we were waiting for our friends.

Anything that makes noise or moves when you stand on it Evie loves to walk on and attempts to jumps. She also loves when her big sister comes and joins the fun.

It's a big rocket!

Running down the building

Evie points to the large white ball (upper center of the picture) and say "ball" one of her favorite things!

Build and Grow 3 & 4

The past two Saturdays I have taken the girls to Lowes for the build and grow project (normally it's twice a month the second and fourth Saturday, but with Thanksgiving they had it two weeks in a row. This has been good to get the girls and I out of the house so Nathan can study in peace. Evie has done great just banging the hammer on the table while Hannah and I work on the projects. Last week we made a garage that came with a little car, which Hannah loves! And has definitely been the most played with project so far, and yesterday we made a snowman that can hold a car with a message in it.

Potty training update

So after having a week at the potty training I had given up again until Nov. 10th we restarted, this time I was determined to do better and NOT give up, because I knew a lot of it was me, not Hannah, I just had to figure out how I was going to go about it. Well, now a week and a half has gone by, we've had accidents three days, BUT Hannah is staying dry through the night and naps. She hasn't had an accident in almost a week at this point and today she pooped on the potty!!!!!! The best part about her pooping in the potty? I was out on a date and our friends dealt with it all! :-) We had been encouraging her in that direction all day, but without any luck, so I had warned our friends and she did it there. Hopefully this trend will continue, and maybe one day she'll be able to go to the restroom on her own without prompting, but that day is still probably a ways off, but we'll see. Good progress for now at least.

And I wondered why...

The girls have been a bit out of sorts the past two weeks, fussy, not as cooperative, Evie was chewing on EVERYTHING. I figured Evie was teething, but hadn't seen a tooth and Hannah I thought was just going through a hard to deal with adjusting to potty training whatever phase. Well, yesterday I found Evie's new tooth! It's a molar on her lower left side, and I was looking in Hannah's mouth today and found that she finally cut the last of her two year molars! No wonder they were both so out of sorts! They've been doing better the past couple days, which is nice.

Story Time

On Tuesday Hannah told me a story, a really long story. Like 15 minutes long. It was over lunch, she's been asking for us to tell her stories a lot lately, and I've been trying to encourage her to tell us stories, but she hadn't done it. She'll read through a book and make up word to go along with it, but she hadn't told a random story. It was great, it was all about her and Evie, and she drove Evie to the park and pushed her on the swings and they went to a friends house. Lots of details and lots of fun!

A Box House

Hannah got up this morning and when she went down stairs and saw a box house in her playroom she asked "is it my birthday?" It was very cute and she is thrilled with the house (cave, crib, boat, fire station), we have two more boxes that we're going to add to it, we may add a dog house as well, we'll see, but here are some pictures of it and her playing for now. Evie still isn't sure about it, but is starting to explore it more.

have you ever seen cattle herding?

Today on the way home from the park we did. There were three guys on horses, at least one with a lasso and they were rounding up the cows that are in the fields near the park. Which is right behind a plaza and only maybe a quarter mile from the highway. Yep, that's Texas for ya. It was pretty cool to watch though and definitely not something you see everyday. Speaking of things you don't see every day, we saw a bald eagle at the park last night and this morning, it was flying pretty low, so it was very obvious what it was and it was beautiful!

Ice Cream!

We made ice cream for the first time in a long time tonight. Both the girls enjoyed it. :-)

Nathan making the ice cream (and trying to keep Evie out of the drawer at the same time)

Chocolate and Vanilla (if you were wondering)

Are you sure that turns into ice cream?

Wow! This stuff is GREAT!

Evie enjoyed a little too, not quite as much as Hannah though..

feeding the ducks

Last week we went to the park three days (and three different parks), it's been gorgeous here, in the upper 70s low 80s and sunny for the past couple weeks. The only bad part, mosquitoes, part of the reason why we did three parks was to try and find one where the mosquitoes weren't bad, but there wasn't one. There was however, ducks at the one we went to Thursday, and I brought bread so Hannah had fun feeding the ducks (and even put up with the mosquitoes) while Evie enjoyed the fact that the birds were so close (she loves following birds around). Hannah also enjoyed that park in general because we hadn't been there since March so it was like new!

Ok, so I turned around for a second and Evie had climbed onto the playground by herself, if you notice the step is high waist height, so I was a little surprised she was able to get up so quick on her own, but that's my climber :-) I took these pictures as she did it a second time later on.





But now where do I go?

Evie wasn't so sure about the slant and flooring, but it didn't take her long to get up and go

There were LOTS of big smiles from Hannah!





And the ducks!

Tick Tock

A couple weeks ago (Oct. 28th) Evie picked up a stuff animal and swung it back and forth while staying "tick-tock, tick-tock" and has been doing it regularly with various objects since then. Well I've attempted to get it on video and haven't been very successful, so here is the best I have:

blowing

Yesterday Evie learned how to blow, I blew on her and she said "blow" and then did it, I'm going to try and get a video, but I'm not sure if it will work, it's really cute because she curls her bottom lip in and blows down.

shoefflé?

I though this was cute. By the time she was done the oven was full of shoes and none were left in the basket.

Bananas

When our house was listed on the market it stated "fruit trees" in the listing, not specifying the kind. I think that's because there is quiet a variety and not necessary all of them have been bearing fruit every year, at least for us. For those of you wondering we have: peach, persimmons, pears, bananas and oranges. This year we've gotten persimmons so far, although I think we finally have some good bananas! Look!

I had to cut these down because it was such a large bunch, I currently have them on our back patio to ripen, we'll see how that goes. I'll let you know if they're any good.

And the verdict is...

We finally got into the doctor today for follow up on Evie's allergic reaction on Sunday. After waiting over an hour past our scheduled appointment time (there were a couple emergencies in the office today) we had a nice chat with the doctor about the peanut butter Evie had gotten all over her face and then broke out in hives. Yep, it's peanuts, no more peanuts or peanut products in our house, for the time being. The doctor said you can out grow the allergy. He also recommended waiting to test for it until 18 months because at her current age the tests aren't very accurate. But he said we should keep her far away from peanuts for at least the next 6 months because the reaction will probably only get worse.
The true tragedy is that this year's Christmas goodies will be peanut free. Ok, so that's not really the wost part, but it's at least on the list.

Dreams

Did you have reoccurring dreams when you were a kids? That's the random question of the day. I did, I still remember a few of them as well. Hannah has dreamed about bugs at least three times now. And when she does it's a long night. Last night she was up (or at least half awake) for about an hour and a half because of bugs. Not so good. Nathan has been sick the past two days, so I was in bed early last night, by 9:45, good thing since Hannah woke up at 11:45 and that's normally much closer to my normal bed time. I had at least gotten a little sleep before being up for an hour plus.

down the stairs!

Evie has wanted to go down stairs on her own since our vacation in Galveston where there was no gate at the top of the stairs and she tried diving down them several times. I've been working with her to teach her how to go down safely and today she did it! She went all the way from the top to the bottom without falling and without diving into my arms. Yay! Of course she still needs more practice, but she's off to a good start :-)

A busy weekend

The name of the game this past weekend was stay out of the house so Nathan could study and work in peace. It worked, he was able to accomplish a lot and was very productive and is less stressed today than he has been in awhile. But they kids are definitely not used to the go, go, go. Saturday we went garage saling (I think we went to five or six of them) then Wal-Mart. Came home, had lunch and then it was nap time, after nap time we went to the supermarket, came home, went to the park and then came in for dinner and to get dressed up for trick or treating, then it was off to our friends to trick or treat and home for bed. Sunday was church, lunch, nap, snack in which Evie broke out in hives from something she ate, at least that's what we think, and then off to some friends for a couple hours to learn more about doing Hannah's hair and what's best for it and then home, dinner and bed. The day light saving time has messed up their sleep, so after all that activity you'd think they would have slept well, but they both woke up multiple times last night. I'm hoping after a more normal day today they'll both sleep well, we'll see. How was your weekend?

afraid of airplanes?

We live about three miles from an air force base. This means planes are going over head regularly and they are loud military aircraft. Well this past weekend was the annual air show, which meant more planes and more noise and some very low flying aircraft (none of them landed in the park though). The show went on Saturday and Sunday, well some point fairly early on Hannah got scared of the noise and started crying every time a plane few over head. She said she was scared of them, she's never had a problem before, but even today on our walk she went back into the stroller instead of walking because of the plane circling the area. I'm wondering how long this fear will last with the fact that loud planes are a daily occurrence, it definitely makes life more challenging.

Happy Halloween!

Tonight I brought the girls out trick or treating with some friends while Nathan stayed in and worked. It was a beautiful night and everyone had a great time.

Hannah before leaving

Hannah and our friend Niki who was a potato

Evie, excited to be down and walking

The group

Our friend Tom and Hannah