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.