Christmas 2013

The most wonderful time of the year!  Christmas 2013 was a success!  I was a bit nervous and wondered if we'd pull it off.  I had everything timed out perfectly but my plans came to a halt when Adeline and Avrie came down with the stomach flu on the Thursday before Christmas and had to miss their school party on Friday and didn't recover until Monday. Fortunately nobody else in the family got sick but I did have to just let some things go this year.  Like cards for example....our Christmas cards have become New Years cards....and I'm mailing them out tomorrow, January 13th. Oh well.   They turned out super cute though! I'm excited for them anyway.

The favorite gift this year were the nutcrackers you see in this picture.  I have to say that they really love their bath robes and their ice skates as well.  We are working on ice skating.  If you look carefully in the picture Avrie has a splint on her left wrist because she fell while ice skating.  She's fine now thankfully.  Next time we'll be sure to wear wrist guards under our gloves.

I think one of my favorite memories this year will be when our family went Christmas Caroling. We visited our neighbors and some older single women from our ward.  Kermit played the guitar and we sang "Good King Wenceslas" and "Away in a Manger."  Both were very cool arrangements and the girls sounded so good!  Hearing their voices never got old and almost made me cry every time!  I loved it! I definitely want to do that again next year. 

Over the break we visited a few museums and watched movies but many days were spent home in our pajamas enjoying whatever each person felt like. Some of our traditions didn't happen this year but we have the good excuse of having a new baby.  I think the thing I really want to concentrate on and set as a personal goal for 2014 is to have the shopping done by October 1st. Fall is such a busy time for our family with birthdays and holidays so I would love to unwind and focus more on service to others in December rather than worrying about if I'm ready with gifts for my own family.  I better get started! =)

Oh,and I have to mention that the girls were in HEAVEN when we got hit with a massive winter storm that dumped tons of snow and left us with crazy low temperatures.  Like  40 below!  It was heaven because school was cancelled for two days and then a third day because the pipes froze at school.  It was the vacation that kept on giving!  Thank you Chicago for the three extra days of Christmas vacation!

A Weekend in December

This little girl had her 2 month check up.  She's perfect and healthy!  What a blessing!  She is in the 95th percentile for height (24.5 inches) and 75 percentile for weight (12 lbs).  She's growing so fast.   All her 0-3 month and some of her 3-6 month clothing went next door to our neighbor who has a baby just a few weeks younger and much smaller.   She started smiling and cooing a few weeks ago and we are loving it!  She has started to prefer keeping her head turned to the left so we are constantly trying to get her to turn right so that she doesn't end up in a helmet like Annaliese did.  She also got shots at this appointment.  She did not like that at all.   Last time she was pretty mellow.  Not so this time.  I finally got her settled down afterwards and she slept for 3 hours but when she woke up....wow! Never have I heard her scream like she did that day.  Thank goodness for Tylenol! I felt so bad.  She was miserable.  Tylenol took the edge off and before long we had our sweet happy baby back.

This weekend we got some awesome snow.  "Sledding Hill" at Oz was full of neighborhood kids- ours included.  Althea and I stayed in the car and watched.  The girls are getting pretty good. I even saw some surf board type sledding from them.  Good times!  Afterwards we went to Avrie's favorite restaurant...Noodles and Co.  Here they are still in their snow clothes waiting for our food. 

And...What would we do if we didn't go see the Joffrey Nutcracker?  Three years in a row now we've taken the girls so that means it is definitely a tradition.  It never seems to get old and we all love it.  Also for the third year in a row we drove through the drive thru at Protillo's for dinner.  Then like every year we had to speed through town to try to get there before we were late.  And for the third year in a row we sat in our seats just as the lights dimmed and the show began.  We've got it down!  Maybe next year I'll get us an early dinner reservation somewhere nice and mix things up a bit! 

We decided the best dances are the Arabian Dancers and the Russian Dancers. Also the girls loved the little ginger bread boy.  We have a couple of different storybooks of the Nutcracker that we read every year.  The girls don't know this but I'm pretty sure that Santa will have 4 giant Nutcrackers for them this year on Christmas morning. I hope they'll love them.  

 On a side note....This year Adeline announced that she would like to take ballet lessons.  She just doesn't want to perform ever and she doesn't want anyone to be in her class.  Hmmm.  Will work on that but I am glad that she is interested in lessons because I think she could be good at it.  Actually I bet all three could be awesome.  Dance lessons are a good thing I think.

And finally, Kermit has been working on a new song/video for Christmas.  Good King Wenceslas.  My girls have the sweetest voices.  It melts me when I hear them sing.

Busy weekend I'd say.  More crazy but fun days ahead as we count down to Christmas.