My reason to laugh today

When I walked into the room Haylee proudly announced with a faux breathless voice, "Look Mom! We're getting energy!"

December Highlights

Cambree and her Uncle Twinkie at one of the times when she should have been sleeping but really just wanted to come downstairs and play games with us.

Elefun! Cambree's smiling because although she had no clue how to play the game or that there was even a game going on, she was in the middle of 4 squealing big girls!

Grandma's bathtub is much cooler than ours!

Marianne (BJ's mom) made matching jammies for all the girl cousins. While the whole process of getting them all done in time was a bit stressful, they turned out adorable...at least we thought so. These are my attempts to capture the matchingness. As you can see, they were all very willing to comply.

"I'm gonna take a picture, go stand next to BJ if you want to be in it!"
We went with all the rest of BJ's family to see the lights on temple square on Christmas eve. It was cold as always and I guess that is why Haylee was such a grump, but it was just nice to be together and here all the oohs and ahs from the kids.

Haylee was so excited to go play in the snow since she hasn't seen much of it out here in Carolina. Her cousin Sami got to teach her how to make a snowman and angels and all that...

These 2, above and below, are probably some of my favorites from our trip...why? Because they show personality I guess. Below is very typical of Bree, trying to fit as much food, not normal food, big people food, into her mouth at one time as possible

Jack: "Hey Haylee! What level can you get to on Grandma's tank game? I can get to level 2!"
Haylee: "Huh? Uh, I'm playing princess right now..."
He convinced her to play the tank game. I wasn't so sure hearing them all intense on shooting and all but it was hilarious to watch (oops, bad mother moment) and I love their faces on this one!

Our first time ice skating in who knows how long...we enjoyed spending the evening holding hands (not each others') and catching Annie :) Haylee refused to try it but had a ball watching us go around and around...every time we got back to her side she'd jump and scream "HI MOM AND DAD!"
Haylee and 3 of her cousins taking turns on Grandma Jan's lap for story time...

Poor Mr. Grinch

I bet he never expected to be dressed in a pink doll onesie complete with velcro diaper.

Oh, and he needed to be changed several times.

Oh, and he got entertained with rattles and such,

and rocked to sleep...

Tryptofan

Julie's brother Ryan and his wife Jenna, decided last minute to join us NC folk for Turkey Day and boy were we glad. Things would have gotten rather dull without them.

Much to the disapointment (and that's putting it lightly) to all the male members of the family, we rented a cheerleading game to play on my sister's Wii after we ate. Haylee was probably the most enthusiastic about it even though we all enjoyed playing it...very reminicent of DDR...


Cambree found other ways to keep herself occupied while everyone else played the Wii...



Can you say cheese? I mean seriously folks, CHEESE! This has become her trademark grin.


Thanksgiving sugar cookie decorating...per BJ's request.

Not too late!

So I just realized that I haven't posted Halloween pictures yet. That could be because I was so mad at myself for somehow misplacing all the pictures we took on Halloween night or it could be because I just forgot, your choice. These ones from our Trunk-or-Treat are pretty cute though too!

A Not so Haunted House

My family has always done gingerbread houses around Christmas time so I had this great idea to make a Halloween house (not a scary haunted house, c'mon, Haylee's only 3 years old) with Haylee. All the prep work took a little longer than I anticipated so Haylee only got to do a little bit of the decorating before bed and I felt bad doing the rest without her but it was one of those nights when we both needed her to go to bed and I really needed to finish asap before my royal icing turned into royal cement...

It was worth it though. I was rewarded in the morning with plenty of oohs and ahhs and wows and "thanks for making this house for me mom!" oh, and several "can I eat it nows?" thrown here and there too.

It took more time than I planned but it really was a lot of fun. I recommend this project to anyone, with or without kids.

Tactile Snacking

What better way to teach your kids to enjoy different tactile experiences than to finger paint with chocolate pudding? You can tell which one was a little more into the experience than the other! I love these pictures because they show how vastly different these 2 girls' personalities are...

Haylee likes to take her time with new things until she's more sure of herself and only then she will let loose - a little. She also likes to have everything clean; she really couldn't believe I was encouraging her to do this. Also I think she went and washed her hands 5 times during our 20 minute finger painting experience.

Cambree, on the other hand (someone else's other hand) knew immediately the purpose of this experience was to allow her to figure out how much of this gooey sweet stuff she could consume in the shortest amount of time and if, along the way, she happened to make some sort of design on her tray, well that was just an added benefit. She ended up needing a "refill" from the paint pot about as often as Haylee washed her hands!