Merry Christmas!

 We have a fantastic day celebrating Christmas with our little family. We started the morning off with presents - you can see Kaitlyn sprinting to the tree below. Then we headed off to celebrate with Jeff's family and then mine. And we ended the day with the most important thing of all - singing Happy Birthday to our Newborn King.

Candy from her stocking ... her favorite gift by far!

Loving her Diego jeep

A Christmas Eve Brunch

This  year we started a new Christmas party tradition with Jeff's Mom (aka Grandma Jo) - we celebrated Christmas with a brunch on Christmas eve morning, in our PJs. (Well Grandma and the kids wore them, anyway!) It was loads of fun. Grandma fixed a huge spread of food complete with a 'decorate your own' pancake bar and made to order omelettes. The kids got all kinds of fantastic gifts and we had just a fabulous time hanging with family.

Listening to the rules of the 'Hide the Reindeer Game'

I found it!

Cousins playing Squinkees

Kids table

Presents!

Grandma's Girls

Grandkids!

Daddy Love

Christmas Parties 2011 - Party 1

The Friday before Christmas we had Jeff's Dad and girlfriend over for dinner to celebrate Christmas early. They came bearing the most generous of gifts - an American Girl doll for Kaitlyn and a Bitty Baby for Kelsey. Both girls were in heaven. Thank you so much for your generosity!

Christmas Time!

From the middle of November until January, we live and breathe Christmas at our house. Here is a glimpse of the fun we had celebrating the holiday.

Santa hats ... they didn't turn out quite like the picture I was copying. :)

Paper candy canes

Our edible nativity

Alt the "Alt Christmas Party". Wearing pink ribbons to remember Grandma and Grandpa who couldn't make it because Grandma was recovering from surgery.

Making Rice Krispie Houses

Making our yearly Salt Dough Ornaments

Reenacting the Nativity Story. Kelsey loves being a King and bringing gifts to Baby Jesus.

Santa was here!

23 Months Old!

Just days from now my littlest girl will be turning two. What a gift she has been to our family for her almost twenty four months of life. These days Kelsey is all about puzzles. She loves doing a whole stack of them at once and is preferring the 12+ piece ones now. She has taken a liking to driving trucks, trains and other vehicles around the house making the 'brrrrrrmmmmm' sound. Of course she is still such a girlie girl too. Kelsey loves to put her dress up skirt on and some dress up shoes or boots and hide behind the curtain downstairs and then come out and 'dance' for us. She and Kaitlyn put on quite a show for us! Kelsey still adores her big sister. These days she is very good at using non-verbal ways to tell us who she wants to do things with. If she wants Kaitlyn to read her a book instead of me, she'll walk right up to Kaitlyn and point or poke her. Its cute. She adores her big Sister and loves playing whatever crazy game Kaitlyn thinks up! Kelsey is still quite the Mommy's girl. She loves sitting on my lap or crawling all over me. She also loves doing crazy jumping and flying games with Daddy! And she is a huge fan of Grandpa A. As soon as we drive in their driveway, she gets excited and once in the door - she heads right for Grandpa. So cute. Kelsey's favorite toy of late is the ipad. I am amazed at how good she is and how many games she has mastered. The ipad is the only toy we own that the girls fight over ... and often ...! Kelsey loves cheese and Hersey bars! Looking forward to her big Dora 2nd Birthday party coming up soon!