christmas eve and christmas day 2012

Once we moved to California we declared that we would not travel at Christmas time. With two kids and the gifts and the time off and the stress it is just not worth it. Harsh? Maybe but it is one of the best decisions we have made! There is just something so nice and loving and celebratory about spending the Christmas season with our little family, taking our time with gifts and making so many memories and traditions.

This year was the first year that we celebrated without ANY family. While it was sad and I got a little emotional on Christmas morning we made the best of it and had a great weekend.

On Christmas Eve we invited our friends the Moyer's over for dinner. It was also their first year of not traveling home so we wanted to make sure they had a nice Christmas Eve dinner. Jason fried a turkey and Andrea and I made some yummy sides and desserts to compliment. After dinner the kiddos played as the adults chatted.

Clayton and Charlotte are VERY blessed little people (as are we!), but seriously they had SO many gifts to open. We started at 9 am on Christmas Eve and opened  a present an hour each until our guest arrived and then opened the rest after the Moyer's went home.

 Wow messy face!

 This mug was my gift from Charlotte. The footprints become "visible" when the coffee is hot...I love Harry Potter!

 Jingle Slippers

 These little building "molecules" (Crayola Jumbles) are great for both the kids! They were actually Charlotte's gift though

 Channeling her inner Italian with the hand talking (oh and I made her tutu!)

 With Ms. Andrea

 LOVE Alphie!

After the present opening the kids settled into their Christmas Eve pajamas courtesy of Grandma, who has bought me Christmas eve PJ's since I was Charleigh's age. Once the babes were read the Night Before Christmas and settled into bed Santa stopped by and set up for Christmas morning.

We had to wake the munchkins the next morning but once they got downstairs it was on and the fun and chaos went on for the rest of the day! Here are some fun pictures of the kids and their gifts and some videos of them trying out their new stuff. This year was one of my favorite Christmases so far. Maybe it was that my little family is complete, all together, the low key nature or just the Spirit. I hope you all had an amazing Christmas as well!!

 Charlotte couldn't handle all the excitement so she napped!

 With hot coffee

 Angry birds

 Ball Pit

 Clayton trying to skate
Trying out the bike
Clayton showing Charlotte the ins and outs of her new toy

Charlotte is 8 months old

I know I say this every month but I am in disbelief that Charlotte is on the downward hill to a year old! I am so struggling with this!! I love her baby ways and I love her baby looks.sweet sweet girl.

So she appears to growing some finally! I mean height when I say this as she is not struggling to grow in the weight department :) As far as I can figure she has grown to 25" and weighs about 19 lbs. She is still wearing size 3 diapers. Her clothes are ranging from 3-12 month stuff. It all depends on the brand and what it is.

She is seriously eating everything!! We took her to Chick fil A and she killed some waffle fries. Of course she loves all the other stuff too as long as she is eating :)  Oh and she HAS NO TEETH!!!

I mentioned last month that her feet are tiny and they are still tiny but she can fit into a size 1 now. After reading up and talking to a PT and another pediatrician I am trying her out in bigger shoes to see if that will help her bear weight on her feet. The idea is that she doesn't feel like her tiny feet can hold her, a deception issue, so if her shoes are bigger a give her the illusion that her feet are bigger she will bear more weight....guess what? It worked!!

Her gross motor has improved quite a bit. She is doing the rocking motion on her belly and is handling falling from sitting so much better than she was. She has also learned to throw her weight when she wants like rocking her pack and play. Her fine motor skill are excellent. She is picking up everything even tiny things and of course it all goes straight to her mouth!

Her favorite toy is still her paci and now that she can put it in her mouth herself we find it in all directions.

She is a giggling machine and can say "mama" and "hi". Clapping, waving and patting things are also new this month.

I took her swinging the for the first time this month and she loved it.

I LOVE that she is a structured baby. Here is what happens when we do not stick to her schedule.

I think one of the best things she has learned to do this month is give kisses....melts me

And by the way in every video you can hear me laughing in the background but that is seriously all I do around these kids! They make me laugh all the time!

8 month charlotte collage

My sweet girl

25 days of Christmas

When I was little my mom or aunt or someone always gave me an advent calendar. Usually the cardboard ones with the little flaps with a piece of candy. Clayton has had that kind for the past two years but this year I wanted to do something different. So of course I consulted Pinterest and found several different types, some with candy and some with fun thing to do, some with wood and some with paper...I decided I wanted a chain type calendar so I thought out 25 fun little things we could as a family or just Clayton (Charlotte is involved in some but this was kind of something just for him). I can't wait to see how excited he gets with each link.

Day 1: Write a letter to Santa.
        This was so much fun! He rambled for several minutes as I tried to catch as much as possible. Here is his letter:

Day 2: Call a grandparent and sing a song. I wish I had recorded him singing the song to the answering machine considering when we did the song it was 8 our time meaning no one was awake in GA!

Day 3: Do a special craft with mommy.
          I took this as an opportunity to work on the special art gift we are doing for our family as their gifts. It turned into a family affair and was so much fun.

 Clayton's feet

 Right before the paint went on

 Where Charlotte was held while we painted

Day 4: Have a Christmas song dance party
Here is is video of the dance party

Day 5: Visit Santa: Jason's unit had a Christmas party on the 5th and Santa made an appearance...perfect timing ; )

Day 6: Have banana snowman for snack (got this idea from pinterst)

 Day 6 he says

Day 7: Wear new pjs to bed...thank you Grandma!

Day 8: Check out a Christmas book from the library...due to an issue with returning a movie on time we are not allowed to check out any more books for a few weeks...oops! So we chose one from the bookshelf.

Day 9: Drive through post and look at Christmas lights. This was a lot of fun for the whole family!

Day 10: Family movie night. After Clayton got dressed for the night "someone" rang the door bell and Clayton rushed downstairs to find a package from Santa. There was a goody bag filled with popcorn and candy and The Polar Express. Family movie night was so much fun and I hope we can do it more throughout the year.

Day 11: Snowman pancakes for breakfast. This was fun for me more than Clayton I think. I saw the idea to make snowman pancakes on Pinterest (where else). Clayton of course loved them!

Day 12: Clayton and I made a tray of yummy treats for the staff at his school. The director put them in the break room and I hear they were gone in an hour! We made magic bars, chocolate no bake cookies and haystacks...so good!

Day 13: Clayton loves to get cookies and bread and treats from the bakery at the commissary but usually that is a no no but on this day I let him chose one treat to share with his family that night after dinner. He chose a marble cake with chocolate whipped butter cream icing.

Day 14: Unwrap a book from under the tree. The book was 10 Little Gingerbread.

Day 15: Read The Polar Express. One of my all time favorite books...love the message!

Day 16: We made an ornament to put on his little tree. It was a reindeer made of a toilet paper roll and some other various things I found around the craft closet.

Day 17: We made snowman pizza for dinner (another idea I got from Pinterest).

Day 18: We made gingerbread men as an after dinner treat. They were actually very yummy!

Day 19: We made reindeer hats and took silly pictures of each other. Clayton had just been given my old camera so it was fun to play around with his photography.

Day 20: Take coffee to daddy at work. It was nice surprise and broke up the day since Clayton was out of school and getting cabin fever!

Day 21: Read the Nativity story and set up a Nativity scene in his room. Clayton and Jason did this in place of a night time story. Sweet :)

Day 23: Decorate Cookies. We actually cheated on this one and made the break and bake with the reindeer on them...still fun to do but not as messy!!

Day 24: Read the Night before Christmas.

When it was all said and done I really feel like it was a great month of fun activities and I cannot wait to do this again next year with both kiddos!