December 2011 Wrap up

The Sunday before Christmas we gathered at my brother's house and had a traditional mexican dinner a game and a nativity. Nathan was Joseph again, Taylor was a shepherd, Natalie the lone angel and Amanda Baby Jesus.

It proved to be quite an undertaking to get a picture of the whole nativity cast actually looking at the camera. This is the best I could get.

I caught Preston and Amanda napping the afternoon of Christmas Eve. After waking up Preston stated that was an early Christmas present for him. He LOVES napping with babies laying on his chest.

Christmas Eve the kids always get new pajamas. They are waiting to open their presents here.

Amanda with her new pajamas.

The older kids showing their's

Christmas morning prior to opening their presents.

Natalie and her Mickey Mouse learning laptop.

Santa brought the girls a play kitchen. Which they LOVE!!!!

Checking out the contents of their stockings.

Showing off their new pajamas.

Christmas morning

Amanda "opening" one of her presents.

Amanda and the playful pup that Taylor received from Santa.

Nathan came home from church and put his pajamas back on and spent most of the day playing with his transformers.

Taylor didn't bother taking the time to change her clothes after church and spent the majority of her day playing in her new kitchen.

Natalie received a Dora guitar that she was excited about.Natalie also didn't take the time to change clothes. This is the before picture.

After playing for a while.

Amanda in her Christmas dress.

Preston's hit the after Christmas clearance sales and picked up this decoration. He took it out to test if it worked because the box had been opened and discovered that it worked but it had been used. It was pretty dirty so he hosed it off and put it on top of the pool net to dry. Preston's comment "We may not have a chimney for Santa to come down but we do have a pool for him to land on." :-)

Snapshots of Amanda

I have a lot of random pictures of Amanda on my camera over the past couple months so I thought I would devote a blog post on them. The majority of them are of her sleeping and she looks adorable if I do say so myself.

Sherri and Amanda (wearing the onesie that Sherri gave her) It says "I Love my Aunt"Amanda getting her traditional first bite of ice-cream from her Nana.Relaxing with Nana and big sister Natalie.BeforeAfter: She is such a great baby. Often she will play and when she is tired she will either quietly go to sleep or whine for a little and then fall asleep.She LOVES the little toy activity bar she got for Christmas. She often will just sit and smile and coo/talk to the hanging toys. We call them her "friends". She now grabs at them and can pull on it to make music.

More sleeping snapshots.

More smiles at her "friends"Amanda officially found her thumb to suck on. She doesn't do it all the time and she sometimes will take a pacifier. We will see how it turns out.

Other memorable info about Amanda.

Laughed for the first time: January 12th.

Rolled from back to stomach: January 17th.

Cut her 2 bottom teeth: January 29th.

December 2011 Activities

Our sweet little Amanda turned 2 months old on 12/10/11. Amanda is such a sweetheart, we all love her so much and are so grateful to have her in our family.

I attempted to add waves to Taylor's hair so one night I spent 45 minutes putting little braids in her hair after she got out of the bath.

The next morning. It turned out okay but don't think it was worth all the time to put the braids in and then take them out. I may just have to buckle down and buy a crimper (if they still make those).

Our friend Hollie had her annual gingerbread party which we always enjoy going to. Once again we didn't come close to placing in the top three but the big difference this year is we didn't stress, do a lot of prep work or spend a lot of money to not place in the top three like we did last year. I still think it turned out cute.

For family night later on in the month the kids made graham cracker houses.

Nathan's

Taylor's

Natalie's

The little girls and I attended the jingle jog at Nathan and Taylor's elementary school.

Even Amanda got dressed up for the occasion :-)

Taylor had a performance later that same day.

Then she got to decorate another graham cracker house. Doesn't she look so serious about it.Her finished product.

Preston's side of the family had their annual Christmas party which we were happy to attend. It is now held at a church building because there are A LOT of family members. We sang the traditional "Hang the baby's stocking" song for all those babies that have been born since the last Christmas. Normally the Mom's go up with the babies but for some reason the Dad's did this year which is fine by me. It was entertaining Preston would dance with Amanda during the song as if she was an adult. I was just waiting for her to spit up all over him because I had just fed her but she never did. Preston and his siblings had a good representation (3) of new babies which has never been the case before. This is only the new babies that were there that night.

All of Preston's side of the family with Nana who just turned 96 on the 8th of January. Just as a side note , notice that my son is wearing shorts and a t-shirt at a Christmas party. You know you live in Arizona when that happens.

We went to a local car dealership that does free pictures with Santa. Nathan who LOVES cars especially Camaro's and Corvette's got his picture taken in a couple of them. Nathan often discusses what kind of car he thinks he will drive when he grows up. He also discusses ideas for his customized license plate like ASUROKS or NATEDOG

As you can see Natalie is still timid about the Santa and would not see him by herself or get too close.

Since Preston was actually with us to see Santa this time we decided to do a picture with the whole family and Jolly Old St. Nick.