Christmas 2009

This Christmas was so wonderful. We truly have so much to be thankful for this year. I am just thankful that everyone is healthy and happy. I probably should split this up into different blog posts but we'll see how we do with one. Jess was just over 4 1/2 years old and Lauren was almost 21 months on Christmas Day. This year we spent Christmas Eve with Scott's family and we had a quiet (well, I wouldn't really call it quiet :-P) family day at home. We did our pajama car ride to see the lights on the 23rd. I gave the girls a bunch of treats -- candy cane, marshmallows...warm milk...This is definitely one of our traditions. I think I'll do a separate post on some of our activities during the month of December. :-)

Let's take a look at some of the pics:

Getting our Tree: We went to our usual place ~ Hall's Nursery in Berkeley Heights. We got the tree 2 weekends after Thanksgiving since we were in Florida the weekend after Thanksgiving. I think we are going to stick with getting the tree that weekend. The pics of the girls together are funny b/c everytime I tried to take a picture Lauren would do this squealy scream. It was so funny. The tree ended up being so nice. It had a perfect shape and a nice point for our angel.




Jessica had her holiday party at Wesley on the 11th. It was her last day of school before vacation. They sang lots of songs for the parents and had treats. Lauren was happy to be there with big sister.





This is a pic of Jess getting ready for her car ride to see Christmas lights. You can see she's got her milk and treats in her little candy cane bucket...and of course Daddy Lulu is coming too.


And this is the girls hanging out afterward before they headed for bed.


Christmas Eve: We headed to Scott's parents' house and then to his cousin's house for a family Christmas party. At this point, I had not wrapped one present for the girls and Scott had stuff that had to be put together. We left the party around 10 and were up until around 3. But we were in good spirits and had fun making everything special for the girls. It was nice spending time with his whole family. The kids get along so well together...so cute.





Christmas Day: It was a quiet pajama day at home. We came down close to 8:00 and everyone got a little something to drink and we started unwrapping. Eventually I'd like to eat breakfast first but I didn't want to torture Jess. Jess had disney princess paper and Lauren had pink snowman paper. We had a great time opening presents and the girls loved everything. Afterward, we had a pancake breakfast and just hung out for the rest of the day. We made a rib roast for dinner, set a lovely table and just enjoyed each other's company....still in our PJs. We still had some snow outside so it was nice having a white Christmas too. I won't post many pics about presents but Jess loved her American Girl doll and Lauren loved her baby and cradle. They both loved the rose petal cottage and Jess loved her critter house. Lauren gave Jess her first real barbies - from the 3 musketeers and Jess gave Lauren a crawling baby with accessories.

MERRY CHRISTMAS 2009!

Way Overdue Post: Jessica's 4th Birthday Party

It seems I never posted about Jessica's 4th birthday party. I've got to make sure I cover such a special event. We had a My Little Pony party at Watchung Stables. Jess invited all her friends to come see the horses. They were supposed to do pony rides but it rained so the kids received a tour of the barn which was very informational and fun. I was really surprised by how much they covered. The kids had a lot of fun. I was so thankful that Auntie Jenny was able to fly in for the event and help me. They only give you 1/2 hour to set everything up so timing was pretty tight. The room they gave us was a little smelly but I kept reminding myself that it was a stable. We did a little picture frame craft, toured the barn, ate snacks / treats and cupcakes / cake and had a pinata. Jess had a great time. I made my first birthday cake and it wasn't easy. It's tough finding icing / frosting that works well and is allergy free. I did my best. She really wanted a my little pony cake. She was really happy with it and I was so thankful.

First Day of School 2009

Jessica started her 4 year preschool class at the Wesley Center last week. She was so excited. It was a fairly warm day so she couldn't wear some of her new fall clothes but she still had a special outfit to wear, with new sparkle sneakers and a new school bag. I went to school with her the first two days. I love getting to go to school. She has about 13 or 14 children in her class and her teachers are Ms. DeJohn and Mrs. I. They really create a wonderful learning environment for the kids.

I picked up some flowers the night before to have on the table for Jessica's favorite pancake breakfast. She loved the pink gerber daisies. She always appreciates lovely flowers.

Here are some pics from the first two days:

Momma's Thoughts

Well I've updated the look of the blog and I hope this reinvigorates me to start blogging more regularly. I do like to keep a little diary of our life at home. You always think you'll remember a special moment and sometimes you do but over time you often don't. The girls are growing so quickly and there are moments that I wish I could just freeze. I do get nervous raising two daughters in the world that we live in now. I worry that in my intent to teach them the right way to go that I may not explain things well enough or teach them well enough or just plain confuse them. I want to just shelter them at times from the world around them. I want them to hold onto their beautiful child ways, their simple yet poignant views on life, their innocence...they are just so precious.

When I picked up Jess at preschool this week, she told me that during their recess time some boys like to play a game called 'hyenas'. They run around and chase each other. It's fairly innocent boy play. However, that day they had been saying things and chasing Jessica in their play. She didn't like it and she told them so but I think they still kept it up. The next day I spoke with one of the teachers about it and she was wonderful in talking to Jess about it too. I picked her up after school and asked her how things went with the hyenas. She said it was fine and that they seemed to forget about chasing her. She said "Momma, when you forget something that's not good, that's good, right?". :-)

On another note, Jess has been very inquisitive lately on heaven and bible stuff. Some recent questions:

1. When we go to heaven will we fall through the clouds?
2. Where is God?
3. Will everyone go to heaven?
4. When we die, will we just fall down on the sidewalk?
5. How come Joseph's father didn't love all his sons the same? How come he gave the beautiful rainbow coat to only one son? That wasn't very nice.
6. Will my daddy lulu (her favorite stuffed animal) be in heaven?

Lots of questions and I am challenged by how to answer them so that she feels like the answer is sufficient and satisfying but it also needs to be age appropriate. There is a lot that goes on in the mind of a 4 year old. She is very thoughtful and ponders a lot of different things. Needless to say, I am doing a lot more praying. :-)

Singing Happy Birthday to Lauren!

Lauren's 1st Birthday Party

Well our little baby is ONE! Time has passed so quickly. In some ways it is bittersweet for me, I am so excited to see her grow and thrive and at the same time I miss the little baby I brought home from the hospital. She's so big now. She is a complete and utter joy to have in our family. I could not imagine life without her. She's funny and spunky and cuddly and cute!

We decided to have a small party at home. I just really like at home parties. We went with a cupcake theme and the colors were light pink, dark pink and light blue. She sported a very cute cupcake dress and loved eating her first cupcake. The kids played "pin the cherry" on the cupcake and did a little cupcake craft. I made a special album (which I still have to finish :-P) of scrapbook pages from Lauren's first year and we also showed a little first year photo dvd that Daddy worked really hard to put together. We had a super cute cupcake pinata. Auntie Jenny also made the cupcake invitations and the birthday banner and the cupcake toppers. They were awesome! Here are some pics of the decorations:

Here is the birthday girl:

She had a great time opening her presents!

Big Sister Jessica gave Lauren a Penelope Peapod doll which Lauren loves!

Pinata Time!

Friends and Family!

Lauren ~ 1 Year

Well I haven't posted in awhile so I thought I would update a bit on little Lauren. We can't call her baby Lauren anymore since she just turned 1. She also just had her one year appointment. She's 23 lbs 3 oz and 31 inches (93%). She isn't walking yet but I'm hoping she figures it out soon. She crawls everywhere, climbs, pulls herself up and gets into everything. It'd be nice to take her outside and not have her crawling in the dirt. Oh well...
She says dada, mama, up, ba (for balloon). She points at everything and is slowly starting to understand little commands. She eats just about everything. It's a little tough with milk and the bottle. I still give her a bottle with formula as I try to figure out which milk she should take. We gave her whole milk and she turned red so I'm going to try goats milk and see how she does. She makes a mess when she eats and likes to throw food on the floor. I can't wait for her to outgrow that phase. She's got a great giggle and loves, loves, loves to be held. I love when she decided to just rest her head on my shoulder. She loves to knock down blocks and she loves cars (go figure) and little baby dolls. She's a total joy.

For her birthday we had a cupcake theme and her colors were light blue and dark pink and light pink. She loved it.