Christmas Recap

Wow, I have really not been motivated to blog. I guess because I feel so behind. So, this post may be mostly pictures. Or who knows, maybe I'll get in a groove and jabber on like usual. We'll see...

We definitely had a great Christmas and holiday break. The best part about it was seeing family.

I am going to start out in the middle of December. Here's a picture of the girls getting in the Christmas spirit watching some Christmas movies. We rented pretty much every movie out there from the library and had a lot of fun. One of the favorites: Mickey's Christmas Carol. I loved that one as a kid.

In the middle of December we had our annual family gathering at my parents' house with a visit from Santa. On the way there we saw this amazing rainbow so we had to take a picture.
Just for fun, here's a picture of our little family's first visit from Santa in 2004 when I was pregnant with Elizabeth (Mom & Dad--I must admit that seeing our old ornaments makes me nostalgic :).

And here's us today:

What a difference 5 years makes, eh?

Here's all the kids with Santa.

Here's the cousins there singing some Primary Christmas songs, if a bit reluctantly
(Natalie sure wasn't! Elizabeth was throwing a tantrum and refused so she is not pictured)

I should put in the letter Elizabeth wrote to Santa this year.

She actually changed her mind later and decided she wanted a cash register, too, so the dolly got bumped.

Natalie wanted a walkie-talkie too along with a yo-yo.

Right after school got out for Joe, we left for Idaho to visit his mom. We left at 4am and it worked out really well. Joe and I were fully awake and the kids slept a lot. We were really lucky with Nate on this trip. He was so easy. I don't think he screamed once in the car and he didn't even cry all that much with Elizabeth right next to him entertaining him and keeping his binky in.

We had a fun-filled busy few days there. It wasn't enough time but we sure loved the time we had. Unfortunately, I don't have any pictures although we did get some video of Nathaniel's first time laughing. Hopefully I can post that soon.

We left a couple days before Christmas for Utah to visit Joe's dad. I think it had been 4 years since we had been there for Christmas and it was a lot of fun. Thank you for being such great hosts, Tom and Lorna!

The kids sure enjoyed having a White Christmas. Here's some pictures of them playing in the snow with their cousins. I was actually impressed with how long they stayed out in the cold. Joe was a good sport and helped the kids build a snow cave and a snow table and chairs (pictured below).

All the kids

Snow cave

All bundled up

Finally, the big day came. We all slept in the same room so we could hear Elizabeth wake up on Christmas morning and say to Natalie, "Guess who came last night?" Natalie was still half-asleep and said, "I dunno..." Then she suddenly perked up and said "Santa came!" It was funny to listen to.

Here's our few pictures of Christmas morning. Santa came through although I don't have any good pictures of them with the things they asked for. Here's what I have:

Natalie loving an outfit she got

What cute girls

A toothbrush!!
It lights up and she seriously brushed her teeth 6 times that day just so she could use it.

The girls also received ballet outfits and lessons (as soon as I can find a place) from grandparents this year. They had to change into them of course.

This next picture is precisely why I worry about putting them in dance. Joe's not going to like it either :). Seriously, where does Elizabeth get these poses??

After a pretty bad bout of the flu that went through our family (minus Nate, thankfully), we managed to make it home. It is good to be home although it was so much fun seeing everyone.

And, since this post is suffering from a serious shortage of Nathaniel pictures, here are some:

Taking a quick nap while the girls were getting ready for bed

A happy dream....
Look at that chubby face!
Grabbing on to the toys on his bouncer
So proud of himself

I hope everyone had a great Christmas!

Happy Birthday to Natalie

We have the internet again after 2 weeks without it. It was kind of nice to have an internet cleanse, of sorts, but I'm so glad to have it back. Maybe I can at least scale back the amount of time I spend on the computer now that I know I can live without it.

Now, on to the task of trying to catch up on here. We have had a pretty busy couple of weeks. The most important event was Natalie's birthday. Unfortunately, the camera died right as the celebration began. We got some video of it at least.

Here are the only pictures from the day.

Natalie decided on a Don cake.
Don is a character from her new favorite show Dinosaur Train.

For some reason, the kids and I all ended up wearing red that day. It really wasn't intentional. We had to take some pictures, though:

I can't believe my Natalie is 3 now. At the same time, it seems like she has been 3 for awhile. I guess it's because she is always wanting to be older than she is. She definitely wants to be known as a "big girl". She tries so hard to act like one, too.

She has been SO excited to go to Primary (at church) and the nursery kids got to come in for part of it last Sunday. I had been helping Elizabeth write a talk she was giving (which she gave all by herself! We were so proud.) and Natalie insisted on writing one, too. I said that was fine and helped her write something out. As soon as Primary ended, she suddenly burst into tears because she didn't get a chance to give her talk. I didn't realize that she thought she was going to be able to say it in Primary. If she had been given a chance, I have no doubt she would have marched up there and done it perfectly and not been scared at all. She is so funny that way.

Natalie has always been musically minded. I remember when she was a baby, if someone was singing, she would just stop and stare at them. Just kind of taking it in. She still loves music. She is always singing whatever song is in her head at the time (I wonder where she gets that from? :). It is so cute. But, if she doesn't know the words to a song she gets VERY frustrated. It's kind of funny to watch, actually. So, Joe or I usually have to stop between lines and tell her the line ahead of time to she can sing it. She knows the words to lots of songs because of this.

We love our Natalie and are so proud of all that she is learning and who she is becoming. We can't imagine life without her.