Christmas

Alyssa was so excited for Christmas. The only thing she wanted was a red scooter. When she woke up she started jumping up and down and said "I heard Santa come down the chimney, he came, he  came!!" Christmas morning was really fun, Alyssa was excited about everything that she opened. We saved the scooter for last. She rides it all around the house. Everyone was excited about their new things. Kate liked playing with the a packets of gum and was entertained by the wrapping paper. She does like her new toys though. Alyssa likes them too. She likes to "play" with Kate (which means taking the toy and playing with it her self)  Unfortunately the stomach bug is making it through our whole family day by day. Gratefully it only lasts about 24 hrs. I feel bad about getting everyone sick, it started with Alyssa.

Playing with remote control car

opening the scooter

trying out her new sled, this hill was too small so we went down the road to a bigger hill

She loved it!

Christmas Eve

We had Christmas Eve at my mom's house. Russ ended up being really sick and wasn't able to join us. Which meant that I had to prepare the turkey. Gross. I did not like doing that. I put a butter rub on it and had to wash off the brine. It tasted good though.  We played some games, had a spiritual talk about angels and acted out the nativity. It was a fun night for everyone but Russ.

Addicted to words with friends

Drawing game

Noelle won

cutie

Mary, Joseph and the donkey

Shepards

Angel

Mary and baby Jesus

Snowy Day

Kate has been very sick the past 3 days. She is running a very high fever despite being on antibiotics, tylenol and Advil. Poor Kate has laid on my chest pretty much 24/7. Today she seems to be turning the corner for the better (thank goodness!) It meant that Alyssa has not had much attention and watched WAY too much TV. Today I called my friend and asked if her daughter could come over and play with Alyssa. Thank goodness she could! They played in the snow for quite a while. Alyssa was so happy!

They said they didn't know how to build a snowman themselves. So I ran out and built a tiny one for them to decorate, before Kate started screaming.

Sledding down the stairs.

9 months

Kate is now 9 months old!! Crazy that I have had her as long as I was pregnant with her. She of course is wonderful. We had her 9 month old appt yesterday. She is now 17 lbs (27%) this is a huge increase for her, she went from 3% to 27%!! No wonder she looks cubby to me =). Her height is 25.5 inches (0.8%) She went from 0.1% to 0.8%. She is still below the normal curves so technically she has the diagnosis of "short in stature". But her curve looks better so if she continues in the that way she should be fine by age 2. If not and she stays below the curves at age 2 they start to do a work up and see why she isn't grow (height wise very well). We are not short people so it is more concerning that if we were both really short people. Her head is in the 90%. Which makes her disproportional but she doesn't look that way to me. But she is healthy and happy and developing great. She started to push up on to all fours this week and rock, so I think she will crawl with in the month. She is happy and a very easy baby. She loves her sister of course and watches everything she does. She now has developed stranger danger and cries if anyone she doesn't know gets to close. This makes it hard to go to the gym, last time I went she cried most of my class and they came and got me after 45 minutes. (Way to long to let her cry!). I now try and find ways to exercise with out having to take her to the gym daycare. Her hair went straight after she lost the newborn hair and grew new hair but recently the ends have started to curl so we will see. Her hair is still brown just lighter than when she was born. She now is so interactive and interested in her surroundings that she has to have something to play with at all times. She also doesn't let me cuddle her very much =(. The only time she will cuddle with me is at night when I am putting her to bed and even then it is very short. (She likes to sleep in her crib) Here are some pictures I took of her by our tree.

Look at those rolls!

of course Alyssa had to get a picture with her sister!

Tree's

Alyssa and I made rice krispie treat trees and decorated them. We were going to make houses but this was easier. She loved it. We LOVE Christmas time. So many fun things to do and see!

Kate was happy playing with the sprinkles

She got our tree lightly flocked this year. It is really pretty

Live Nativity

Today I took Alyssa and Kate to a live Nativity in Alpine.  This has been going on for 11 years, I had never heard of it until this year. It only goes on for 4 days. It is on someones farm. It is huge! They had donkeys, sheep, camels (4), Shepherds, Roman soldiers, a town of Bethlehem with people "working" trades like bread makers, basket weavers, blacksmiths etc.  I went with my friend and her family (Russ had to work). I am so glad I went with them, I couldn't have waited in the LONG line with 2 kids by my self.  We waited for 1 1/2 in a half in line. Much longer than I had anticipated. Along the way there were shepards, guards  sheep etc. It was really cute. We followed the star to find baby Jesus, Mary and Joseph in a stable.  It was a good way to teach Alyssa about the true story of Christmas.

FINALLY we made it!

Checking on a camel

Roman solider and a shepard

Lights

Riverwoods has so many fun family activities. Yesterday they had the "Lighting of Riverwoods" They have something like 4 million lights. They also have a Santa house, carriage rides, face painting, gingerbread competition and shopping. It was SO crowded yesterday. We really just walked around and looked at the lights. We will go back another day to do the other things.