Santa at Our House

Santa visited our house for Christmas. Luckily he was a little lighter this year. We are running out of space in the house with three kids now. The girls have plenty and next year hopefully I can find some volunteer opportunity so the kids can start learning how to give back.

Santa

Santa made his second consecutive appearance at the holiday party. The girls managed to keep it together to sit in his lap. Shortly after he left, we had to leave too. (See post below).

Merry Christmas 2008

Tiffany invited the gang to her house for a Christmas celebration. She had a craft table set up downstairs and we were going to make our traditional graham cracker houses at her house since we were unable to do it earlier.

We had a great time but I underestimated the craziness of organizing the kids at her house. Usually we have it here and that's all we do. The kids were super energized to be at Tiffany's house and were bouncing around like crazy. Plus I thought we'd be able to manage making the houses like we did last year but I think with more kids added, we will need to premake houses. It was still fun and I'm not sure the kids were disapppointed, I did not hear anyone complain.

We did have to make an early exit though. After ALL the excitement, Carys threw up twice and the final straw was Helen pooping in her pants. It could have been worse I guess but that was pretty much the end of the party for us.

Handsome

Just thought he was handsome in this photo

Proud Sisters

See their smiles, they tell the story. Of course, he can't walk or talk yet.

First Big Snow 2008

Poppy took the girls sledding this year by himself (pretty brave of him considering how scared they became last year). It turns out they LOVED it. They even went down the monster hill together without Poppy. Poppy admitted it was probably best that I did not go, I probably would have freaked out. I will try to work on that in the future, they obviously proved they were up to the challenge. Carys is now ready to go down by herself. I'm sure she'll make it this year.

I will say, Helen's snow angel is a little too close to the road for my taste though.

Post Bath Chill Out

Walker loves his bath, especially the few moments when he's warm and dry after the bath. We've started rubbing his legs with some baby oil and he just relaxes and soak it up. Baby spa anyone?

Faking Holiday Baking

I'm trying to push past the extreme exhaustion of taking care of a newborn 24/7 and give the girls some holiday fun. I'm taking shortcuts this time and not trying to bake from scratch (which is a huge challenge for me even when I'm fully alert). We've done sugar cookies from the package, icing from the container and we do have sprinkles to make it fun.

The best part is the girls don't know the difference right now, the cookies are actually edible and we enjoy eating them as much as making them.

We did also make these delicious buttermilk cinnamon muffins from scratch. The girls love the muffin tops (they were basically bathed in butter and cinnamon sugar- who wouldn't love it) but the rest of the muffin went uneaten. Poppy and I love these muffins and as soon as I start getting more rest, I will be trying more baking recipes from scratch.

Carseat Babies

Lately Poppy and I have been reminiscing about our babies, who Walker resembles, and what traits he might have as he grows.

I've enjoyed looking back at photos and have found that we even took similar ones with each baby. I guess it's similar to the naked baby on the lawn photo that is basically a requirement in the South (but obviously season dependent here).

So we've subconciously opted for the "traditional" carseat photo. I'm going to keep my eyes out for more of this phenomenon to share with you.

I think Walker resembles Helen more from this photo group, especially skin coloring and hair.