Kate...almost 1

Kate was the best Christmas gift last year! She arrived on the 21st. She came with such a fun personality too! She is very sweet but also a little feisty and wants to part of the party. She LOVES to play and is so so so busy! She moves from one toy to another really fast and pretty much wants to explore everything. 

She screams when something is taken away from her and definitely states her option when she does or does not want something. 

I can ask her, "are you hungry...do you want to eat." And she will shake her head yes or no. 

She also knows the things she is not supposed to play with (AKA the plants) and will stop and look at me before she tries to touch it. Haha 

 Kate loves Claire! She loves to chase her, play with her stuff, and grab her hair, clothes, etc. 

 She still doesn't crawl, just scooting. And she is very fast! 

 She's eating like a champ and I know that once we introduce table food she will want to try ALL of it! She really wants to eat anything we are eating. The other night I was making ginger snap cookies. She squawked at me until I gave her a piece of one. silly girl!  

Caught in the plant...it's hard to see but she has a mouth full of dirt I had to fish out. :( 

She will only keep a headband on for a few minutes. After that she will pull it off then try and put it back on her head. 

 Kate is up to 5 official teeth...and 2 more trying to come through. She has the funniest faces! 

This is her "really excited face!" 

And her ...I'm so tired face!" 

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Kate is starting to pull herself up and gets so excited to be standing. She often does downward dog just in the middle of the floor. :) 

 

The other day she found this pan in kitchen and within a few minutes figured out how to get in and out of it. Once she's in it she scoots herself around. It's pretty funny to watch. Kate is definitely going to be a climber. Just yesterday she was trying to climb on our kid piano. There's going to be a new level of craziness at our house soon once she starts walking. 

We sure LOVE this fun girl or ours! 

Happy Birthday Miss KATE! 

Christmas Parties!

We've been able to attend a couple of really fun Christmas Parties this year. Before our Branch's party (the church party) I tired to get some pictures of the girls with the Christmas tree. It's pretty comical the series of events. :) 

 Shaun got a some cute ones of the girls. 

 Our Branch party was REALLY fun! We had a nice dinner and then Santa came. We haven't really talked much about Santa at our house. Claire knows of him but doesn't really get the concept, which I'm okay with. We told her when people ask her what she wants from Santa to just tell them things she likes, i.e. mickey mouse, paints, etc. That seemed to help. 

Santa gave the kids a book, coloring book and a candy cane! Claire was SO excited! 

The next day when we asked her who she got to see last night, she said, "someone." 

While we were doing Santa the others were getting ready for the program. They did an incredible program. The manger scene was breath taking. They had a simple narration, beautiful music, and spirit filled room. It was very nice. And it was awesome because I wasn't in charge! It was nice to come and enjoy! 

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The other party was Shaun's work party. It was held at his bosses' house about 40 mins from us. Each year the city of Brandon has a light parade. The parade goes right past her house. So we had delicious food and then watched the parade. It was 70 degrees! 

Claire found a little stool to sit on and eat at the party. :) 

Sherry's house was amazing. Just as if we walked into a pottery barn catalog. Kate wanted to crawl around and get into everything. so I mostly just followed her around. 

The parade wasn't as cool as I thought it would be but we still had fun. Claire got a ton of candy! She just started holding her bag out and people would throw it in by the hand fulls. 
It was so fun to get out and enjoy some festivities! Shaun's boss even sent us home with a gift bag for the girls with all sorts of fun things. Great times!  

O Christmas Tree

We LOVE Christmas trees at our house! Claire especially loves them! 

Our current tree (given to us from my mom) has been great! It looks pretty small with our 12 ft ceilings so we may need to upgrade in the future. I still love our tree though.  

It has some fun new additions. 1- little violins that I found at a consignment store and gave to Shaun. and the little OSU man. I found that for Shaun at one of the Amish shops in Ohio. It's kind of a fun memory of our time in Grand school. 

This year we got a small tree for Claire. When I was little I LOVED having Christmas lights and a little tree in my room. Claire's is a little bigger than I had anticipated but it was an awesome black Friday deal. 
She decorated it with Shaun's help. The little crystals were a gift from one of my former students years ago. They look great on her tree. 

Claire has since decorated and re-decorated her tree. She has made the ornaments into "steps." Hanging on each other. 

We've been talking about some of the symbols of Christmas and the prophecy of the new star. Claire looked at our tree. "Mom, something is wrong with our tree. It's missing something." What's it missing Claire? "It's missing a star....That's okay, we can go buy one." 
So sure enough on Saturday we went to walmart and found a star. Later on Saturday I asked Claire and Shaun where the star went. I said we need to put it on our tree. Claire said, "Mom I put it on MY tree." She was so excited! What a cutie! 

The station tree.... brought to you by the head grounds keeper, Peter. Fully decorated with pop cans, construction tape, wire, and big paper holder clips. Topped with an aluminum foil star. The only thing that would be better is if it lights up. 

Yes, that is blue sky you are seeing! we are really enjoying this nice weather!