Me and My Gals

 Emma has been taking dance all year.  She does ballet and tap.  Here are pics and a few videos of the recital!


  Emma's teacher with her class.



 Daddy and the ballerina!
 From one generation of dancer to the next.

Here's Emma's program from school.  There are a series of videos.  So enjoy!

Here is our Happy Birthday girl. Tradition in our family is to give the new one-year old either their own cake or a HUGE slice to just 'dig-in'! Livvy did pretty good. I think Cami was a bit jealous and wanted to dig into her piece.
The 3 girls! (Emma had just lost her tooth and was sticking her tongue out the new hole all week)
The one year old!
Diggin in!
Not sure what to think!
Dad helping with the presents.
Fun pink skirt!
Trying to unwrap the presents. Sisters being very helpful!
Cami just wouldn't let Livvy have her own pic. :) If you check on the other pics, you will see her fingers on the edge of the table. She crept into this one at the last minute.
The videos below are of Livvy opening her presents. I love the timid opening of 'I don't really know what to do' that she is doing. She was really excited to get this blanket and asks for it ALL the time. She loves her squishy!
And the last video is her timidly eating her cake. I thought for sure she would tear into it, but she didn't really know what to do. Dad had to help her out!

Olivia's 1st birthday was the day of Kevin's family gift exchange. So we didn't get to celebrate much that day. We got back to my parents really late that night. We were going to celebrate the next day. But so she wouldn't feel too neglected, we all sang to her and let her blow out one candle. And since we hadn't made the cake yet, we improvised.....a roll!
Olivia, like the rest of us, LOVE my mom's rolls. So she was just trying to grab at it and eat it the whole time. And she didn't figure out the whole blowing the candles out thing. She just kept trying to grab it. She is so funny. And loved all the attention she was getting with everyone singing and taking pics.
My favorite is this picture. She looks like she is saying, "Mom, what do I do with this?"
And more grabbing of the candle.

See, I am not totally pathetic! She did get a real cake the next day! And that is our 5 for the past two weeks (oops!). And a video to enjoy! She is just staring at all the cameras and loving being in the center. With 2 other sisters, they all fight for the spotlight!

We had our annual Christmas party with Kevin's family. We do a gift exchange with his siblings. So these pics are of that. And the only ones I took...awesome, I know! Kevin is number 7 of 10 kids. 7 of us are married with kids. (2 more are joining the ranks in March!) So the grand total of children 38! Plus Kev's cousin with his 6! It was a bit crazy, but so fun!
Camilla is posing in the pic above.
Kev's parents are on the left in this pic. Grandma holding one of the many babies. :) Did I mention that 2 of Kevin's sister have had twins within the last year and half! The second set of twins were blessed while we were in Idaho. So fun!

More of Cami and Emma.
And the 3 girls with Kev holding Olivia!
Fun party and fun to see everyone! (All but one of Kev's brothers whom we missed!)

My girls were really excited to get to see some snow! We realized that Cams was 1 when we moved and hasn't really been around snow that much. We were excited to arrive and see some snow! Our girls begged to go out and play. We bundled them up and it lasted a good 5-10 minutes. Here they are making snow angels!
The snow soon melted and it NEVER snowed again while we were there. Bummer! Actually it snowed as we were leaving Utah. Our girls love the snow!
About done with the snow! Hi mom!
Here are a few videos. We brought our Wii and rented Just Dance 3! (We now own it, it is so fun!) My girls are really quite good at it, which is fun. I don't know how I feel about them knowing the words to Katy Perry's "California Gurlz" but what do you do? We had to ban them from the 'Mermaid' song because they did it over and over and over again! That is the one pictured below. And a shout out to mom who made the matching jammies! Olivia has one too and my sisters! (Maybe that is where I get it). Anyway, best game ever and I couldn't move my arms! And everyone else was sore too!

Well by this rate we will be done with Christmas in July. I am good with that. At least I am posting something, right?
So Kevin and I stayed up until 4 am Christmas Eve (I guess it was Christmas day by that point). Kevin was busy finishing a doll house, I was finishing matching shirts for Christmas day (yep, I'm that nuts. :) and some hats that I realized I couldn't finish at 1 am. :) Plus we hadn't wrapped A SINGLE THING! Or packed. Seriously, what were we thinking?
So we had Christmas morning, packed like mad and then went to the airport. I would like you to visualize the circus that we were. We had:
5 checked suitcases
3 carry-on suitcases
3 car seats
1 stroller
1 diaper bag
1 backpack
We looked awesome! We got a ton of stares and on the way home, our whole cart tipped with the following items plus an extra suitcase and everyone stared at us! No offer for help. Anyway, I digress. ;) Flying with kids is STRESSFUL!!! Trying to get everyone through security was the most stressful! And we were late checking our bags by 2 minutes. That 2 minutes cost us an additional 2 hours in SLC as we waited for the rest of our luggage to get there. You know the essentials- diapers, pull-ups, the girls clothes and my clothes! Whew! We were just glad to see those mountains beckoning us home for Christmas!
So here we are on our flight. This was a first for Camilla and Olivia. It was fun. Kevin sat with Olivia (who started walking at 10 months) so he was basically in a wrestling match as she tried to walk up and down the aisle.

Emma and Camilla did great on the flight. Other than the rude guy who asked me to keep Camilla from kicking his seat. Maybe he shouldn't have reclined. I smiled real big and said "I will do my best" maybe not in the nicest way.
Here is one tired Momma with the girls. (Did I mention I stayed up until 4 am) We listened to Tangled on the MP3. I zoned out with the IPod and the girls colored. On the return flight, Emma was 'the best passenger' and was given all the leftover snacks and a set of flight wings.

A little more awake?


All of us Christmas morning. With our matching jammies. Yep, worth it!
Dad and the girls. I love their faces! Cami pulls this mischievous face all the time. And I am pretty sure that Olivia had found some piece of candy already from the stockings. :)

Just the girls! (Olivia does have a matching shirt too:)

I seriously can't get enough of this little baby! She is so fun!


Well I guess that was a bonus! More than 5! Merry Christmas!!! :)