My Bountiful Blessings

Junior participated in the Christmas pageant at mass again this year and actually sang along with most of the songs this time. He had a much better idea of how they went this time than last year. The next morning we hid all our baby Jesus' for the kids to go find. Then we opened presents and then more presents once my family came over.

New Year's Eve we invited our friends, the B family over for dinner and to play games and let the kids play as well. Before that we went to, what has become a holiday tradition for us to ride the train in a nearby town. The B family joined us and had a great time. We did not expect the kids to make it until midnight, but they definitely did and then some. We got them all ready for bed after midnight and they were still running around on fumes I think because once our friends left, the kids went straight to bed and slept in the next morning!

We celebrated Christmas with Daddy's family on New Year's Day and enjoyed the time we had with them. We went once again but with the H family this time to ride the train again. They were the first ones to introduce us to the train man. Unfortunately, I forgot my camera for all the events of this day.

Christmas and New Year's Eve 2011

It feels as though our Gaga has already been 3 years old for some time now. She does not act like a 2 year old anymore. She's growing and experiencing things faster than we would have every imagined. When she went up to the front of the church for her birthday blessing she did it all by herself, stood there while the priest gave the blessing, did the sign of the cross and headed back to our pew without a second thought. She is perfectly content going through her day playing by herself. She role plays with her "little people" acting out different parts of our day or adding voices to each one. I have to get somewhat close to her when she is doing this because she is always whispering when she plays in her little world. Overheard the other day with one of her "people". "No, no, no, not go pee pee right now, you have to hold it." I wonder how many times I have said that in the car on our way home from somewhere! She is constantly talking or singing. When she wants me to pick her up she says, "Mommy, hold you me". :) I have mentioned before how independent she is and she lets me know that with a common phrase around here right now, "Gaga did it by myself". She realizes I guess that 'love' is stronger than 'like' and when she says it, she says it with enthusiasm, but for the wrong objects. For example, we were cutting an avocado for dinner the other night and she asked me what that (seed) was. I told her an avocado seed to which she replied, "Gaga LLLLOOOOOVE that avocado seed". She still enjoys going to preschool more so than Junior ever did. She thrives on that interaction and pretend play that her and the other girls in her class give each other. Although she is mostly a ray of sunshine from the moment she wakes up, she has her moments and recently she has taken to saying "I not like you" if you do anything that upsets her. She is extremely hard to get to do anything you ask her to. Where Junior would hop up and get it done, she dawdles and almost acts helpless that she can't complete the small task you have asked her to do. Daddy and I are broken records to each other always saying, "She just doesn't listen"! GRRR. Definitely room for improvement in this category. Below are pictures from her birthday party with a few friends from school. Her request was a pink princess party!

3rd Birthday

We have been praying to St. Lucy since Gaga was born with a cyst on her eye. This, however, is the first year that we have celebrated her feast day. The kids had a great time learning about this saint and why we pray to her. They made candle light wreaths and I made cinnamon rolls. Yum! St. Lucy, pray for us.

Over the past month Smiley has learned to pull up to stand at furniture (see picture in crib below). He is finally rolling over from back to front now and started to really crawl well (alternating hands and knees) at 7 1/2 months. Since he can crawl with great ease now he loves to try and find us in other rooms that he thinks we are in, listening for sounds we are making and going in that direction. He can start crawling from a sitting position and sit back up from a crawling position when done. We still have not had much luck with feeding Smiley food. Everything gets spit back out. We think that he might prefer solids that he can chew rather than anything pureed, but he still needs time to figure that out.

Our annual cookie day with my side of the family took place at my mom's house this year (to break in her new double oven). The kids decorated gingerbread houses, trains and Christmas trees with Great Grandma and Nana which is always a hit.

Halloween this year was filled with fun from the Pumpkin Patch, Halloween parade at preschool, trick or treating and pumpkin carving (a day late). Click the picture below for more pics!

Halloween 2011

Daddy took the day off work on Friday and we made a long, fun-filled weekend out of it! Starting first at the State Fair. We all get a corny dog, funnel cake and one ride for each kid. We always enjoy the bird show, "working on the farm", and seeing the farm animals. Then we headed out that afternoon to Houston to visit Aunt K!













For these and all the rest of the weekends pics click below.

State Fair and Houston 2011