Happy New Year

With just a few minutes left of 2009 I had to log on just to wish everyone a HAPPY NEW YEAR! We've had a laid back last evening of 2009. Which was great after a "really full day" (as Megan would say). So here's what I learned today, the final lessons of 2009...

1. Megan LOVES the "Mothers room" at Babies R Us... good to know for future us. Who ever put the mirrors in there... good thinking.
2. It is possible to take 2 kids on the carousel... and you don't have to pay for a little one who's sleeping in a car seat carrier. Even if the doof at the gate says the baby needs a token. After all he was just in training....
3. Pizza and Brownies for Megan = time for me to eat crab legs. :^) YUM!
4. And the most uncomfortable lesson... if you have to ask, "Are you pee peeing on my leg right now?" it's just a bad situation.


It's official as I write this - Happy New Year!
Later I may reflect on what the new year means to me/us... but for now I'm just relishing in this sweet baby (which is actually the reason I'm still up - she's due to eat any time now) and the year of growth ahead of us, in my big girl and all that she'll experience this year, and my wonderful husband who I'm so thankful I have to share all this with.

May this be a year full of God's blessings and the making of many amazing memories for each of you!

Cookie Fest

Before Christmas we had a little get together with some little friend for a cookie decorating playdate. So we started with some of these.... Added a few little friends and fun was had by all....

Nate started eating the second he hit the chair.

Bryce, a friend from school, was very precise.

Will had definite decorating ideas.

And Megan - she was all about color, sprinkles, icing, and just overall wanted to decorate with as much stuff as she could fit on her cookie.

Nicole took it all in and started for form her own ideas for future cookie decorating opportunities.

The cookie decorating was just the cherry on top of some playtime. It also turned out to be a beautiful (non freezing) day so we ended up playing outside for a little bit. Megan is all about riding her tricycle. Unfortunately she's outgrown her little toddler helmet and we need to go get another one.

While Megan was burning off all that "energy" (AKA sugar high), Nicole was just chilling. I think she loved being held by all the mommies. :^)

The Joys of Christmas Morning

There is something soooo sweet about Christmas morning. We got a treat and Megan slept in till 8:30. WOW - I was expecting a normal 6:45ish wakeup call, but no.... and it was a great needed "nap" since I had been up with Nicole. When we went to get Megan she was soooo excited. She kept asking, "Is it Christmas? Is it goodmorning time? Is it Jesus' birthday? Did Santa come?" Oh so much fun. But of course she wanted baby sister up to experience it all with her.


Don't you love thier matching PJ's!!??! That was a sweet present from our neighbors. Megan loved matching Nicole. (Oh the joy of being a girls mom and the future of matching clothes... so fun!)

Megan had told Santa that she wanted a Baby Doll for Christmas - and so did Nicole. Here are the Blaisdell girls with their baby dolls.
Even Nicole seemed to like her baby. She surely didn't let the excitement of Christmas interupt her sleep.Megan picked out a teddy bear for Nicole. Megan said she needed her own "Doh da" which is Meganese for "Snowball," her beloved polar bear. Now Nicole won't need to borrow Megans. Megan did inform me that we needed to go get nicole her own blankie so that she doesn't need to use Megan's. There is a limit to sisterly sharing after all.Megan LOVES her baby sister! And we love our little girls!!!!

Megan also loved her sparkly red shoes.

And she had to try out her new "heels" in the dressup kit mommy made for her. (that's a tiara on her head)

And Uncle Dan, Megan loved her new trains. They were on the train track quickly. The milk car was a huge hit. It's been mooing at us ever since.

But, the biggest hit of Christmas.... Megan's new art easel. She's such a little artist, we decided to get Megan her own art space. We couldn't get it set up fast enough and we had to cut her off so that she could take a nap. She loved it! I don't know what was her favorite aspect - the dry erase board....

Or the painting?
It was so fun to watch her paint and see her creative side come out. For all our family in MN, I'm sure you'll be receiving some of her masterpieces before you know it.

We are pretty sure that Nicole enjoyed her first Christmas.... We did for sure!

Megan asked Nicole what her favorite part of Christmas was but she seemed a bit undecided.

It was a fabulous Christmas full of memories and those special moments that just make your heart burst open with joy. So fun! We wish we could be with our friends and family in MN right now. Normally we'd be up there at this point having Christmas with the family. On the bright side - we avoided travel delays and didn't fly into the blizzard they were having in MN. We will have to wait a little while to introduce you all to little Nicole- but hey, I'm on my new laptop and I have a webcam and I'm on Skype.... so lets video chat!

Christmas Eve

The stockings were hung by the chimney with care

With hopes that St. Nickolas soon would be there. The children were nested all snug in their beds....

Well - before we were snug in our beds, we did head to church for our favorite Christmas Eve service. It's put on by the children (ages 4-3rd grade). So cute and fun. Totally the way to prepare for the celebration of Jesus' birthday!

Once we got home (after another tour of lights in the cold misty rain) we had our own reinactment of the Christmas story with our little people and then sang Happy Birthday to Jesus and of course partook of some of his delicious birthday cake.

Afterwards Megan said it was time for bed so that she could go "fast asleep." Somewhere she heard that Santa comes when you are "fast asleep".

Big Family Christmas

This past weekend we started our Christmas celebration with the BIG family Christmas. My aunt, uncle, cousins and their families all headed over for our traditional celebration. It's always wonderful to be together and it amazed me to look at this picture and see how much life has changed. Here are all the "kids".... The wierdest thing about this photo is realizing that I so vividly remember when Hunter (the oldest) was the only "kid"... I was in Albania when Carly and Claire (the twins) and Daniel were all born... And when Tom and I got married, Anna wasn't born yet. It's like seeing my life in a visual timeline of other folks children. And then this year, a new baby added to the mix. I remember when the parents of these kiddos were the ones at the "kids table."

I love my little family!!!!!!

Megan had a great time opening presents.

Nicole thought the festivites were exhausting....

And my littlest present of the year....

What a blessing it is to have little kids around to see the wonder and joy of the Christmas season. Now I'm off to wrap presents and get ready for our Birthday party for Jesus. Hard to believe tomorrow is Christmas Eve.

Decorate, Decorate, Decorate...

One of the highlights of Christmas are all the fun lights, decorations, and holiday parties. Our friend Joy always decorates her house and turns her yard into a winter wonderland. It's an annual outing for us to go over and jump into the Christmas decoration mayhem!
Megan loves all the inflatables. This year the see saw was one of her favorites. She would've climbed right on if she could have.

And of course, there were lots of hugs for her inflatable friends.

Although it was a bit chilly, even Nicole took part in the festivities. (I'm not sure what happened and why it's sideways).

Once we got inside to warm up, Megan loved all the singing and dancing characters. Here she is "shaking her groove thing" along with the dancing snowman.

Then tonight..... oh so much fun!!!!

We went out on a "tacky lights tour!" Seriously, you should check out the tour site and see what houses are in your area. We made it to 2 houses - both had huge light shows that were set to music. You could tune into the music on your radio and enjoy the "dancing lights" as Megan called them. It was pretty impressive - and actually not really tacky. I was extremely amazed/impressed at how coordinated it was, and how pretty. And it's free!!!!

And what a small world, while we were at the first house we ran into some friends. Megan was very happy to have Kenny there with her. They ran, jumped, danced... while we enjoyed the light show.

On the way home we stopped off at a little display at the front of our neighborhood.

Megan was most impressed with the "snow" that wasn't really snow.

What I realized..... When it's Christmas, people will pretty much decorate anything!

When we were heading home (the houses we went to are just a few miles away) Megan was very upset and I couldn't figure out why. She kept saying that we couldn't go home until we saw the nutcracker. I had no idea what nutcracker she was talking about. We drove around for awhile looking at lights just hoping we'd see a nutcracker to apease her. She was really really upset about not seeing him. Finally she asked to see "the news"....

This was the newspaper that had the article and pictures of the house (Mint Julep on the tacky lights site). I thought, maybe there is a nutcracker in the picture that we missed.... Then she started talking about it pointed it out to me.... it wasn't at the house of lights. Above the article about the Mint Julep decorated house, were pictures from a founders day parade in the area... and guess who's in those pictures..... a nutcracker and a rat - they were dressed up characters from The Nutcracker. Oh, now where do we go to see him????? I may not be able to help her out on this one, but at least the mystery is solved.

School Party

Last week Megan had her Christmas party at school. We made some reindeer cookies for her to give to her friends. Megan was a great cookie maker (with some help and guidance from mom).
She was very very proud of her cookie creations. And they were yummy to boot.
And Megan came home with the cutest present from her teacher! Ms. Mandi is a fantastic teacher and comes up with some of the cutest and creative gifts - that are truly gifts for the parents. Already we have a bunch of keepsakes from Megan's early preschool experience.

My little Rudolphina was very excited about her shirt! And I have to admit, I'm in love with it too!

PT update

That would be Potty Training....

Ok so on Friday, we hit a major major major milestone. Megan asked to poop in the potty... while she had a pull-up on (she just woke up and was still in her PJ's). Wow... it was her 5th "success" of the the past couple of weeks. She has officially proclaimed that she's a big girl now and will always go on the potty.

Oh yeah! It's true what they say -when she was ready, she did it.

Holidays

I have to say, celebrating holidays with kids is so much fun. We've been in art mode for weeks. Our house is covered with scraps of paper (Megan is working on her cutting skills), markers, stamps, crayons, paint - and everyone's favorite - glitter. Here's my little artist, hard at work!
This weekend was the long awaited Christmas performance at church. I say long awaited because choir practice starts back in October so by the time Dec. gets here I'm ready for Tom's practices to end.
This year baby Jesus is one of Nicole's newest friends - Ben. It'll be fun to watch these babies grow up together. Nicole and Ben are only 10 days apart. Megan and Doss (Ben's big brother) are only 3 days apart.

My whole family comes to the performance - here's Megan enjoying some hang time with her cousin Justin.

Then cousin Daniel decided to join in on the sleigh ride.

I just love this little girl.

During the performance, Megan was singing along with the choir. She's learned a lot of Christmas music from her "practice" with Daddy in the car. Today we were singing songs in the car and she asked me to sing the "Jingle Bunny Hop" song - I'm not quite sure what she wanted... it was either Jingle Bell Rock or Rocking around the Christmas tree... at any rate - I was butchering the words (we didn't have the practice CD with us) and Megan informed me that I should ride in the car with her and Daddy to church so that I can learn it. It was so sweet. And I think that in a few years she'll be right up there on stage with Daddy in the children's choir.And Nicole did great... she slept through the drummers drumming (the drum line from a local HS) and the 12 days of Christmas with the Chick-fil-a cow.... Which Megan informed me today that she couldn't wait to go to church to see the cow. Oh dear...

Afterwards, the choir had a party so we stopped by to chat with the stragglers on our way home. Megan was super excited that Mary Grace was still there. Her mom, Amy, sings in the choir with Tom. At some point they were "sharing" their treats...
Yum- thanks. Doesn't that make you want to grab a Christmas cookie?

But the highlight of the party (for Megan at least) was the -- ok, not quite sure what it was called -noise putty or something (maybe?) --- it's a flubbery type playdohish slimy container of gunk that when you push it down it makes a farty noise.... yeah - gas passing slimy stuff..... great. Since then every day Megan has said that she'd like some for Christmas.

I'm just thinking..... oh great.

But we did get a video of her hysterically laughing once she figured out how to do it. I'll try to get that posted.