Christmas

This post will be full of pictures. We had a great Christmas and New Years. It has been six years since I spent the holidays with my family in Utah. We decided it was about time we did it. I am so grateful to Bryan for being willing to do this. Here we all are on Christmas Eve in our new PJs.
Both of my girls love seeing Christmas lights so we decided what a better place to show them lights than to go to Temple Square...it was cold, but a lot of fun!
Christmas morning was so much fun. Both girls loved seeing what they got and it was fun to see them love each and every thing. Mia's favorite part was ripping open the presents. She just wanted to rip the paper off...she didn't care what she got at all as long as she had paper to rip!!
Claire asked Santa for Scooby Doo characters. She was thrilled to see she had been a good enough girl to get what she asked for!!!
Also in Claire's letter to Santa she asked for a baby doll for her little sister...Mia loves her new baby doll.
I think Claire's favorite gift of all though was the camera Grandma Lois and Papa Don gave her. She has had so much fun taking pictures of just about everything in sight...including turning the lens to get pictures of herself. What a fun gift for Claire!!!
This is the first or second time in our marriage that I was able to surprise Bryan with a gift (thanks to our friend Ben's help)...Bryan loves riding his bike with Ben for exercise, but he doesn't have a road bike just a mountain bike. I want to encourage him to do the things he loves (especially when it is exercise) so I decided to spoil him. Here he is after he realized what his surprise was!! (I think he was still in shock when I took the picture)
This is the best picture I got of the girls in their Christmas dresses. I made the skirts out of t-shirts. I think they turned out great. The girls looked so cute in them.
Santa gave Claire, Mia, Grandma Nancy and Papa Chuck, Rudolph noses in their stockings...who could resist this Kodak moment?
We were able to spend time with Uncle Brett and Aunt BethAnn. Uncle Brett showed our girls how to use Nerf Guns. They had a great time shooting them and trying to get the darts to stick on the window. I love the look of concentration on Mia's face as she even tries to aim the gun.
This is one of my favorite pictures from the trip. My mom as a picture of my niece Summer trying to open the door of the Salt Lake Temple. I have always loved it so I decided it was time to get my girls doing the same (thanks for the idea Ginet). I have tried a few times to do this, but the temple was always closed off, but this time it wasn't. I love how Claire can easily get the handle and is ready to go in, but I love even more seeing Mia on her tip toes trying to hard to reach the handle! Our wish is some day our girls will be worthy to enter and will enter the doors of the temple!!
One of our other adventures was to see the UP house. This is a house built in Utah for the parade of homes this year. It looks exactly like the house in the movie UP. The inside is also decorated similar to the inside of the house on the movie too. It was so much fun to see. Thanks for Kenley (one of my nieces) for showing it to us.
We finished off our trip by celebrating the New Years with my parents. We let Claire stay up late to bang pots and pans to welcome the new year...we had a great time celebrating with the Owen family too; well sort off...we celebrated the the New Years on Eastern Standard time (my sister and her family live in Virginia)...so we say we celebrated with them.
This is what we saw as we headed home to Washington. I think that our girls had a lot of fun, because they sure slept good on the long drive home!
We wanted to thank everyone who helped us have a great holiday. We loved having friends and family come and see us. We enjoyed playing board games, playing just dance, laughing with each other, eating good food and of course making great memories with people we love.

We Did It

Well we did swim lessons this Fall, and once again Claire did wonderful. Here she is doing Big X, Little Y (that is what she is doing in the picture) and Super I. She does so great!!
The last day of lessons is a water safety day. Claire really loved helping rescue Teacher Terry!
Claire is so proud of herself and loved having swim lessons with her new friend Annie, not to mention she absolutely loves Teacher Terry!
This time we did something different with swim lessons...we signed up for a Parent and Tot class. Bryan even came and participated with Mia once. Mia loved that. Here Mia is showing off what a great floater she is.
Besides playing Humpty Dumpty, Mia's favorite part of swim lessons is sliding down into the water. The only thing is she always wants to walk up all the steps of the ladder in one step instead of taking them one at a time.
There were more people than this in the Parent tot class, but this was all that were there today. Mia loved Teacher Terry too (see she can't stop looking at her).
I just love this picture (besides the fact I am in a swim suit)...I love these two girls so much. They make my life so much greater than I ever imagined possible!!!

November

One morning we woke up to like a 1/2" of snow...of course Claire instantly wanted to get her snow stuff out and play in the snow. So we got both girls ready and let them go out. Here they are so excited to go outside.
The girls had fun looking in the window at Bryan and I, so we decided to take some pictures (the only problem is you can see my reflection with the camera)...Here is Claire-
Here is Mia- she got so excited each time she looked in the window and would see one of us...her whole face would light up.
On Black Friday, we took the girls to see Santa and two of his Reindeer. As you can see the girls loved it....well Mia did as long as the reindeer stayed a safe distance away from her.
Here are the girls with Santa! They were so happy to see him and he was so great with the girls.

It's Fall!!!

Ever since it got cold Claire has been anxious for the leaves to turn colors and fall. Last year she got her very own rake to help with the leaves, but with an early snow last year she was never able to use it. She was determined to use it this year. As the leaves started falling she kept asking and asking if it was time yet...so we decided to shake the two little trees we have in the backyard and help the leaves fall so Claire could use her rake. She was in heaven!!Of course Mia couldn't let Claire have all the fun; so she did some raking too (well if you can call it raking).
Then the real fun began...JUMPING IN THE LEAVES. I love watching my kids play in the leaves. Claire just loves to jumping in them too!!
This was the first time Mia could play in the leaves and she wasn't all that sure about them. However, after watching Claire for long enough she decided maybe it was an ok thing to try. She eventually had fun with the leaves.
After a great time raking leaves, jumping in the them and then doing it all over again...it was dark, which meant time to clean up. The best part is both girls loved helping clean up too!!!

Halloween

This post will have a lot of pictures because we have had a lot of fun this Halloween. Here are the girls in their outfits on Halloween day. They were both so excited to wear them.
Bryan's cousin and his wife host a Halloween party each year, on our way to their party this year we saw this on the side of the road. I have seen the aftermath of a car on fire, but never one actually on fire. It was crazy!
Of course we had our annual family pumpkin carving day. Mia even helped us take the pumpkin guts out of her pumpkin and Claire wasn't so sure she liked taking the guts out. After a few hours we were able to get all four pumpkins carved. It was a fun time. I bet you can't figure out who carved what pumpkins...
Mia was a cupcake for Halloween. At first she didn't like to have the hat on, but she really loved it once we were out in the cold. This is the best picture we got of her in her costume.
Claire was Rapunzel. Thanks Grandma Lois for making her such an amazing costume and for finding her a Rapunzel wig (we braided her wig and added flowers to it). She was so excited she got to wear her costume four different times. This picture is from her preschool Halloween party. She loved every minute of it. She looks so cute too!!!
I am not much of a Halloween person, I prefer to sit home and see all the kids in their cute costumes. However, I will dress up for the family party, but the costumes I choose are usually simple. This year LeeAnn and I decided to be Jem from Jem and the Holograms and Pizzazz from the Misfits. I think we did a pretty good job with our costumes...what do you think? If you don't know the cartoon then google it and see how we did!!
Bryan was Ron Burgundy from Anchor Man. I think he did a great job. He wasn't loving his wig because it wasn't styled like the package said it would be and that bothered him because he wanted it to be perfect!!
We actually took Claire trick-or-treating this year, our friends brought their two kids and we all went out together. Claire had a good time, but surprisingly we didn't even make it around our whole neighborhood and she was ready to go home.
At the end of the night we took the girls up to trick-or-treat at Grandma Lois' and Papa Don's....Mia showed us that she knew what was supposed to happen with the Halloween candy and she kept doing it over and over and over. It was too cute not to tape!!

Hair Cut

Obviously this first picture has nothing to do with a hair cut, but it does have to do with hair... Claire loved that she had green hair when she put on this witch's hat. This girl makes us all so happy!!

We finally did it... Mia got her first hair cut. Her bangs were so long in front, her sides were getting really long and there was one really long strip in the back. So we finally decided to get a trim. Here she is before...

... and after. No there isn't a huge difference. However, she can see now, her sides aren't as long and now that long strip of hair in the back matches the rest of her hair in the back. Now she really does look like she has a little A-line cut and for the most part it is completely natural.

Thanks Aunt Janelle for giving Mia her first hair cut!!

Pumpkin Patch

This past week Claire's preschool class visited a pumpkin patch. She was so excited to go; Mia got excited too. There were so many activities for the kids to do and they loved it. One of the activities was a barn with animals that they the kids could pet. Claire loved the llama. Her babysitter does a fun little llama finger-play that Claire loves so she was so excited to see there was a llama...apparently the llama was excited to see her too.
The kids were also able to climb a hay bail pyramid and run through a hay bail maze. Claire loved it so much. She was the second one from her class to make it through the maze. She was so proud of herself.
When we were out in the pumpkin patch the kids were told to walk out and pick the pumpkin they wanted. There were so many pumpkins I thought Claire would really look around, but she walked five feet and found the pumpkin she wanted...she refused to even look around at any of the other pumpkins.
Here we are on the hay ride ready after picking out pumpkins. Mia loved Claire's pumpkin so much we decided to pick her out one too. Mia was so proud of her pumpkin. She wanted to carry it with us every where we go.
At the end of the day I had two happy girls who were thrilled to have their very own pumpkins!!