Lily's First Christmas

Well Merry Christmas and almost Happy New Year all rolled into one! Lily's first Christmas was very fun. We spent Christmas Eve, Christmas, and the day after Christmas with my parents in Enumclaw, and Lily really enjoyed being with her grandparents and Aunt Anna and Uncle Josh, like she always does. Ben and I really enjoyed it too, and it was nice to be with family for the holidays. Ok, well I figure that pictures are going to tell you how everything went better than just writing it out, so here goes!

Ben and I in front of our Christmas tree at home. The bottom is kind of bare so Lily wouldn't mess with it as much. It kind of worked.

Lily in her sailor outfit! There's a cute hat that goes with it too, but she wouldn't keep it on long enough to get a good picture. My mom got this outfit for her awhile ago, and she's just getting big enough to fit in it.

Contemplating her first snow. She wasn't too excited about it one way or another, though she did start crying a minute after she sat down. I tried to bundle her up good, but we could only stay out there for about 10 minutes anyway - it was just too cold for her. This was just after the first time it snowed, and it was only about 2 or 3 inches at the time, but by the very last time it snowed, we had probably 8 inches, which is crazy for western Washington.

Christmas morning!! My family has a tradition where we read the Book of Mormon together every night through out the year, and we read the last chapter Christmas morning before we can open any presents. We also always take a picture with our BOM's after we're done. This was right after we'd finished reading, but still getting ready for the picture. Lol :)

Pretty family picture.

Trying to figure out what her stocking was. By the middle of all the unwrapping she was definitely understanding that if she tore the paper off, she got something cool. :)

Daddy helping her unwrap. I think she was getting a little distracted by the paper.

Seeing her baby doll for the first (ok, she saw me pick it out at the store) time. She was very excited. I had been very excited to give it to her.

She really likes it. She carries it around and pats it on the back and likes to point out the baby's nose and eyes. So cute!!

But she got tired of everything after awhile. She has such a cute sad face. :)

Hehe, My mom probably won't be too happy with me, but I had to include this on here. Lol, she had just gotten a new cell phone from my Daddy and it's a fancy touch screen one, and she was a little overwhelmed by how to control it.

One of Ben's family traditions is that his Mom always makes red and green pancakes Christmas morning. Since we weren't with them this year, Ben wanted to make them for everyone. Fun stuff!

 
My new apron! Ben and my Mom are apparently trying to domesticate me, since I unwrapped such items as this apron, an ironing board and iron, spatulas, a sewing machine... are they trying to tell me something?? I thought I was a good little housewife! :)

Lily had way too much fun with the stairs. Only problem is she still hasn't figured out how to go down, and we haven't found any gates that will fit across my parents stairwell here. So we were constantly running after her and pulling her off the third or fourth step.

So proud of herself!

Having fun with Daddy.

We tried to get a cute picture in Christmas hats, but Lily wasn't super cooperative. Ah well.

 
I like this one of Ben and I. :) I think we're pretty darn cute. (You can see where Lily gets it!)

Dressed up in her new clothes from Grandma. I can't believe she actually kept the hat on long enough to get a picture. How cute is she?!?

 

This was Sunday after Christmas, back in our house. Lily really likes playing Peek-a-Boo, and she'll do it all by herself with blankets or cloth diapers or just her hands. She's a doll.

I see you!

So, that's been our Christmas shenanigans this year. It is definitely lots of fun having a child to give gifts to in addition to Ben and I. It just brings out a whole other side of giving in each other, and it's tons of fun to watch Lily's face light up when she realizes she has a new fun toy. Her favorite present was definitely her baby doll we got her, and she really likes all the books she got too. Mommy enjoys that Lily received a bunch of new clothes! :) Ben and I really enjoyed all our presents, and hanging out with family, and taking a mini vacation away from Bothell. We also really loved singing in the choir at Church. It was a beautiful program. Well, see you next year!

Nine...

Teeth. That is, Lily has 9 teeth now! Which seems like way too many for an 11 month old, but we noticed yesterday that a molar on her bottom left side had popped through. We hadn't even noticed that she was teething! I had the thought that maybe she would start teething, mostly because she had been drooling excessively for the last two days, but it seemed too soon to start teething again since she already had her first 8 front teeth. She's a chomper!

Well, she's not exactly happy here, but she has such a cute crying face! Plus you can see her four bottom teeth if you look really closely.

See? The tooth on the right is the least through and only barely visible. Also, on the left you can see the white area where her molar is about to pop through. This was taken about a week ago.

I'm just glad that the molar coming through didn't seem to cause her too much pain. Considering we basically completely missed that it was coming! I don't mind. If only all teething was that easy! :)

Pictures!

So I said I would post pictures of the Thanksgiving trip and then I got busy doing other things. So here's the post.

The four girl cousins that were there! Bethany's the oldest, Savannah is her sister and is 14 months (she's left), Lily in the middle, and Rachel on the right is 12 months. The three babies had a lot of fun playing together, it was really cute to watch them all week.

So Fun! Rachel, Savannah, Lily. There were bubbles in there at one point, but they were in there for awhile and most of them are gone by the time this picture was taken.

Lily was squatting almost the whole time. She didn't like to sit completely down. Silly.

I love Savannah's smile! Adorable!

One night Lily fell asleep on Grandpa's lap. It made him pretty happy (really! even though you can't tell in this picture! lol). It was really cute!

I tried to get a good picture of all the girl babies playing together, but they didn't like to pose for the camera nicely for some reason! ;) So this is the best I got.

Cute Nathan - he loves Superman, and wore his Superman cape, or a superman shirt almost everyday! Cutie! Nathan is Bethany and Savannah's brother.

The only picture I got of Thanksgiving dinner! Sad. Eric carving the turkey, and Debbie setting the food out.

A picture with all four babies! Again, I couldn't get one where they're all sitting nicely together, or anything like that. Way too active! Colton, along with Natalie and Ted, didn't get there until Thursday evening, so it wasn't four babies until Friday and later. Colton was the youngest at 8 months, but he was pretty mobile and held his own with all the girls. :) It was really fun to have so many babies around!

Look at those beautiful animals!! We really loved seeing the lions.

Family picture at the zoo.

Lily checking out the Komodo dragon. This was tropical area, and Lily really liked walking around, checking out the lizards, fish, etc. She was kind of a handful because she just wanted to walk around, not be held very often.

Lily got really tired at the end and zonked out about 20 minutes before we left. What a Cutie-pie.

My sweet husband putting my candles on my pie, a whole 23 of them.

Happy Birthday Me! I had a Lemon Meringue Pie. Yum!

Well, that's about it for now. I still need to put the pictures from my birthday at my parents on the computer, so they will be forthcoming!

Thanksgiving in Colorado

I hope everyone's Thanksgiving was wonderful! We just got back from Colorado a few days ago. We were visiting Ben's parents who live there, and the rest of the family that came up to visit them as well, namely David and Debbie, who live in Utah, Natalie and Ted, who live in Utah also, Eric and Monica who live in Colorado, and Daniel and Andy (who live here in WA) were there too. It was really great to see so many of Ben's family all together and hang out and have fun. The highlights of the week, for me, were Thanksgiving dinner (of course), going to the Zoo, playing racquetball, and celebrating my birthday. Ben says his highlights were also the zoo and racquetball. So I'll start with those.

Thanksgiving was a feast, naturally, and the most fun part, for me, was all the women in the kitchen trying to get everything ready at the last minute. I know it kind of stressed Ben's mom out, but to me that's always a part of Thanksgiving, is cooking together, hurrying to finish the food on time, and sneaking bites of everything as you make it and put it on the table! Ben's mom makes really really yummy rolls (dipped in butter!) and mashed potatoes, and a really yummy jello dessert that everyone looks forward to, and those were probably my favorites. I made the deviled eggs (which we forgot about, so they weren't on the table, lol), the green bean casserole, and the stuffing. I was really proud of myself for making the stuffing. It's my mom's recipe, and she couldn't tell me exact measurements for things because she's been making it so long she just throws it together. So I was a little nervous, but it turned out really good, and everyone said they liked it. Yummy stuff. I like Thanksgiving!

On Friday we went to the Denver Zoo, and it was awesome! Ben had been telling me for awhile that it was a lot better than the Woodland Park Zoo here in Seattle, and I was really looking forward to it. I wasn't disappointed. All the animals were really easy to see, which was great, and they had quite a few different animals too. Lily's favorite was the ducks! :) There was a huge pond with tons of ducks and geese and a few more exotic birds like pelicans too, and when we'd pass it she'd stretch towards it and start chanting "du, du, du, du" (which is how she says duck). It made her happy, and it was cute. She also really liked the fishies. Ben's favorite animals were the lions, and my favorite was probably the lions too. They were so close, and it was really cool to see them so clearly.

I really like racquetball, even though Ben and I don't get too much opportunity to play. But when we hang out with Ben's dad we get a lot of opportunity because he really likes it too. He's the one that first got into it, I think. Anyway, so we played quite a few times with his Dad, and various other members of the family. It was tons of fun. I was probably one of the (if not, the) worst people playing, but I definitely improved between the first and the last times I played. I liked it so much I had Ben go and buy me my own racquet. Ben and I are looking into a place where we can play around here that's not too expensive, so if anyone knows a place, give us a heads up.

This is getting really long, so I'm gonna do another post about my birthday after Sunday, when I celebrate with my family. I haven't even mentioned how adorable Lily and all her cousins were together. I'll do another mainly picture post where I talk about that. Anyway, again, I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving break. We sure did!