Happy New Year! For the last few years we have gone to our good friend's house to celebrate New Years Eve. The Chandlers are always so fun and we love ringing in the new year with them.
Andrew and I took photos on the stairs last year too. Maybe that's tradition now.
We came home just after midnight and enjoyed some sparkling cider given to us by the Chandlers. The kids were so excited to stay up late. Our neighbors across the street do fireworks in our court so we watched out the front window. They kids stayed up till about 12:45am watching fireworks. (I then stayed up till after 2 am listening to them....so much for my new years resolution to be patient and kind. Seriously. 2am? Go to bed! Be considerate of other people! Ugh!) Anyway. Happy New Year!
December was such a busy month but we had oh so much fun.
Shopping fun.
I told Bailey that Grandpa has glasses like this and she insisted I wear them.
Matching! Gosh I love this little girl. She loves shopping like her Mama!
Naked bums! (Yep I posted it. Move on.)
Bailey, you have a little something on your face.
Andrew likes to climb on the back of the chairs in the van. He's our monkey.
Love the pink.
Christmas cup stacking. I can't be beat! Andrew is quite good and did this one here.
Bailey found our elf on the shelf, Elvis. She's pointing to him in the entertainment center.
Pretty in pink!
He rolled up his pants and tucked his shirt in. Love his sense of fashion!
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My pretty princess.
Bailey enjoys watching Andrew practice the piano and doesn't want to get left out of the action. This is also the child that will sing to herself for hours. Yes hours. I've timed it, and I love it. (Unless you're all trying to sleep in the same room, then her lullaby that lasts past midnight isn't quite as cute.)
I love watching kids learn and grow and figure something new out. I also love when kids have a difficult time saying a word or they say it in a way that is just too cute. Bailey used to call "water" "wa-dee" I loved it and didn't correct her. I knew she would eventually figure it out, and she did. I felt she grew up a lot the day she started saying it correctly. Here she's trying to say another word that took me a minute to understand. I love how she is old enough to describe what she is talking about to me. Both videos are pretty similar.
I realized this post had much more of Bailey than Andrew. He is in school 5 days a week now and it's showing in my photos. I'll make a better effort to photograph him next month.
Merry Christmas! Here's a little peek of our Christmas day.
The tree and the loot :)
We always open stocking first. We do something a little different than most for our stockings. When we were newly wed and didn't have much money we started filling our stocking with random things around the house like a wooden spoon, toothpaste, paper clips, fruit snacks etc. We would try to find the most random things and it just became a fun tradition.
In the nursery at our church, Bailey's teacher told me Bailey would ask her to read this book to her often. (I brought it to church last Sunday and we happened to sit behind her teacher. She was so excited to show her teacher she got this book for Christmas. Her teacher picked her up and put her on her lap and read it to her. It made Bailey so happy.) Bailey Opening Book
Go BYU! (This puzzle is really really hard!)
It's fun when Ryan gets surprised too. He wanted this drill, but I told him to wait till Christmas was over since it was such an expensive month and we would get it in January. Then I told his parents he wanted it...:)
If you asked Bailey what she wanted for Christmas she would say a pink bike and a pink helmet. Once she opened the helmet she didn't want to talk it off.
Ryan did the impossible this year. He actually
surprised me with an AMAZING gift! It is really difficult to surprise me
during Christmas and he did it perfectly. It was this small box hiding
in the tree so I didn't even notice it. He saved it until I thought we
were all done with gifts. Then he pulled out this bad boy. Wowzers. I was shocked. She's sparkly! I had no idea and it's hard to pull one past me. Thanks Ryan!
On Dec 14 we got all dressed up and attended Ryan's company party. This theme for this year was rustic Chrismtas or something like that. Each year the company does an awesome raffle drawing. Each employee gets a ticket and the prizes are usually incredible! This year had a Kureg, a set of knives, a few Samsung Galexy Tabs, 2 Xbox 1s, 2 PS 4s, sets of 3 vacation days (PTO), a 56" TV and the biggest prize was a 65" TV. This was our 5th time going to his work party and we hadn't won anything yet. The first year Ryan worked with this company there were only about 25 employees. We joke that the first year Christmas party was the best chance for us to win anything. The odds are not in our favor. Well, guess what? We actually won this year! Guess what we won? A computer mouse. Ya, tell me about it.
Anyway, we had a blast and have made some good friends with another couple from Ryan's work.
On December 20, we went to the Houston Zoo! We love going to the zoo and have gone at least 10 times in the last year. Each time we go we find some new animal or some new area of the zoo we haven't experienced before.
Like this. Bailey spotted the baby before I did. Can you see him?
I LOVE MY KIDS!!!!!!!!
This time we saw some of the zoo lights they put up around the holidays.
Singing the BYU fight song to the cougar at the zoo.
