Christmas...wrapped-up

We hope you all had a wonderful Christmas and got to spend it with your loved ones! We had an eventful couple of days and would have loved to drag it out all last week and this weekend... but it is over for now and the countdown can begin for next year. I wanted to wait until after the new year to clean up but I am afraid we killed our tree... again (now I remember why we got a fakey in AZ). When we bought the tree we brought our stand to see how much we needed to cut to make it fit. The answer was none so the guy at the lot told us to drill holes in the side for it to get water. Well that didn't work and the water level has been the same since the day we bought the tree (two weeks ago) so now the tree is CRISPY! I don't even turn on the lights because I am afraid it will burst into flames. So, I guess this year we will clean up Christmas early. Oh well! This year we spent Christmas Eve with Kevin's family at his Grandma's house. We had a great time and got to see family that we don't get to see too often. It was so cute to see Caralin with her cousins and we were finally able to get a picture of all the kids together. We woke up Christmas morning to a cranky toddler with a yucky nose but thankfully her mood changed quickly when she saw that santa had come. We opened gifts together and played until the afternoon where we went to my parents to celebrate. It was a nice day! My mom made lasagne and salad and breadsticks (she always tries to do something other than the typical, and we all love it)! My mom really outdid herself this year. She worked hard to make the evening fun and special. After a mountain of wrapping paper and presents she had a couple of games for us to play to win a mixture of pink-elephant junk, lottery tix, and gift cards. It was a lot of fun! Caralin got so many nice gifts and loves to play with them all. Her playroom finally looks like one fit for a toddler and not a baby! She will actually play for longer than 10 minutes in htere now! (We'll see how long that lasts.) For some reason I was so absorbed in passing out and watching everyone open presents that I didn't take many pics (which is really unlike me). My dad has some and I will try to get them soon so I can post more. Enjoy!

Christmas is almost here!

I know it has been longer than a week since my last post and I have promised a cute video, but it has been a little crazy around here trying to get ready for Christmas. I think we are just about ready. Today we had so much fun driving up to Mt. Laguna to play in the snow. It was fun but VERY cold. Unfortunately, it was raining and very windy so it was too cold to play. So, we took a couple of sled runs, a couple of pictures and then quickly got back in the car! We will try to go again when it isn't so windy. I have posted the video of Caralin helping papa with the Christmas tree and a couple of pictures from the snow today. I also found some cute pics that I put in a slideshow. Enjoy!

Potty Talk

Caralin has hit a huge milestone! She is potty training! I may have mentioned this a couple weeks back because we bought her a potty chair then but she is fast becoming an expert (just like her to do this early too). We let her take her time getting used to it and using it. We went through several days of accidents on the floor... so much fun, but she thought it was cool to use the potty (and so did we). So, yesterday and today I let her roam the house with no pants...again (kind of without choice because I can't seem to find training pants small enough to fit her) and she started going to the potty by herself when she needed to go! I was washing dishes and she came into the kitchen yelling "Yeah!" and sure enough she had done it all by herself! After that she went by herself several times throughout the day and today (skip this if you are squimish) she went #2 all by herself and them came and told me (again I was in the kitchen, I seem to spend a lot of time in there cleaning). We are so proud of her. Every time she goes she gets so excited and wants to go wake up daddy to tell him (if he's sleeping). We are still taking it at her pace but she is making great progess and she seems to be having longer spans of time without being wet. Alright, enough of that!
We are frantically trying to prepare for Christmas. Kevin's birthday was Wednesday and we went out and finally bought our Christmas tree. I have had the house decorated since before Thanksgiving, but it took us awhile to find time together to pick out a good tree. I have an adorable video of Caralin with my dad helping with their Christmas tree. I will try and post that tomorrow. Here are some photos from our Christmas shoot. Enjoy!

Fun Stuff

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