Beach trip

The day after Christmas we loaded up our car--where the car seats don't touch--and headed to my sister Jenn's house in Richmond. We spent the night there and then headed to the Outer Banks. We spent the next week at the beach with my crazy family. The weather was warm enough to go to the beach the first few days. Katie was really funny with the water, for some reason she would not go anywhere near it, as the waves came in she would run further up the beach even though she was very far away to begin with. She did have a lot of fun going on walks to collect shells.

Kaite with cousin's Madeline and Ella





My sister Scotia with Katie and me

Katie was in heaven having someone to play with at all times. New Year's morning we had a second Christmas and opened family gifts. Katie got a laptop from my parents so she thinks she is cool like Mommy and Daddy now.

Marcus and Addison were little angel babies the whole time. They had a blast, there was always someone to hold them. Addy has started giggling and they both laugh.

Bethany holding the twins

Cousin Carson pushing Addy in Katie's doll stroller

My sisters and mom and I got ourselves into quiet the project when we decided to make little outfits for our girls. They turned out really cute. I have to hide Katie's from her because she wants to wear it and won't take it off. I am hoping they will both fit great this spring.

Katie's

Addison's

Merry Christmas

Our Christmas started on the 23rd when we took all 3 kids to the mall for Christmas pictures. We love those professional pictures--so much so that this was Katie's second time in her whole life. I was smart enough to bring two outfits...don't try that when everyone involved is under 2yrs old. After that event we went to visit Santa. Last year Katie would not go anywhere near him, this year she waited over an hour in line to see him. We even tried to bribe her to get her to leave but she was having none of that. When we finally had our turn, Katie ran up to him and gave him a big hug (sorry we opted out of paying $14.99 to document it), and talked to him about what she wanted for Christmas--toys and candy--easy enough, right Santa? I was so proud of her, anyone who knows Katie knows that she doesn't go anywhere near strangers, I guess there is just something about Santa.

Christmas Eve

Christmas Eve was pretty uneventful, we read "The Night Before Christmas" (this is a tradition of Mark's family that we decided to carry on) and 3 Nephi 1:12-14, and then set out milk and some of the cookies Katie and I had made. Then Mark and I stayed up all night and "helped Santa out."

The next morning I actually woke up before Katie, but when she did wake up she was in heaven. She spent the morning unwrapping gifts; her's and everyone else's.

The first thing Katie did after she unwrapped her kitchen was run to her toy basket and started grabbing things. We asked her what she was doing and she said she was getting stuff to put in the kitchen. We had to convince her to unwrap her gifts with promises of things to put on all the shelves. If you look closely you can see her car in the oven window.

Then we made a yummy breakfast, and hung out for the day. We read the Bible Christmas story before we ate dinner and sang Happy Birthday to Jesus before desert.

After dinner we went to see 3.2 miles of Christmas lights. You turn off your car lights and drive slowly through a park full of different Christmas lights set to music--it took us almost an hour but it was pretty cool.

MERRY CHRISTMAS !

Silly Katie

This past week has been BUSY. Mark and I had our nanny come all day last Friday and we went Christmas shopping. Then Saturday we drove to West Virginia to meet my brother to buy a car from him. We have all been crammed in my Jeep Cherokee--which I love, but it doesn't hold 3 car seats very well. Joey was selling his Yukon so we bought it from him. We had no idea what we had been missing-there is so much space! The car seats don't even touch each other! But my favorite feature is the heated seats.

In the name of being silly, again. Katie decided to put on some of Marcus' clothes. I tried not to laugh, because I'm sure these clothes will never fit Marcus again but I had to take some pictures.

Other then being silly, Katie's other favorite characteristic is that she a good sister. Here are some moments we caught during this past week.

Marcus and Addy were in their little seats and Katie decided to have story time. They are both actually paying attention!

Katie was playing with her baby doll in our bed. We laid Addy in there and she let Addy play too. Addy was so happy to be included in Katie's world.

We made Christmas cookies this week. Katie was in heaven.

Step 1. Eat the batter

Step 2. Lick the frosting

Step 3. Take them to the neighbors

I told everyone to eat at their own risk.

Getting ready

Katie and I decorated for Christmas this week, she loves the tree and the lights. Every morning when she gets up she asks to turn on the lights.

This will be the first Christmas that we are spending at our home so we are working on starting some Christmas traditions, but aren't quite sure what we want to do. We need to start with a bigger tree but can't agree on fake or real. I grew up cutting down our own in our forest and dragging it home, and Mark grew up with a fake one that made no mess and had no pretty smell. Needless to say we both think the way we were raised was right. And since we can't agree we are going one more year with our fake, tiny, we-don't-spend-Christmas-here tree.

We also need to go Christmas shopping but can't find time for us both to get out--Mark is in the middle of finals--so we are going to be a typical American family and shop the Saturday before Christmas.

On another note-Katie is silly and she likes to remind me. She decided that Mr. Potato Head's mouth looked better in her own, then when I started taking pictures she wanted me to have one of my own.

We're back

Ok, so we took a long break from the whole blogging thing, but we are back.

Over the past month life got a little crazy.

First, in an effort to get the twins to sleep longer then 3 hours at a time we moved Marcus out of the same bed as Addison. Doing this we discovered that Addy is an angel and she sleeps right through the night--I mean until 7:30-8:00AM! After a little work Marcus is now only waking up around 5:30AM and then cries for a few mins and then is up around 7:00AM. You would think that we would be less tired with getting almost 8 hours of sleep but for some reason we are still exhausted. Oh well, someday.

We started using the bumbo seat, Marcus doesn't love it but Addy does

Also, because we are putting our house up for sale in this wonderful market we decided we better fix the kitchen, something we have been planning on since we moved in but haven't gotten around to. We replaced the cracking tile, repainted the cabinets (I did this), painted the walls a perfect green color and put in a dishwasher. The kitchen finally matches the rest of the house. I spent a work week upstairs with all 3 kids while it was being remodeled.

For those of you who knew what it looked like before here is the after--

the tile is a grey color

A couple weeks ago my little sister Bethany got her mission call to Rome, Italy!!!

During this past month, Marcus and Addison started smiling. They are so cute! Addy always smiles at me when I start to get mad at her for not eating. I really try not to smile back so she can tell I mean business but she is so cute.

Marcus was the first one to smile and coo

And lastly, we decided last minute to fly to Utah for Thanksgiving. Most of Mark's family hadn't met the twins (mine will meet them at Christmas) and this will probably be the last year we can travel for the holiday's so we did it. Katie was so excited for the plane ride, she talked about it for weeks ahead of time. Traveling with 3 kids under 2 was lots of fun. We were delayed in Pittsburgh and ended up missing our connecting flight by 10 mins and had to wait another couple hours. Luckily they gave us food vouchers and we sat in a restaurant during that time eating for free.

We had a lot of fun in Utah. Some of the highlights for Katie were watching Uncle Mike ride a bull, feeding horses with Uncle Mike (anything with Uncle Mike), playing with her cousin Nick, and playing with play dough with Grammy and Grandpa.

For Marcus and Addy it was Aunt Emily and Aunt Bethany (she came down from BYU-I to spend Thanksgiving with me!) holding them the whole time and getting lots of smiles out of them, cuddles with Aunt Kara and the flash from Aunt Rachel's camera (haha).

For me and Mark it was CAFE RIO!

Katie and Nick watching Mike ride the bull



Feeding the horses

Thanksgiving day

Nick and Rachel thaught her how to put olives on her fingers

My mom gave me the adorable outfits that the twins have on

Sunday

On the trip home our 8:10PM layover flight was delayed until 11:30PM. There was a 9:40PM flight that we tried to get on. They told us it was full, but Mark made our plea and they gave tickets 1A and B and 2B. We were thinking it must be a small plane, but no, when we got on the plane and saw our big seats...we realized we were in FIRST CLASS! I'm sure no one else up there was as excited about it as us, but hey!

November 13th--Happy Birthday Mark

Top 4 Reasons We Love Daddy

1. He is fun to "hold"

2. He gets up with us kids at night because Mommy sleeps through it

3. He likes to have dance parties with us

4. He got a good job so he can spoil all his girls

HAPPY BIRTHDAY MARK DANIEL!

Our little Flower (and Pumpkin and Hotdog!)

Well the big day has come and gone. Katie had a blast. She was so excited to dress up in her costume. I had told her that I would paint a ladybug on her face last week so she was very excited to be a complete flower.

Addy is the pumpkin and Marcus is the hotdog.

Katie and Carson

Aunt Heather, Aunt Flossie and Cousin Carson came up to go trick-or-treating with us. Katie had a blast hanging out with him for the weekend.

One happy family!

It took Katie about 2 houses to figure out how this whole thing works. She was not shy at all about walking up and and taking the candy. We had Marcus in a stroller and I carried Addy in this fabulous sling that I made. We live in the best neighborhood for trick-or-treating. We only made it through a few blocks before we had too much candy.


Katie and her bowl of candy that Dad & Mom will end up eating

Here are some other random shots from this weekend.

Katie and Mark playing ball outside .

They are so cool in their hats!

Church today.

We just thought that Addy looked so cute in this headband.

Shout out to Bethany!

This is the dress she brought home for Katie from China.