Christmas is for 4 year olds

Christmas has been an insane source of excitement for my girls this year. Almost every night since Thanksgiving they have asked as they go to bed "Is Santa coming tonight?" They have been besides themselves with joy over the Christmas season that they could hardly sleep. We have tried to remind the girls what Christmas is really about. They have wanted to listen to Christmas music non-stop and only watch Christmas movies. Claire raided about half of my Christmas decorations to put in her room (luckily I have lots that I don't always put out). They were getting a little over ambitious with they desire for gifts so I made sure that they knew that Santa would only bring ONE present so think of something good. These are the letters we wrote to Santa which was a veiled writing exercise

After a lot of Christmas activities and fun Christmas Eve finally came. The girls were allowed to open one present that morning

Digital cameras for kids

That night they got new pajamas and slippers

And of course we decorated cookies for Santa

Christmas morning finally arrived with much excitement

We then headed to the Inman's house for more presents and Christmas luncheon

Claire and Alice singing carols for everyone

We had a great Christmas that involved way to much fun, food and presents!

Crazy December

This December has been absolutely nuts! I feel like I work all the time and when I am not working there is always something to do. On top of all that Marc has been hard at work submitting applications to 13 schools to hopefully pursue an MFA in creative writing this next year. So my usual support system has been strained this month. Needless to say it has been crazy around here. However, we had a great time and here is a sampling of a few of the activities:

We made gingerbread houses

And potica

Visited Santa

And a Pioneer village

Just in case Santa didn't get the memo

Baby Simon

Quite some time ago, my sister-in-law Jessica asked me to be her doula during her natural childbirth. I was thrilled and honored to be asked so of course I accepted. My duties as her doula were to attend one of her HypnoBabies classes with her and basically do whatever she needed me to do during her labor and birth. I eagerly anticipated her baby's arrival and finally on November 15th I got the call I had been waiting for. Jessica had gone into labor at about 9am, at 1pm things were picking up so she called. I arrived at about 2:30. Her water broke at 3:30 and we headed to the birthing center.

I snapped this on our way out the door

Jessica was amazing and her cute little guy was born at 6:07pm. It was such a blessing for me to be able to participate in his birth.

After he was born came the naming. Caleb and Jessica had a short list of names and were going through those trying to decided what fit. Noah, Jacob and Luke were the top picks. Noah started gaining traction and looked to be the winner. However when Caleb and I were talking he mentioned that he liked the Apostle names which is when it hit me and I said, "What about Simon?" Caleb said, "Yeah, Simon's OK" and Jessica said something like "Simon's OK but I really like Noah." Pretty quickly it was down to Noah and Simon. Basically everyone that came through thought he looked like a Simon more than a Noah, but Jessica wasn't convinced. Around midnight I fell asleep in a chair while the new parents were basking in their cute baby. Around 2am we decided to head home which is when Caleb said to Jessica: Are you sure? as he was filling out paperwork. Jessica: Yes I'm sure. Caleb: OK Simon Peter it is. So yes, I am taking credit here :).

Yesterday I brought my girls down to meet their newest cousin. Claire was beside herself with joy at the prospect of holding a new baby, Alice was ambivalent. Claire held Simon for quite some time (with supervision of course) and was very pleased about it. Alice held him for about 2 seconds and was done. Claire was hilarious giving Jessica all kinds of advice about wrapping him in a blanket, putting him to bed, reading to him and feeding him. We are all so excited to welcome Simon into our family.

Halloween

I am discovering that working full time and keeping up on my blog are apparently incompatible as this blog has been rather neglected this year. Today I am at work without a single patient on the schedule so I will get a little caught up.

First a little about the costumes. Claire wanted to be Minnie Mouse and Alice wanted to be a Pirate. Whatever. Do you have any idea how hard it is to find a girl pirate costume that isn't skanky? FOR A 4 YEAR OLD! Ridiculous! Luckily Costco had both of those costumes and we bought Alice a boy costume, which she was happy about because it came with a cutlass.

Alice Making her
"Pirate Face"

This year it seemed like Halloween dragged on FOREVER! Of course we started pretty early with Little Haunts at This is the Place Heritage Park on Oct 18th as it coincided with UEA and I got called off of work that morning so we quickly threw costumes on and headed out for a little pre-Halloween fun. The girls always love This is the Place. It was rather chilly but we made it work.

Claire wanted to be Cinderella for This is the Place. They had just
received a bunch of dress up dresses for their birthday so that was easy.

Alice insisted on a picture on the "Pirate Ship"

You have to be on your toes to keep the goats out of the candy

On my day off we went to a pumpkin patch and carved pumpkins.

The next Saturday came the real madness. We went to Boo at the Zoo in the morning, a birthday party in the afternoon and the ward Trunk-or-Treat that night. We were all exhausted.

Alice thought it was so cool that her primary
teacher dressed up like pirates too.

On Wednesday Halloween finally arrived. The canyon doesn't trick-or-treat, so we went to the local shopping center which is very popular with the locals. I am glad that Halloween is over.

On another note, I took another ultrasound registry on Halloween and passed which is very exciting for me.