Our Merry Little Christmas Morning

Mommy and Daddy wrote Santa a letter and asked him if he wouldn't mind dropping off the girls' gifts a few nights early since we were headed to Mimi's house for Christmas this year. The big guy gladly obliged and we were able to have our own little Christmas morning at home before we made the trip out the New Hampshire.

Here's the living room right after Santa left on our Christmas Eve (eve, eve).

It's funny, now that I'm a mommy, Christmas morning is so different. I don't really care what gifts I get [Mike, pay no attention to that last statement...] I get so excited to see the expressions and excitement on my children's faces. This year was especially fun because Kylie knew exactly how this whole "presents" thing worked and she knew all about Santa and she was so excited to help Emmie Grace with her presents too.

Ky did so well passing out the presents this year. No one really asked her to do it, I think she was just super excited and took it upon herself. She knew that the striped wrapping paper was Emily's, the polka-dots were Kylie's, the ornaments were Daddy's, and Mommy's were plain red.

She helped Emmie open all of her presents (and the rest of us too, for that matter). It was adorable because she actually helped and showed her the proper way to rip it open. 

This is the book that Kylie picked out just for her Sissy. They have both gotten alot of fun out of it.

One of Ky's favorites was her brand-new, real-life, kid-tough camera. These pictures that she's been taking are so fun. I am definitely going to have to do an entire post of just those images.

The aftermath...

When all was done, we hurried and packed our bags for our trip to New Hampshire (talk about last minute packing) and headed to the airport that afternoon. Notice I didn't say we cleaned up? Yeah, we picked up the wrapping paper, but our house pretty much looked like this for a whole week while we were gone... It was worth it though. Our girls had a great Christmas!

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Santa Baby

We took the girls to go see Santa for FHE this week. The whole week before, we were prepping Kylie, asking her, "What are you going to ask Santa to bring you for Christmas?" She would excitedly answer, "TOYS!" or "PRESENTS!" and occasionally she would be more specific and say "ANIMALS!" By the time the day came to go see the big guy in red, Kylie was all ready to go. She was going to sit on his lap, tell him what she wanted and I was going to get some great pictures that we would cherish forever. Well, we got there and she wanted nothing to do with him. She was perfectly content watching him from a distance, but sitting on his lap was out of the question. Emily, on the other hand, sat down like it was no big thing, happy as could be. We even tried telling Kylie, "See? Emmie Grace is on Santa's lap, don't you want to sit by her?" "No, I'm good." she answered. So instead of the perfect picture of Kylie and Emily on Santa's lap with smiles ear to ear, I got this one, with Santa banished to the back of the chair...

But then, when we thought all was lost, Santa brought out the big guns. Chocolate. Kylie started to like him a little bit more after that...

Okay, maybe alot more... She gave him a BIG hug when it was time to say bye.

I tried one more time, "Kylie, do you want to sit on Santa's lap so Mommy can get a picture?" "No, I'm good."

So we called it good, since I got the super cute picture of Ky hugging Santa and headed to the food court to moderately enjoy some overpriced pizza. When we were finished we decided to try one more time (since there was no line this time) and Kylie hopped right up there without any coaxing and started telling Santa all about the presents she wanted. (I think this time she knew there was candy in it for her because as soon as she was done, she hopped right down and went straight for Santa's basket of chocolates. That's my girl!)

Merry Christmas!

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Christmas With The Kirbys!

The Kirbys threw a Christmas party this year, and I have to say, it was pretty darn fun! We made lots of yummy treats, including: sugar cookies, muddies buddies, pound cake and cinnamon honey butter, Oreo pops [which Kylie called "magic wand cookies"] and white chocolate candy cane cheesecakes (which are a new family favorite).

The kids decorated rice crispy treat houses, sneaked lots of sugary treats, played, loaded up on more sugar, and played some more. {Mike had the genius idea, since we had 15+ kids under 3, to hire a couple babysitters to come supervise the kids activities so the adults could enjoy the party too. It was one of the best ideas ever}

And the parents played a very competitive game of (guys against gals) Christmas Pictionary.  There's no need to mention which team won... It's really not important...

We had so much fun and can't wait for the 2nd Annual Christmas With The Kirbys party next year!

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Ky Ky and Emmie Grace

Whenever I ask Kylie who her best friend is, without a pause she replies, "Emmie Grace." Kylie is such a sweet big sister and Emmie Grace looks up to her so much. I love watching them play together and can't wait to watch them grow up together. I love my babies!

I may be a little biased, but I think I have the prettiest little girls in the whole wide world!

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2010 Christmas Cards

Rather than posting our newest family pictures I figured I would just post our Christmas cards instead since they feature my favorite photos anyway. I love how simple, bright and warm they turned out.

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inside
I did something really special with these two images in the girls' rooms. I'll share those soon :) 

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Emily's Birth Announcement

So, we sent out Emily's birth announcement a little late... I decided to included it with our Christmas cards this year. Sure, she's almost 6 months old now, but better late than never. I love the way they turned out. They were die-cut into this shape and I think it made them even more beautiful!

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Daddy's Girl

Daddy and Kylie have a very special bond. When's he's around, nothing else in the world matters. She loves him more than I could have ever imagined and he loves her even more than that.

 

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November Is Over?!?

What a crazy busy month this has been. I'm sure I'm not the only one that thinks that November completely flew by... Mike and I always (half) joke about how in the Fall we never see each other and our house is always a complete wreck. I get so busy with photography and now, with Mike's new job, he is super busy too. About a month ago he started a new job as the Senior Planner over video games for Walmart Stores. I don't know if you know this, but he's a pretty big deal. (I think so at least- if you ask him though, he'll be modest). Anyway, they brought him in during the busiest time of the year and needless to say he's working longer hours and not seeing his girls quite as much :( but we are so proud of him and so grateful that he works so hard for us! Anyway, getting back to my original point, November has come and gone and I was a blog slacker! Here's a brief run down of the kickoff month to the Holiday season.

We started it off with Emily's 4 month well-baby visit. She is doing so well and is such a happy baby. During this visit she was due for another round of immunizations. No fun at all. We always go to doctor's appointments as a family (it's an excuse to spend an extra hour of the day together) well when Emily is ready for her shots I always volunteer to take Kylie out into the waiting room and Daddy stays with Emily. I still just can't bear to listen to my little baby cry, even though the whole time I'm waiting in the other room I am closely listening for her. (I don't think I will ever be able to sit there while someone pokes her.) Mike knows that the only reason I want to be the one to take Kylie out is because I don't want to see Em cry but he pretends not to know any different. He's such a nice boy.

Isn't she such an angel baby? She really is.

 At 4 months old Emily was:

Height- 24 inches long

Weight- 15 pounds 3.5 ounces

And the way her percentiles go, 

she has an above average head circumference (75th), average height (50th), 

and way above average weight (90th). 

She's a healthy girl!

Aside from working, we didn't do too much in November... We took our family pictures at the beginning of the month. They turned out cute but I am waiting to reveal those until our holiday cards are out in the mail. They're a super secret surprise... Maybe the next post will be about those...

We had a really great Thanksgiving with some of our good friends, The Owens. And guess who didn't take a single picture? Me! The food was wonderful though, and the company was even better. It was funny, while I was setting the last dish on the table, before we sat down to eat our giant feast, I thought about how strange it was to be the parents that cooked this Thanksgiving dinner for our children and friends. It's still weird to me that I'm a grown-up I guess, but so much fun all at the same time.

{By the way, these pictures are all from a birthday party that we were able to attend for one of my clients. I have amazing clients who have turned into great friends! I was asked to take pictures at the party and my cute little family was invited to come play and enjoy cupcakes. It was such a fun afternoon!}

Well I guess that's pretty much November in a nutshell... See, I told you, not much happened.... But I will try to keep up with our Holiday festivities a little better in December. It is the most wonderful time of the year after all.

Oh, and one more "by the way," this post is dedicated to my Inky Grandma and her dear friend, Billie. I got a phone call from Inky Gma tonight. She just wanted to make sure everything was okay because I hadn't updated the blog in a long time :) I promise I'll do better Grandma! LOVE YOU!!!

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Lunch Time!!!

Um... I think she liked her Spaghetti-Os...

This is what happens when dad is supervising lunch while mom is taking care of the baby in the other room. Strip her down to nothing but a diaper and socks (so her feet don't get cold, of course) and let her have at it. Seems like a good idea...

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Halloween 2010

We've made it a tradition the last couple years to dress up in a family themed costume. Two years ago we were a family from the 50's, last year we dressed up as Wizard of Oz characters and this year we were the Alice in Wonderland gang. I was the (nice) Queen of Hearts, Mike was the Mad Hatter, Kylie was Alice and Emily was the White Rabbit (from the original cartoon- none of this Tim Burton business). I make our costumes every year and every year I wait til the last minute and end up getting so stressed out that I vow "next year we are buying them!" But then next year will come around and I'll want to make them again, there's just something much more fun about home-made costumes.

Kylie LOVED her costume- well she loved the blue dress and insisted that it was her Princess Cinderella dress. We had to keep reminding her that it was her "Princess Alice" dress. {She still loves to run around the house in it.} And I don't think Emily really cared too much about her costume either way, but I though she looked adorable in it!

On the Friday before Halloween, Walmart HO puts on a giant trick-or-treating event for all of the kids of WM. There are always so many people there and the offices are always full-out decorated, it's alot of fun. Unfortunately, because of Mike's new job (oh, didn't I tell you? Mike got a super cool promotion- I'll have to tell you about it later...) he was stuck in a meeting during the time that the kids would be trick or treating and by the time he got out everyone was packing up. We still ended up visiting a few of Mike's friends and got to show off the girls for at least a few minutes and Ky still got plenty of candy so it wasn't such a big deal that we missed most of the event.

The next day, we had a Trunk-or-Treat that was put on by our church. They had games for the kids and trick-or-treating of course. This is the night we all got dressed up and paraded in all our glory. It was pretty fun, and again, Kylie got tons of candy. Here are our Halloween pictures from that night:

This is the only picture I got of the girls together... I'm thinking maybe we'll do a little post-halloween photo shoot so I can get more pictures of the girls in all their cuteness and more of the costumes that I spent so much time on.

The Mad Hatter passing out his candy. Thanks for dressing up for me, Babe!

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