Pretty In Heels!

For Christmas, one of the girls presents were play-high-heel-shoes and they LOVE wearing them. They are constantly bringing them to us asking to wear their "shoes". They prance around with their bracelets, cell phones, shopping bags while pushing their strollers. I can barely contain myself, they are so darn cute!

They are so girly and I just LOVE it!

Playing Catch-up!

I don't even know where to begin with this post. So much has been going on and everyday I say to myself that I am going to sit down and blog and then, well, I just don't. Not that I don't want to. Not that their isn't a hundred posts that need to be written. It's just so much has been going on. SO let me start with a list and then all the posts will be post dated to be when they should have been published.

Enjoy!

1. The girls 2nd birthday party was December 15th. It was a great party filled with lots of love and laughter! To be honest, I haven't even uploaded the photos off of my camera...that's just how busy I have been! POST COMING

2. Preparing for the Christmas season. Shopping. Cooking. Baking. Wrapping. Decorating. Planning. Making lists and checking them twice. The list goes on and on. POST COMING

3. My biggest babies are TWO. How did this happen? How did time go so fast? They were TWO on December 23rd. POST COMING

4. All the girls have been sick for weeks, it may have even hit a month now. We have been back and forth to the doctors at least once or twice a week. I swear they should just name rooms after us there because we are there so often. It's a miracle if I go a whole week without taking one or two of the girls. Claire started with an ear infection. She was on antibiotics and the last day of antibiotics she got a fever. Each of the girls have had a fever, bad cough, horrible runny nose, and have just felt like poop. Madelynn and Emily have been on nebulizer treatments, which helped immensely. But every time we go the doctor, they have been tested for flu and RSV and it's always negative, and we leave with just the same news...bad, bad colds for all. It's been around the clock care for all four of them and it's non-stop, let me tell you. Much of my days have been spent wiping noses, giving medicine, rubbing backs, and cuddling my sick girls. 

5. I had my second ultrasound on December 24th. The doctor gave me a good guess on what the sex of the baby is. I keep saying and telling everyone it is a BOY because everything has been SO SO SO different this entire pregnancy, so stay tuned to see if I was right. My next appt for the gender and anatomy scan is on January 21st, so we will know for sure then what this little bean is. POST COMING

6. Christmas was wonderful. Except for my four sick girls. They slept most of the day on Christmas, but when they were up, they had loads of fun and were spoiled to the core my all are friends and family. POST COMING

7. SNOW! We have had two little snow storms this week. Christmas Eve afternoon and evening it snowed about 2-3 inches and made traveling a nightmare, but it was awesome to see snow on Christmas Eve and made waking up to a white Christmas really neat. And then yesterday, December 26th it snowed about 4 inches here at our house. On Saturday we may be getting another storm. Hoping that's the case...I LOVE SNOW! I love it even more when my family is all together inside spending the day together. Nothing is better.

8. I have another exciting announcement for the blog! POST COMING

9. Tim and I are hoping that we can get a quick trip into go skiing at the end of January. Keeping my fingers crossed. The deals we normally would get won't be around in January, but oh well, we want to go and we can't wait until the end of February, since my belly will be too big by then. I am giddy like a little girl when I think about it. We haven't been skiing since 2009, before our family grew!

10. My birthday is coming up. It's next Friday and I have a list of possible places I might want to go for dinner, so I must narrow it down asap and make reservations. So looking forward to a quiet night with my hubby! This is the second year in a row that I am pregnant on my birthday!

11. Emily is now 11 months old...as of yesterday, December 26th! She will be ONE in less than a month now! Holy crap! My bayboo! I guess I better send out her birthday invites. See it never stops! Oh my! POST COMING

Christmas Eve 2012

Christmas Eve this year was a little more hectic than I had expected. I must say it was totally different than the past two years, for a few reasons. In 2010, Christmas Eve, the girls were 24 hours old and I was confined to a hospital bed, unable to do anything...and hadn't even seen my babies yet...a day I would love to forget. Last year, Tammy and I went to the airport to surprise Megan. 

Every year of my life up until 2010, my grandma has a huge open house for Christmas Eve...for like 50 years. It used to be a hug party that went all night and everyone in the town came. Of course it has diminished to just family over the years as she has gotten older, but it was what I looked forward to each and every year. I got to see my cousins, have an awesome meal and celebrate with everyone until the wee hours of the morning. But, my grandma got older and it got too hard for her to get everything together for our growing family, which I don't blame her, it was a lot of preparing and cleaning!

So this year, my aunt took over preparing a wonderful meal and hosting everyone. It was soooo nice. The food was amazing, just thinking about it now makes my mouth water. 

But first I want to recap before we met up with our family that evening. Early on Christmas Eve, I met my mom nearby for a sonogram to see the little bean and all was well. The appointment took a lot longer than we expected and by the time I had arrived back home it was seriously time to take showers and get everything ready to head down the road an hour to my aunts house. So, Tim and I took showers and got dressed and when we looked out the window, all we saw was a major snow storm. The forecast was for a quick, brief snow shower possible, not four inches of snow in less than a few hours! We had a bunch of errands to run around town before even leaving, so we rushed and got the girls ready and headed out the door with our hundreds of bags and got going. My sister decided last minute that it was too bad for her to drive so she wanted us to give her a ride, and that was fine since she only lives five minutes away, but getting across town was a horrible mess. There were accidents and back-ups everywhere. By the time we were getting ready to get on the highway, we should have already been at my aunt's house...so it was dinnertime for the girls. It was seriously a freakin' mess everywhere and there was only one lane down the highway. 

So all of us and a million and one things are packed into the car, headed down in the dark snowstorm, and the big girls start getting cranky {plus they had bad colds}, Emily is extremely mad screaming at the top of her lungs and as each moment goes by I keep getting more and more nauseous because I am so darn hungry. It took over an hour to down to my aunt's house.

All I can say, is that it was a lovely ride down. When we finally arrived I had to seriously collect myself because I was so upset, flustered, mad, ect. Not the joyous holiday evening I expected!

But once we got in and the girls got busy playing with everyone and I shoveled food in my mouth {which proved to be a very, very bad idea about 30 minutes later} all was much better. Like I said, the dinner was delicious and it was exactly what I needed. The girls ate like they have never eaten before and behaved pretty well, I must say.

Maddy and Grandpa playing

You can totally tell Claire isn't feeling well.

The big girls loved the freedom to go up and down the stairs as many times as they wanted.

Then we changed them into their Christmas jammies and they were much happier...plus they looked so darn cute!

Claire and Grandma

All and all it was a great Christmas Eve spent with some great family. The girls passed out on the way home and it was a much more relaxed and quiet ride back home, AMEN!

Christmas Morning 2012

Yeah, yeah, yeah...I know it's over a month later but I wanted to document for future memories!

We got up normal time and let the girls open some things while we waited for my parents to come up. I didn't get any photos after these, unfortunately. Once Grandma and Grandpa got here, it looked like a bomb exploded with gifts! :)

The girls had a blast opening presents and even helped open many gifts that weren't for them!

It snowed for awhile on Christmas Eve, COMPLETELY unexpected. The forecast was for a snow shower, and it wound up snowing for hours upon hours, making driving extremely difficult. We had to drive an hour to my Aunt and Uncle's house and to say that was a nightmarish drive is an understatement. {More on that in the Christmas Eve post} 

No matter what the snow was so beautiful to wake up to on Christmas morning!

We enjoyed a quiet, jammie day at home. We had breakfast all together and then cooked a huge pot of chicken cacciatore, which was absolutely delicious! All and all it was a wonderful, quiet Christmas. 

The Girls ACTUAL 2nd Birthday/Christmas Celebration

On December 23rd, the girl's second birthday, we had a wonderful family day at home. Tim cooked the girls pink sprinkle pancakes for their birthday breakfast, just like last year.

We had a normal day of lots of dancing, playing, singing and lots of huggies and kisses.

My parents arrived later that day and we got some pizza from the same place we did the year before on the girl's first birthday and since they love pizza, it worked out perfectly.

Nana, Aunt Megan and Aunt Christine came over to celebrate with us too. ANd also, Aunt Kim and Uncle Roger {my bff}. We opened birthday presents and Christmas presents! It was so fun! Aunt Megan had a super special gift to give us and we will never forget it! ;) {More on that in another post}

Aunt Megan got each of the girls recordable story books! They love them and Momma loves them too because it gives Momma a break from reading!

Nana got the girls a bunch of things, but most importantly their new down comforter for their bed! Momma and Dada got one too and WE LOVE IT!!!!!!

And the girl's also got cute new boots from their Great-Nana and Great Aunts in PA!

Again, I didn't pick up my camera too much and instead just focused on the moments with my big 2 year olds!

{Nan, these photos are for you. The girls are opening up their gifts from you and Aunt Suzie! Thank you for it all!!!! We love you!}

After all the birthday celebrations and Christmas celebrations, the girls are now professional present openers. They got some awesome gifts and we are so thankful! 

Family Photos 2012

Last year for the girl's first birthday, our therapist in Montgomery County gave the girls a free photo shoot with her daughter, who is an EXCELLENT photographer and I have been saving it all year to use for their two year old photos and some family photos!

I was going to show all of the photos that we just had taken but I figured I would save the girls 2 year old photos to put with their two year old post. So sorry but it's a secret for a few more days. I can't believe my babies will be TWO in a little over ten days! I can't even begin to comprehend that...and this is only TWO, I really can't imagine when they are 16! Ahh! Okay, enough of that...on to these great photos!

So here are just the family shots and a few of Tim and I together and Emily separate...ENJOY!

First up..our Christmas card photo: I couldn't be more blessed! I thank God every day, and still it's not enough for the abundance of blessing He has given me! Four sweet girls, a wonderful man for a husband and a new baby in my belly...life is good!

I love these of my littlest girl!

It's amazing how much older we look from our engagement photos taken in April 2009...