Christmas 09'

What an amazing Christmas! Aaron and I joked about how we can't believe we are in a recession because this was our best Christmas yet. On Christmas Eve Aaron's family came over and we had an awesome dinner and opened a ton of gifts with Aaron's parents and sisters. On Christmas morning while I was getting ready, the girls went ahead and moved all of the presents from underneath the tree onto the ottoman. They did this in the 2 mins. it took for me to throw some clothes on, brush my teeth and pull my hair up...silly kids! After the terrible blizzard we had, we were afraid that Chrismas dinner at my sister's house would be canceled. Thankfully, everyone in my family has at least 1 vehicle with 4-wheel drive and we were all able to make it over to her house. And thankfully Aaron was willing to help my brother in law shovel out her driveway so everyone had a place to park when they arrived. Both of the girls got everything they wanted for Christmas, and Santa was pretty good to Aaron and I too! Cecelia's favorite present...I think it's a toss up between her Easy Bake Oven and her DS. Kiley's favorite present was probably her DS and accessories. Stanley loves his milk bones and new toys. Yeah, he opened probably 5 presents this year for Christmas too

Building a snowman

My best friend Rachel and her boyfriend Clinton are in town from California for a few weeks over the holidays. One of the things they said they really wanted to do while in town was to build a snowman with Cecelia because living in California obviously doesn't give them an opportunity to do this kind of thing. Cecelia loved it! We had been trying to get out and build a snowman since we had our snow days from school, which occured back in early December but the snow hadn't melted enough to make a quality product. Stanley even enjoyed our creation. Every time Stanley went outside to go potty he would bark at the snowmen, this went on for days. Then, once Stanley was comfortable with them, he began to use them to pee on...needless to say, our creations are very yellow now.

Baking & Decorating Christmas cookies

I love to bake and Cecelia is really beginning to enjoy it too. Cecelia and I really went all out this year in the kitchen. We found an amazing recipe for chewy sugar cookies...they were so good! In addition to the sugar cookies, we made chocolate chip and peanut butter kiss cookies. Yes, we cheated on the peanut butter kiss cookies. We used the pre-made mix. In my defense though, I had a lot of different kinds of cookies going at once and I needed a little help. We bagged them up and gave them out with Christmas presents. I think they were a hit.

Yay for snow days!!!

Cecelia and I were lucky girls today...school was cancelled! I was scheduled to be at a Bellevue daycare today, working on art projects with Pre-schoolers. Although it would have been fun, I had more fun playing in the snow with Cecelia and Stanley. We were going to build a snow man but when we tried, we realized the snow was still a little too soft. We are planning on going back out tomorrow, once the snow has gotten a little harder and trying again. Stanley loves the snow! When we try to get him to go outside through the back door and down the back deck steps (to go potty), he refuses to go. However, if we take him out front, either through the front door or through the garage he does just fine. And once we were outside today he was running and jumping around in the snow like he had never seen it before. After we got done playing we came inside and Cecelia put on her bath robe to get warm and I made her some hot chocolate. We most likely will not have school tomorrow either. The forecast is for at least 8 inches of snow to continue to fall until late tonight, possibly early tomorrow morning. Hopefully we will get another snow day, we will see.

Decorating

The Christmas tree went up two days after Thanksgiving. I love the soft warm glow of the white Christmas lights on the tree. I like to turn off all the lights in the house except the tree and snuggle on the couch with Cece and Aaron. It's so peaceful. Cecelia really enjoyed helping me, she especially liked to eat the candy canes we hung up. We are planning on having Aaron's immediate family over on Christmas Eve. It's a Culver family tradition to deviate from the traditional holiday meal and have Manicotti for dinner on Christmas Eve. I love that tradition. Then on Christmas day,we will open presents with the girls in the morning and then we will be going over to my older sister's house in the afternoon. Kiley will be with us for over a week on Christmas break. We are all so excited to spend the holiday with her.

Naughty Squirrels!!!

I decided to host Thanksgiving at my house this year. My side of the family is very large...I have 5 sisters. So once you add my sisters, their spouses and kids it can get pretty chaotic. My intention was to bring in my patio table and chairs, clean them off, throw matching table cloths over my kitchen table and patio table and have a few more seats for guests. So, I go outside to assess how were going to get the patio table in, and low and behold 2 out of 4 cushions have been destroyed! I was at an absolute loss. I had just been on the back deck less than a week ago and the patio set was fine. No one could really fathom what in the world could have done that to the chair cushions. My mom thought that since I don't bring the set into storage during the winter that maybe the elements had caused the cushions to split. Okay, it was the most logical explanation we could come up with. Not the case at all! Aaron and I have both witnessed squirrels coming onto the deck and leaving with a mouthful of stuffing. After we realized what was happening, I suggested we go out together and put the cushions in trash bags and take them out with the trash. Aaron said we should just let the squirrels have what they need for they're winter nests, they were already ruined anyways. What a kind husband I have. So as of now the cushions are still on the chairs being picked at by the squirrels. Looks like I'll be getting new cushions next spring :)

Cece doing what she does best...being cute!

Last year for Christmas we had bought Cecelia a tag reading system, the storage case and 2 books. A pretty expensive gift for a 4 year old! So imagine our disappointment when she never really took an interest in it. Lucky for us, since she is learning to read at school, she has grown to love her Tag! It's an awesome learning tool and I'm so glad we got if for her...even if we could have waited almost another year to do it! I just threw the picture of Cecelia making brownies in because she loves to help around the house, especially in the kitchen. Thank goodness for that! I appreciate any help I can get with cooking, cleaning or doing laundry. Work that has to be done, and although I usually don't mind, it is sometimes tedious and is very repetitive! Watching Cecelia help me gives me some entertainment and help breaks up the work a little.

Stanley is too adorable!

Just a few pictures of Stanley. Notice in the one picture he is laying in (and fits perfectly in) my bamboo serving tray which we always have on the ottoman in the living room. We use the serving tray to set our drinks or snacks on... what a goof! Stanley gets a bath about every 2 weeks. He has gotten A LOT better about behaving in the bathtub for me, but as soon as he gets out, it's another story! He runs around the house like a mad man. He's full of energy and won't let you hold him. I try to catch him so I can towel dry him and brush him, but he would rather run from me and pounce on my bed and the living room furniture soaking wet.

Denver

Kiley turned 8 on November 12th! We traveled to Denver to see her for her birthday and we brought my 8 year old niece, Mercedes, with us as a surprise for Kiley. We got in on Friday afternoon. Aaron picked up Kiley and we surprised her with presents and cupcakes. That evening we stayed in and ordered pizza and went swimming in the indoor pool at the hotel. The next day we took Kiley shopping for new clothes...she is growing too fast and seems to need new clothes all the time! After shopping we took the girls to go roller skating. That outing made for some great entertainment. Cecelia spent the majority of our time there, hugging the wall for security. Mercedes and Kiley were a little more ambitious and just used the wall periodically for support. That evening for dinner we took the girls to Kiley's favorite restaurant: Casa Bonita. It's a fun little Mexican restaurant with lots of entertainment for the family. They even have cliff divers who jump off of a rock wall into the water below! Saturday night the snow started coming down pretty hard. I got a beautiful picture of the water fountain outside of Casa Bonita as we were waiting for Aaron to park the car. After dinner we got in more swimming and hot tub time back at the hotel. Sunday morning when we woke up, it had snowed probably 8-10 inches. Although it was very pretty outside, I was nervous that we would have a terrible time driving home. Instead of leaving after lunch as we had planned we left after breakfast that morning. The roads ended up being perfectly fine as soon as we got outside of Denver. Better safe than sorry though when you have precious cargo!

Halloween 09'

This year for Halloween Cecelia was a witch. "Alfabie" (The wicked witch in the Wizard of Oz movie) to be specific. We found some really cute striped tights and a little wooden broom and she was set! Cecelia didn't want to fuss with any face paint or colored hairspray this year. So I decided to turn my attention to Stanley whom couldn't protest as easily. Stanley was the Incredible Hulk for Halloween. We spray painted his hair with green hairspray and we got him a shirt that was a little too small, then we cut a few of the edges of the shirt (to make it look like it was stretched out and ripping). The two of them together was adorable!

Carving Pumpkins

Almost every Wednesday evening I have 2 of my best friends, Summer and Karissa come over for dinner. We each take turns buying and preparing the food for the evening. I love it! Summer has a son, Chas, who is just a few months younger than Cecelia. I love that they are so close in age. The Wednesday before Halloween, Summer and I decided to let the kids carve pumpkins. Since Cecelia was an infant we have always gone over to Aaron's parents house to do this every year (I'm not really sure why we didn't go over there to do it this year). Aaron's dad, Kent, being the great grandpa that he is, always does the actual carving of the pumpkins. Needless to say, I really didn't know that carving pumpkins was such hard work! The kids had a blast and didn't make too big of a mess:)

Where the wild things are

Parent teacher conferences were on Thursday evening for Cecelia. She is doing great and is mastering all of the kindergarten goals set for her. They have a scholastic book fair running in the library during the conferences, so after we were finished meeting with her teacher we let Cecelia pick out a few books. $26.00 for 2 paper back books and one hard back...Ouch! Totally worth it though, Cecelia loves, loves, loves to be read to. On Friday I took Cecelia and her best friend to see Where the wild things are. This was Cecelia's first out of school activity with a friend from her class. Very exciting!!! I took the girls to Village Inn for pancakes for dinner before the movie. I loved seeing the excitement on Cecelia's face when they brought out the pancakes and they were in the shape of a face...just like daddy makes for her at home. The movie was awesome. I'm not so sure the girls understood the underlying moral to the story but they enjoyed it anyways. The girls really like playing with my camera too. The close up of them was taken by Cecelia herself. Too cute!!!

Elmwood Park

With the weather cooperating over the weekend I decided to take Cecelia to Elmwood park to get some new pictures of her. The park is absolutely gorgeous this time of year. All of the leaves are changing colors and are falling to create a perfect backdrop. Plus the playground itself is fun for the kiddos. Apparently other people had the same idea too. We saw at least a 1/2 dozen other families taking photos, some even had what looked like professional photographers with them. I totally felt like an amateur out there. My mom is a professional photographer, so having her there would have really been helpful. I rely on my mom to take pictures of Cecelia far too often and I really should do some myself to get good practice. I still think I got some great photos though. Cecelia is so beautiful its hard to take a bad photo of her.