3 Little Monkeys

This year, my mom gave each of the grand-daughters a set of matching jammies with their name on them. They are adorable. I hope this is a new tradition that my mom is starting. (hint, hint mom!). :) However....trying to get all three of these adorable little monkeys to look at the camera at the same time is a completely different story. Here's what most of the shots looked like:

And even though they aren't all looking, smiling, & posing - I think that these photos are priceless. I love that these cousins are growing up together. What a Merry Christmas indeed!

Playing

After presents were all finished being opened (round 3 for our crowd) Nellie & Eloise played with the left over wrappings.

I love that Eloise has her cousins to play & be silly with.

More Christmas Photos

Here are some more photos from our Christmas Eve & Christmas Day celebration. We were so happy to welcome my parents into our home for several days during Christmas - thank you Mom & Dad for coming - we loved having you. Here are some precious pictures of my parents with their littlest grand-daughter.

Dad reading to E on Christmas Eve

Mom playing with E & her Nativity set that they gave her

E bringing more books to 'Papa' to read:

E's oldest cousin - Nellie, whom she calls Mia. Both of the girls are Mia to Eloise. So funny.

Thank you Wagners & Harmon's for filling our Christmas Day with love, joy, & delight. We love you!

Merry Christmas!

We hope that you & your family had a wonderful Christmas celebration yesterday. We were SO blessed to have our family here with us to celebrate the day. Here are a few photos from the past few days. I'll be back with more later & more details on our CHRISTmas celebration.

Our first official family Christmas photo - ever! :) A new tradition - I hope:

A sneak-peek at presents (round 3):

3 sweet cousins all in a row, in matching jammies with their names on them. LOVE it:

A beautiful little E in her Christmas dress before the Christmas Eve service at church:

Merry (belated) Christmas to you!!

Eloiseisms

There are a few things that Eloise is saying right now that I want to make sure and document, because they are just too cute! So Grandmas, sorry, but there won't be any pictures in this post...you can go ahead & close the window if you want to. :)

At almost 21 months Eloise says:

Gow {translation} = water

Almost always says 'peas' & 'tank you mama' {even if it wasn't mama who gave it to her - love that!}

Exsouse me mama {excuse me mama} then she pushes her way past me. :)

Calls Santa Tom. Ha ha ha - so funny.

Asks where certain people are throughout the day. Our favorites to keep tabs on are: Gaga {Grandma}, E-tan {Ethan}, Mia, Wa-wa {Auntie Laura}, Fia {Sophia - her bff}, Newie {Nellie}, & of course Dada.

She puts her hands in the air and asks 'whered it go? Whered it go?' over and over if she can't find her lovie. Which brings me to her next one.

She LOVES her nigh-night as she calls it. And Kissie. Kissie will be going away though in a few months, that will be fun.

She's talking NON-stop. Points & waves at things & then proceeds to tell you all about them, it's hilarious.

That's all that I can think of right now, what a blessing & joy this little girl is!!

Christmas at our House Continued

Here are a few more glimpses into our Christmas home.

Dining room light:

Nativity my Mom & Dad gave me last year for Christmas (this is the first year I've gotten to use it!). Along-side the nativity are our scrapbooks from previous Christmases:

Our growing basket of Christmas books to read in December:

Sofa table downstairs (see the beautiful table runner my Mother-in-Law made me for Thanksmas!?! I love it):

What's This?

A new machine has made an appearance in the scrapbook room.

{see below}

That's right - I've decided to learn to sew. My Andrea donated a machine to me {now that's love} & my mother-in-law & sweet sister-in-law took time during Thanksmas to start me on a pair of PJ's for Miss E. After an evening tutorial, we were at JoAnn's the next day buying more fabric.

4 PJ's + 1 gift set later, I was on a roll. Here is my first completed project:

And My Andrea, this is for you - this is my thread jar. :)

Maybe if I work really, really hard - one day My A will let me in her sewing room...

Christmas Time!

It's SO much fun to decorate our new house for Christmas this year. It feels like everything is new, since it now all lives in a new space. Tim & I were just commenting the other day that the house feels like home now. I think it helps too now that we are all fancy for Christmas - love it!

Here are a few pictures of our Christmas house.

Thanksmas

This year, we had Thanksmas from Wed. - Sat. It's kind of like Festivus, except much, much better. My sister-in-law did a great post with TONS of pictures (I think she was the photographer for the week, since I just uploaded my pictures & found that I only had 1 days worth - sigh). Go here to see more photos (thanks for the great post Kim!).

All of Tim's immediate family was there for the whole time, it was nice to get to spend some quality time with them. My nephews are growing so quickly. The 4 littles had a great time playing together.

Eloise & her daddy at the beach:

Eloise, Daddy, & Grandma walking back up from the beach:

Daddy, Papa, & Eloise (Daddy & Papa had a great time swinging Eloise as they held hands - so cute!):

Nativity (as played out by a 1 1/2 year old)

For Christmas this year, my parents have given Eloise the Little People's Nativity set. That's right...I said this year. My mom sent it early & Eloise really, really wanted to open it so she could play with it leading up to Christmas, so my mom graciously allowed her to do just that. I had nothing to do with it... :D

So last night we were playing with the Nativity, when suddenly a great cloud of heavenly 'sheep?' appeared. The sheep was able to sing like an angel - it was quite remarkable really.

And then, having traveled from afar (really very afar) a dinosaur appeared to pay the Baby a visit. And he didn't bring a gift, but he did bring his ROAR!!.

And it was good.

A Daddy and his Daughter

Tonight, Eloise & Tim sat on the couch and watched Elmo. Eloise thinks that this is all that Daddy's phone does - is show short videos of Elmo - it makes her world a little more happy. It makes mine overflow to see these two together.

Thank you Auntie A for teaching Eloise about Elmo. She will never be the same. :)

We Now Return...

...to your regularly scheduled blog updates. Whew! 2 weeks!! Who knew that life would be so busy these past few weeks? A lot has happened around here, so here is part 1 of a weeks worth of updates. (If you're lucky). And hopefully, this will pacify those who have been harassing me about blog updates (you know who you are Melissa). :)

Last week we got SNOW! Here is the first snow picture at our new house:

And just before the snow, we returned from a 5 day adventure to the beach with Tim's family for Thanksmas. We *heart* Thanksmas. I have another post just for it, but for now, here's a sneak peek at some of our events:

Drinking from Mama's water - it tastes better, you know:

Mama & Baby-cakes at the beach:

Dadda & Sweets at the beach:

I'll be back with more later!