Christmas Continued

I just wanted to put up a few pictures from Christmas morning....

The girls sporting some of our gifts.

The grandkids loved their pillowpets!

Billy's 1st Christmas!

Christmas Eve 2010

Tyson was lucky enough to get Christmas Eve off this year, so we headed down to Castaic to enjoy the holidays. It was awesome because my WHOLE family was there, which is an amazing feat. We spent Christmas Eve at my Aunt Karen's house (a long-standing tradition in our family).

Nina was in heaven having her cousins around to play with. She absolutely loves her cousin Tricia and still talks about her every day. We need to devise a plan to get them to move closer. Iowa is just too far away!

The pregnant ladies: Betsy (boy due in May), Leslie (? due in April) and me (girl due in March).

It was so nice to have Mayer, Billy and Tom back from Columbia early so we could spend Christmas with them too. Little Billy is an adorable angel child!

Great Grandma Wood just loves being around all of the great grandkids.

Some of the cousins: Tricia, Squeaky, Billy, Madelyn, Nina and Haley

Halloween (I know it's a month late)

It really does feel like Halloween was a week ago to me. I swear the time is flying like crazy. Well, here's the recap of what we were doing over a month ago.

Getting set to carve pumpkins. Nina was interested for about 5 seconds, which didn't bother me. I didn't quite trust her around the knives. Luckily the Halloween Charlie Brown movie was on TV which kept her happy and let us carve away.

Here's my finished pumpkin and for some reason we don't have a picture of Tyson's. Sorry bud, you spent such a long time on it too. :(

We met up with Nina's friend Sadie at the mall for trick-or-treating. They were more interested in the candy machines than the actual trick-or-treating.

We ran into their friend Atley there, too. Aren't the three Disney girls so cute!

Belle, Tink, and Alice

Sadie met up with us on Halloween to do actual trick-or-treating.

Grandma Beth helping out with the trick-or-treating.

Grandpa was a trooper and manned the door while we were out. Thanks for doing that two years in a row!

*Side note about Nina's costume: She was supposed to be a chicken this year. I thought this was the last year I could decide what she was to be. I started making her costume and wanted to try it on her to make sure it fit. She took one look at it and started screaming "no, no, no". She wouldn't even try it on. Who knew she had such a strong opinion. Oh well, she ended up being a really cute Alice.

Disneyland with Grandma and Grandpa

Nina and I have been trying to take advantage of our Disney passes and it sure helps that Grandma and Grandpa have them too. We took a trip to Disneyland at the end of October. I just love all the holiday decorations and the Halloween ones did not disappoint.

Waiting for the Tiki Room. Grandpa was NOT excited to go, but Nina loved seeing all the birds sing.

Hmm...she begged to see Mickey but got a bit fearful when we got too close. I love the look of absolute terror on her face.

Jesse wasn't as scary, especially when Grandma acted as a buffer.

Nina thought this "Little Mermaid" carousel was the "Nemo" ride because she got to ride a fish. Worked for us because it probably saved us an hour of waiting in line for the real "Nemo" ride.

Disneyland really does seem magical and I'm glad Nina loves going so much. She talks about all the rides and even Mickey Mouse every single day!

Kupins

Kupins=Pumpkins (Nina language)

We visited Murray Family Farms this year to pick out pumpkins as a family. The place was awesome. They had a great petting zoo with very friendly and hungry goats, a few mazes, a farm tour, and lots of other fun things to do. Too bad the store was closed by the time we came back from the hay ride, meaning I didn't get a turnover. I guess we'll just have to go back.

The goats seemed really hungry. They were trying to eat my papers and my purse.

Gotta love the chickens.

Riding the pig

She has been carrying those pumpkins around ever since.

The hay ride.

New Addition

I felt bad after Nina's 2-year appointment. She absolutely hates everything about the doctor. She hates getting weighed, measured, assessed and especially poked. Well, she got 2 shots and a finger prick. The finger prick showed her iron was low....meaning she got a good ol' blood draw too. Horrible really. I felt so bad that I bought her a fish on the way home.

Meet Sharkbait

*I kind of regret it already. I swear he is the dirtiest fish ever. I have to clean him every few days. I'm glad I didn't feel bad enough to buy her a dog or something. But...she does love him so maybe it was worth it.

**2 year stats: 24.5 pounds, 34.5 inches

The Big 2-9

I turned 29 a couple of weeks ago. It's crazy to think that I will only be in my 20s for one more year. In a lot of ways I still feel like I'm 18 years old. I had a great day. Had an ultrasound in the morning, my friend Gin took me to lunch, and Tyson took me to dinner. What a gift...I didn't have to cook or do dishes all day!

Reasons I feel 29: the wrinkles around my eyes don't go away when I stop smiling, I have a quarter of the energy I did at age 21, my memory has become horrible, my baby sister is going to be 21 and going on a mission

Reasons I don't feel 29: I'm still immature, I enjoy a good dirty joke and will still laugh about it, I still feel like I have a lot of life left to live

Pictures from lunch

Mmm...Que Pasa dinner, blue corn enchiladas.. I probably consumed 5,000 calories that day!