Christmas Pictures

We were taking pictures for our family Christmas card and thought of doing some sister shots... this picture shows the amount of attention span these girls have!

Claire did pretty well if she didn't have anyone around to distract her. This one turned out great! She sure is cute.

Pa and Claire looking great as always.

Ma and Marie all dressed up.

This was our final Christmas card... as you can tell there are no sister shots in it, but it still turned out pretty good. Marie is almost 2 1/2 and Claire is almost 1. We have definitely been blessed with a great family this year! Merry Christmas!

Happy Thanksgiving!

We drove up to Sacramento to see Teddy's Aunt Christine. We ate tons of delicious food and they had a lot of leaves!

Marie got put to work 'helping' to rake leaves. She had a blast!

Since Marie did such a great job raking, we had a big enough pile to throw her in it!

Where is Marie?

Pa also had fun rolling around in all the leaves.

Claire had a great time munching on all the leaves. Maybe that was what she wanted for a Thanksgiving dinner... just leaves! :)

Sharing

Marie likes to show Claire how to blow into the tea kettle lid to make it whistle. She demonstrated for Claire and then even let Claire have a turn! It took Claire a couple minutes to get the hang of it, but now I have two whistlers!
Teddy thinks Marie should maybe go work as an engineer in China...

Marie even shares her suckers with Claire! Sometimes she has to pry Claire's head away to get it back, but she is a very considerate sister!

Marie thought it was only fair that since she shares with Claire, that Claire share her car seat. Marie insisted on sitting in a car seat that is way too small and then having me even buckle the straps! I did just the top one at first, but she wasn't satisfied. These girls are great fun!

Bucket Head

Marie and Claire love to play with the toy cars. Claire is sometimes more interested in the bucket. She emptied all the cars for Marie and then repeatedly put the bucket on her head and then took it off again. I think she enjoyed hearing her own yell being super loud in the bucket.
My cute little monkey girls! It is getting cold out, so we got them some cute PJ's... of course Marie picked out the ones with monkeys.
I was folding clothes one day when I looked at Marie because she was yelling, "I did it!". She actually folded a rag the correct way! It was amazing! Great job Marie!

We needed to refill our flour bucket, so Claire took advantage of the situation. She had a great time playing in the spilled flour... I am not sure if I spilled it or if she did.

We had a visitor a little while ago... he was not very happy about being caught. He got put into a bucket and was hissing like a beast. Marie would just wave into the bucket and say, "Hi snake!" She had no idea that the snake was very ticked off.

Claire's Milestones

Claire has started waving!
Marie loves to wave at her because she knows that Claire will now wave back!
She gets really excited about it sometimes... why use one hand when you can use two? Claire also has been giving kisses lately. Marie gets so excited when Claire gives her a kiss. It is so cute!

Claire also started walking on Nov. 3rd!! She thinks walking is too easy, so she adds random squats while she is at it... Teddy says this position is a perfect wrestling stance, it must run in the family.

The most steps she has taken in a row is about 5 or 6. She is going to be running in no time! It won't matter if she crashes too much... she still doesn't have any teeth to knock out!

Diggers!

A random hole appeared in our backyard with about a 5" diameter. It had moths flying out of it and there were no sand piles next to it... so there must have been a pretty big cavity somewhere and it was dug from some other end (not from our backyard down). So what better to do than dig to find out what this hole was all about?

Teddy got to work digging out the hole and it just kept going! He dug the whole about 4' deep and then dumped two 55 gallons drums of water down the hole. The water just poured right out the hole. It must lead to something pretty big! We were hoping there wasn't some big cavity below our house, so it wouldn't collapse on us. We never did figure out what it was, but we did get tired of digging eventually.
Marie loved to play in the hole, but she was a little nervous when we started throwing dirt back in.
Marie loves dirt!

The overall hole Teddy dug (I just made the stairs into the hole) was about 5' x 3' and 5' deep. We found no animal and no cavity and no gold. Bummer.

Happy (late) Halloween!!

OK... so I know that I am behind on my postings, so I will get a couple out quick.

We had our friends, the Zajanc over for Halloween and we made hot dog mummies! They turned out really cute and delicious. I love hot dogs anyways, but the breading was crispy from the oven... yum!
I also made a fondant cake for the event! It turned out pretty well. The sides were a little bit bumpy, but overall it was great! I have no idea how they get their cakes so smooth in 'Cake Boss'. We had a trunk or treat at church and had a great time! Marie was a dragon. Who knew that dragons liked candy so much? She wouldn't move on to the next trunk until she had eaten all of the candy that she had just got... it took us awhile to get around to all the trunks.

Claire was a pumpkin (filled with some balloons) that her Uncle Spencer was when he was little. Teddy dressed me up as a mummy!

Teddy was the trunk master! He hid in the trunk to open and close it as people came up. He did a great job and even won the best trunk award!

Marie loves the school bus!

While Teddy and I were off enjoying our vacation, the girls had a great time with their grandparents. When we returned to pick them up, we had one more day to hang out in Virginia. We were even lucky enough to ride the school bus with Marie!

Marie got distracted by all the catipillars on our walk out to the school bus.
They sure are cute though and we don't have ones like those where we come from!
Marie LOVES the school bus! Everytime she sees a bus (no matter what type of bus it is) she yells, "SCHOOL BUS! I want to ride the school bus!".
I already dread the day that she has to start going to school...

Marie's journey is complete.

Vacation! --Part 4

We went to Universal Studios after the cruise, mainly to see Harry Potter World... but we ended up seeing the whole park because the lines were super short! Sometimes it would take longer to walk to the ride than it did waiting in line. It was amazing! All rides had about a 10 minute wait... except Harry Potter...
Teddy met up with a long lost relative.

Now, on to Harry Potter World! It was absolutely amazing! I really wanted to buy a chocolate frog, but they were $10/each! Even if we didn't get anything at the stores, they were fun to look through. They did a great job putting it together to follow the books.

We HAD to get some butterbeer. It was delicious! It was like a cream soda with some really yummy cream put on the top.

The lines to get into the main Harry Potter ride was about 2 hrs, but we went through as singles and got on in about 30 minutes! The ride was just fantastic... Hermione puts a spell on the bench you ride on so you can 'fly' in the ride. The ride was a combination of a simulator plus real objects. It was the best ride I have ever been on (and not just because it was Harry Potter!). They did an amazing job! I hear there are rumors of them expanding the Harry Potter section of the park. If they do... we might have to make another trip!

Vacation! --Part 3

For the next part of our vacation we were on our cruise to the Bahamas!! It was a great time!! We had a fun time on the ship, but who wouldn't with food like that? We met another couple on the ship who was from Canada! They were interesting people to talk to... They were our age and she was a C & C machinist and he held different seasonal jobs. They flew into Florida to get on the cruise ship and it was their first time flying or going on a cruise or doing pretty much any vacationing! The most exciting thing was that they got engaged right after eating dinner with us!

We arrived at the Bahamas and were super excited to get in the water and start snorkeling... that was all I wanted to do all day! We ported in the middle of the island and there was shopping/snorkeling/everything to the East and then there was a little place that had only snorkeling/ocean activities to the West. We wanted to go West because the reef was right off the shore and you didn't have to take a boat out to the reef for another $40/person... Apparently, no one else had the same idea as us. We waited for more people to show up that wanted to go to Paradise Cove with us to split the taxi fare of $40/person to make it $16/person. It was about a 20 minute drive from the ship, so we couldn't walk it. We waited about 45 minutes and then another group of people walked up wanting to go to Paradise Cove! So we were on our way...

The first things these guys ask our cab driver after we all get in is, where can I get some weed? Wow... these guys were ridiculous! They were 'medical' users and grew their own stuff in Oregon. We got to Paradise Cove, got our snorkeling safety brief and jumped in! It was amazing! I wanted to spend all day out there, but I was getting tired after about 3 hours in the water. The pot heads only lasted 20 minutes and then decided it was too much of a workout...

This is a HUGE brain coral!
We saw tons of great fish. We even saw a tiny octopus that was in a clam shell. Teddy pulled open the shell and it was upside down so it looked like the bottom of a starfish. Then it darted out and Teddy got inked, haha! We also saw a monterrey!

I don't know what this thing was... there was just the little tunnel of rocks and shells... then Teddy poked it a little bit and this worm like thing started coming out!

I about had a heart attack when I saw these guys! There was no discussion of jellyfish during our snorkeling briefing! I have seen Finding Nemo and these guys freaked me out... We were swimming along and then I spotted one right in front of me. Then all of a sudden you notice TONS of them all around you! I was freaked needless to say, so we asked the guys on the shore about them and they said they were harmless jellyfish. I don't know about that... Teddy got stung by something under the water and had a big bump show up! Either way, they were amazing to see!

Snorkeling has to be one of the greatest activities ever.I was very happy with how our underwater pictures turned out. A couple from church showed us their underwater camera bag they used, so we ordered one online before we left. Definitely worth the money!

So we got back on the boat after an amazing day of snorkeling and being on the beach. The food was fantastic and entertainment was great. It was a smaller ship so we got to participate in everything we wanted to! Teddy got pulled onstage during a comedian show... we got to play Friendly Feud... Teddy was the ping-pong and shuffle board champion! We had a great time eating unlimited ice cream... but we still had more vacationing to look forward to!