December Happenings

December started with a trip to Hunter Farm to look at some christmas trees, ride on a sleigh, and have a visit with Santa.  As exciting as it is to pick out your very own over-priced christmas tree, we decided to go with our cheapy fake one for another year.  So we just admired all of the beautiful real ones and Eleanor and Penelope ran through the rows and rows of trees.  I tried to snap a picture but they were just having too much fun.

    

After all the frolicking through the trees we got in line for our sleigh ride. 

  

    

We rode over to see the animals and give them something to eat.  Santa was also in the barn with the animals, but the girls were more interested in hanging out with the goats, sheep, pigs, cows and chickens.  

  

 

   

Penelope started to get a little bit nervous when the animals were getting loud so she found some reindeer to love right outside the barn.  

  

Then it was time for our hayride back to the fire-pit for s'mores and hot chocolate.

 

  

And this is how Penelope felt about having hot chocolate when it's 71 degrees outside.

So from the first weekend in December until Christmas morning I didn't take any pictures on my camera.  Oopsies.  I did get some on my phone so I'll have to fill in the rest of December in another post with camera phone pictures.  I think my point and shoot camera is on its last leg.  Most of the pictures I took Christmas morning didn't really turn out so I mainly have video clips.  So I thew them together and made a little movie.  I figured it's probably a good way to organize all the videos I take, especially since it really does capture more than just a picture and the girls love to watch them.  I just used Windows Movie Maker to do it, which turns out isn't very user friendly and you can't do a lot of cool stuff.  (In college I used imovie a lot so that's what I'm used to.  Anybody know if you can get imovie for a PC? Or is there a better movie making program for a PC?)

Anyway, here is a glimpse of our Christmas.  We stayed home and enjoyed a nice Christmas together with just our family.



Since we didn't go anywhere for Christmas we decided to go on a fun outing to Discovery Place Kids.  It was the best children's museum! We went the day after Christmas so it got a little crowded, otherwise we could have stayed all day.  The girls loved it! Here's a video of some of the things we did there.




For New Year's we headed over to Wilmington to visit Andrew's parents.  His sister was there with her husband and his grandparents were also visiting all the way from Washington.  We had a barbque on New Year's day and enjoyed playing outside in the beautiful North Carolina weather! 

sometimes my kids look presentable

so I try to take their picture...

{I wanted to get a "birthday portrait" for each of them. Eleanor's birthday was in October, Penelope's birthday was in August.  

November seems close enough to their actual birthdays, right? Especially considering we threw a new baby into the mix in September.} 

sometimes they insist on wearing a green tutu...

sometimes they want nothing to do with taking pictures...

 

sometimes they cooperate...

sometimes they don't get along very well...

{fighting over a stick-turned-microphone}

sometimes they really like each other and play together so nicely...

 

but, one thing is for sure, I think they are always pretty cute!

       

and of course I couldn't leave out this little cutie from the post :)

 

A Name and a Blessing

We blessed Molly on November  4th.  And I'm completely aware that was more than two months ago :) Let's just say I'm a little behind.
But, it is a new year, so I'm resolving to be better at recording our family history! (Baby steps, right??)

Now that we live in North Carolina we are much closer to Andrew's parents so we get to see them more often.  Andrew's dad often has business in Charlotte so every other week or so we get to go meet up for lunch at Chick-Fil-A with him and the girls love it!

Anyway, they were able to be with us for Molly's special day.  It is always so neat to get a glimpse into what the Lord has in store for his little spirit children, and so humbling to think that the responsibility of helping her reach her potential is mine!

Unfortunately, I didn't get around to taking pictures of just Molly before church.  Even with the extra hour we got from daylight savings that morning we were still rushed :)  By the time we got home from church she was already changed into something more comfy, so I made sure to snap some of her during the following week.  

 

She is such a doll!  And have I mentioned an AWESOME sleeper?!! Definitely earning some favorite child points :) At 7 weeks (about the time of her blessing) she was still sleeping in her swing. (We've since moved her to her crib, she was just getting too big for it and a flat spot on her head!) At night she was sleeping from about 11 pm until 6 or 7 am.  And boy do I love her for that! And for many other reasons of course. 

 

She has the cutest little face.  I think every time I go to pick her up I think to myself or even say out loud, "you are so cute!" She has such a content little personality and just loves to watch her sisters.  She is always scanning the room to make eye contact with anyone.  Now she'll smile as soon as she locks eyes with someone, but back then smiles were a little harder to come by.  She likes to be held, but she's not a cuddler.  So once she falls asleep I always hold her precious little cheeks right next to mine and take a mental picture while savoring that moment. Oh, just such a sweet little girl.  She also really enjoyed just being with me and Andrew late at night once the big girls were in bed.  She would just talk and coo and give us all her smiles.  It was like she had been holding them in and saving them all day just for us!  She goes to bed much earlier now and I kind of miss those days of just sitting on our bed and getting acquainted with her sweet little spirit.     

 

Some of her nicknames are Molly girl, Miss Molly, Miss Molly girl, Molly pop, Molly Molly. 

 

Molly has actually always been my favorite girl's name but I could never convince Andrew to use it until now -- since she was the third girl, our favorite names list was dwindling.  Elizabeth is my middle name, and I am also the third girl in my family, so that is pretty neat.  And it is my mom's middle name, too.  We sure do love our little Molly Elizabeth and feel so lucky to have her in our family.

We attempted to get a good family picture before church (you know how that goes)...

And then we tried again after church...

  

Needless to say, we had a lot of outtakes.

I guess I'll just have to get used to my new reality of "good family picture" :)

Happy Halloween!

We missed our ward's trunk or treat while we were out of town at the BYU game and Andrew has class on Wednesdays (which is the night Halloween was on), so I thought we'd just skip Halloween altogether since the thought of taking all 3 girls trick or treating just didn't seem very appealing.  LUCKILY Andrew's class got cancelled and he was able to join us for Halloween for the first time since we've had kids.  It was so fun! Andrew practiced the whole "Trick or treat"  script with the girls and they had it down until it was actually time to do it.  They went to about 20 houses then came home and were so excited to tell me all about it and show me all their candy! 

Strawberry Shortcake

Rapunzel

I'm so glad when daddy comes home...

I have so many blurry pictures because they were running around screaming "best day ever".  

It's the go-to excitement phrase in our house, and even more fitting now that Eleanor was Rapunzel.

 

            

Wouldn't you want to give these little cutie pies some candy?

  

Go Cougars!

We were so excited to find out BYU would be playing Georgia Tech.  Since it would be close enough for us to drive we bought tickets back in August for our anniversary present. Georgia Tech is in Atlanta so we made the 4 hour drive down in time for Andrew to attend the fireside that the football team puts on the night before they play.

On Saturday we got all dressed up in our BYU gear - my sister Amy was nice enough to send BYU shirts all the way from Provo so the girls would have proper attire. Then we took the MARTA (subway/train thing that runs through downtown ATL) to the football stadium. 

Loyal strong and true, wear the white and blue...

Waiting to ride the MARTA down to the game

 When we got to the stadium I was feeling a little nervous/embarrassed/anxious about having all three kids with us, including a 5 week old!
But as soon as we got to our seats in the BYU section we felt right at home, there were kids everywere.  The lady sitting in front of us was even crazier than us, she had a 3 week old in her baby bjorn.  Gotta love BYU fans.

There were a few times I didn't think we'd make it all the way through the whole game.  Luckily popcorn and cotton candy make for good entertainment.  Penelope fell asleep for the whole 3rd quarter so with her bestie unavailable Eleanor got a little antsy so we went and walked around for a little while.  All in all I think we all had a really good time and best of all, we have some new cougar fans in the house!

 

Cougar claws!

Sleepy Penelope at half time.

Eleanor, running out of steam.

Game over, BYU wins

I couldn't help but dig up this old picture (and reminisce about how much skinnier and blonder I used to be).  This was the last BYU game Andrew and I went to.  It was in the fall of 2007. We used to be so footloose and fancy free back then :)

Crazy to think what a difference 5 years makes!