Merry Christmas 2013

We had an awesome Christmas.  It was fun to have little Julia with us for her first Christmas and Ivey was finally old enough to appreciate what was going on (for the most part). We had a busy week traveling to Badin Lake right before Christmas & Charleston right after Christmas. We were home Christmas Eve night and Christmas Day. Ivey walked right past the Christmas tree and gifts from Santa on Christmas morning to come see us upstairs. We told her we needed to go downstairs to see if Santa had come to see her. She thought Santa was actually in our house along with his reindeer. She also thinks Santa lives at the restaurant since that is where she visited him. She does at least understand that Christmas is Jesus' birthday. 

                                                 
                                                   

                                                   

                               

Dancing with Santa

We had our second annual breakfast with Santa the first weekend in December. Ivey did not want to sit on his lap, but she did tell him she wanted him to bring her a toy. She also was willing to give him high five, stand close enough for a picture with him and Julia and eventually gave him a cautious hug. Julia did not mind sitting in his lap at all. 

Mr. Twister was more popular than Santa.

After breakfast with Santa we headed downtown for Ivey's first dance recital. We dropped her off at the backstage door. There were about 15 different classes performing. We sat pretty far away from the stage and didn't think to bring our extra zoom lens. Ivey is on the far left. She did fairly well except forgot to do the twirl which was her favorite part! She didn't even seem to notice. The whole recital was pretty entertaining. We will be prepared with the zoom lens at her next recital in May!  

Thanksgiving

We celebrated Thanksgiving at Aunt Allison's after a rough start. Ivey woke up with pink eye the Sunday before Thanksgiving and then Julia woke up with it Thanksgiving Day. While Julia and I sat at the doctor's office for 2 hours, Joe prepared our 2 casseroles. We arrived at Allison's about an hour after we were scheduled to eat and still had to cook the casseroles. Nonetheless, we had a good afternoon and no one else got pink eye (at least they didn't tell me if they did). We headed to the mountains that evening for a couple days where we enjoyed taking a walk in the snow (wearing pink snow boots of course) and picking out a Christmas tree. 

We celebrated Aunt Jamie's birthday too!



We welcomed Fizzle the Elf into our family for the season.



Sisterly Love

I think Ivey definitely loves her sister to pieces and it is a known fact that Julia is head over heels for Ivey. Julia lights up when Ivey walks in the room and she will practically do back flips off the changing table to try to get a glimpse of her when she hears her voice in the other room. No one can make Julia laugh quite like Ivey. Julia is constantly reaching and touching Ivey every chance she gets, much to Ivey's dismay. I am pretty confident that touch is Julia's highest ranking love language. It is very sweet and we wish Ivey would be a little more tolerant, but Julia doesn't seem to mind Ivey's whining. Julia is the sweetest baby alive. She is constantly smiling and laughing and just generally happy. She rarely cries, loves to take baths and is extremely curious about everything.

Sweet Hugs & Giggles