A Cinderella carriage ride

Waiting our turn.
All of us in the beautiful carriage.

Grandma and Grandpa took us to a beautiful part of town that had incredible decorations, lights, etc. Danielle saw the Cinderella carriages before we even got out of the car and she said, "I wish I could ride in one of those!" Well, Grandma and Grandpa made her wish come true. We had a magical ride, listening to the clop-clop of the horses feet down the street!! When we got off the carriage Danielle got a "glass" slipper to keep as a souvenier. So cool for a 4-year-old girl.

I promise I will get to some Christmas pictures but these were pretty special and I didn't want to forget to share the memories.

Samantha's first hair cut!

BeforeDaddy watching his baby girl getting her first hair cut.

After.

Told you it would look pretty Daddy!

We're having a wonderful time visiting family in Southern California. There is so much to write about and so many picture to share that I'm having to try and find time to post from other people's computers.

Whenever we come to "the big city" we try and do things that are a little more convenient here than they are at home. One thing I had been putting off was getting the girls' a hair cut. For Samantha it would be her first. Grandma had a great idea to take them to a place called Rainbow Kids. It went terrific! Samantha got to sit in a little race car and play with toys in her lap which she thought was pretty cool. Her hair looks a million times better. Danielle got a trim and a fancy braid, and they were mostly all smiles the entire time. (Samantha did not care for getting her hair blown dry but it sure did look cute once finished) Of course I saved a curl for her baby book.

Baking cookies & a surprise visitor!!

Ho! Ho! Ho!

Family picture with Santa

Heading up to hang stockings!
Sipping hot cocoa

Samantha helps.

Danielle helps.

We celebrated Christmas with my family one week early since we will be traveling to southern California next week. Our family tradition is to bake cookies (for Santa AND us) on Christmas Eve. This year both girls enjoyed helping and our only regret is that we didn't double the batch.

Before we made our cookies a special visitor dropped in. Santa!! Danielle was overjoyed. Samantha was a bit nervous but afterward Santa was all she could talk about. He brought little teddy bears for the girls, made all of us laugh with his great humor, and even stayed for a photo. We were very happy to hear that one of Santa's special rules is that on Christmas we needed to remember to sing Happy Birthday to Jesus since the day really is about celebrating Him.

While we waited for the cookies to bake we sipped some of Grandpa's new recipe for homemade cocoa along with whipped cream and marshmallows.

What a night filled with special memories.

Happy Birthday Jesus!

Daddy & Danielle really getting a band going!

A big thanks to Uncle Tim for the drum set (slight sarcasm)!!

Cookies and milk during intermission.

Grammie opening up her special calendar.

A wonderful celebration of our Savior's birth. Our Christmas with my family would have surely made Jesus smile. Our day started with everyone singing happy birthday to Him. (I even got it on video....might share it sometime so you can see our manger, baby Jesus, and hear that story.) There was so much giving from the heart, thankfulness, joy, laughter, hugs, game-playing, and even naps! Danielle loved watching each and every person open their gifts and of course there were plenty for her, too. Samantha got a little overwhelmed with all the packages and just wanted to play with her little doggy set (tiny dog, dog house, etc that goes along with the doll house they have) off in the corner. Oh well, she was happy!

I am so thankful for this time together. It was wonderful to have Gram visiting and to enjoy special time with my dear family. It would have been perfect if Jeff had been feeling better, but he was a real trooper and enjoyed watching the girls and playing with them in between times of rest.

Update and Photo Sessions

This is our Christmas card so you'll be seeing this photo again when you get your card!!

An update on the new beds: Samantha is doing great sleeping in her toddler bed and Danielle is thrilled with her new bed. That was an easy transition. Not all transitions have gone this way so I'm extra thankful for a smooth one!

It's getting to be a lot of fun communicating with Samantha. She now says, "Lub you Mommy" at random times which melts my heart. There is also a lot of "I dude it" (I do it.) and "self!" because she is very independent. I forgot how much patience this stage takes because it would be so much faster to just buckle her into her carseat and go...instead I let her think she's helping me when really the entire time I'm sure we're going to accidentally pinch her finger.

Since I'm sharing about Samantha I have to tell a funny story. The other night we were up at my parents for dinner. Samantha loves to have Grammie do things for her instead of Mommy. So, she asked for more apple juice and when I started to get up she said, "No, Gammie dude it!". She said it with a little attitude so I stopped and said, "Samantha...what's the magic word?" She said...."Gammie!". We were all laughing so hard and love to share that story. Thankfully my mom is not the type to "spoil" our kids, but it was funny.

We are definitely having fun getting ready for Christmas. I'm sorry I haven't posted many pictures but I'll try to get better about taking some over the next week. Then we will be having our Christmases (one here and a few in So. Cal.) so there will be tons of pictures to share. I was excited this week that I got the above photos. It sure makes a Mama happy to have a good picture of her family.

A big change....

Her cozy new bed. Snuggled in.

Grammie & Danielle saying goodnight!

Kissing her baby goodnight.

How Danielle ended up sleeping.

Where Samantha ended up for the night.


The other night (at 2 a.m.) Danielle woke up crying very hard and telling me her eye hurt. After looking her over I saw what she meant...she had split her cut above her eye open again! Apparently she smacked it on the edge of her toddler bed while she slept. Poor thing...not a ton of blood but still it hurt. We had been planning on getting her a twin bed soon but this made me see that she really is too big for her bed. So, yesterday my parents, the girls and I did some Christmas shopping AND picked up twin mattress and frame for Danielle. She was thrilled.

As we were moving furniture around to see how it all would fit I had to make a big decision. The crib was taking up tons of room and the toddler bed takes up very little room. One of those beds was going to have to come out...the question was which one. I decided that my baby really was big enough to sleep in the toddler bed now so we took apart the crib. Yeah, I'm kinda sad but it felt like the right thing to do. We told Samantha that we would give the crib to a baby that needs it and she kept pointing at it saying "for babies". Then she would point at her bed and say "my bed". She was very pleased.


So, my mom stayed awhile and helped me get the girls ready for sleeping in their new beds. We prayed, tucked them in, took the cute photos and left them to giggle awhile. Well, that turned into an hour and I decided that for tonight Samantha had to sleep in the pac n play in the playroom. They both fell asleep in moments! Hopefully after a few nights of doing this they will be used to the change and Samantha can sleep in her new bed.

Danielle can't wait for Daddy to get home tomorrow and see her new big girl bed!!

Our Christmas Tree!

Went out in the snow to choose our tree.

Waiting for the tree to come inside.

It's all decorated!

Putting on a special ornament.

Samantha loved this doggy one.

We were all pretty excited to get our Christmas tree last night. We went out into the snow, walked about 30 steps, picked out our tree, loaded it up and brought it home. This is our first year purchasing a Christmas tree and....I love it! Jeff is right that there is something special about hiking through the woods to pick out a tree (and I'm not saying that we'll never do it again) but we have a lot going on these next weeks so it was so nice to donate a little money to our local Christian school and get a beautiful tree so easily. The only hard part for the girls was waiting for it to drip-dry on the front porch. It was covered in snow so we had to do some shaking and waiting for a majority of the water to drip off. While they waited the girls got out the tree skirt and put their toy Christmas tree on it. Too funny!!

Finally it was time to bring in our very nice, big tree. It barely fit in the stand and we had to groom the top so the star would fit, but it's perfect. Then came time to tell the girls what many of the ornaments mean, show them the ones that belong to them, etc. They were very gentle with the ornaments and loved putting them on all by themselves!

After we decorated and had dessert Jeff read Danielle the story of Jesus' birth from the Bible. I thought it was neat that she brought Daddy her Bible and asked him to read about Christmas. What a blessing that she really seems to understand the reason for Christmas. Then I read the girls the children's book God Gave Us Christmas. It was a very special family evening.

An added bonus was that both Jeff and Danielle took turns with the camera so there are even a few pictures of me with the girls and Jeff.

November 29th......what a special day for our family!

I love this girl!!

Daddy's girl.Grammie and Grandpa

A 1-year-old and a 4-year old! (for about 6 more weeks)

She loved all the birthday calls from the many family/friends who love her.

Danielle said her favorite things about her birthday were "being 4 now, decorating her birthday cake, the singing and blowing out the candles, eating cake and opening presents". She also enjoyed calling her birthday buddies (twins - Sadie & James who were friends of ours also born on November 29th, 2006) hearing about their day and telling them about hers.

What a day!! I now understand why my birthdays were always so special to my parents. I always knew that birthdays were a fun day to celebrate but now I really get it. All of the memories of Danielle's birth (and the years of heartache leading up to my pregnancy with her) come to my mind and I'm overwhelmed with the joy of being her mom. So, today was fun to watch her excitement and getting a chance to make her feel like the special girl she is, but most of all it was a day of thanking God for bringing her into our lives.

I'll have to post pictures of her enjoying her presents in a future post.

Danielle's birthday party with friends...

She got fairy wings from her friend Ava! Yay for dress up stuff!!
Samantha loved her cupcake!

All the girls.

A princess castle pinata!

This year we decided to have Danielle's first friend birthday party. A few girl friends came over for a tea party, painted fingernails, hit a pinata, etc. Danielle loved it! She is blessed to have sweet friends (and a sister) who love her.

We baked cupcakes and then had the girls decorate them and then eat their own cupcake. It seemed to be fun for them and I didn't have to agonize over trying to decorate a cake.

Tomorrow is her real birthday...we will bring cupcakes to her preschool and then have a little family dinner, cake, etc. It seems like an awful lot of spoiling, but it's fun to do when she is so appreciative and excited.

More pictures to come after tomorrow!