Christmas

Christmas with kids is MAGICAL! I love it so much-seeing their excitement and their love of traditions and the fun moments that the holidays bring.  It was very sweet also with it being McCall's first Christmas. She definitely loved the wrapping paper the best but was happy and content with all these different people holding her.

I got this cute little elf outfit from a friend and McCall was quite possibly the cutest little elf on the shelf!

Christmas Eve we watched the Seahawks game in the morning and did some last minute gift prep and then it was sandwich time. First up signing the board and McCall even drew a few lines on for her name.

Then making the sandwich.

Three cute Christmas girls ready for carry the sandwich around the house.

And of course we had to light our Santa candles.

Sandwich all ready to go!

Traditional song and carrying the sandwich around the house.

Then Nona had her mismatch nativity and the girls put it together while I read from the scriptures. The funny thing is that she was missing a piece and of all the pieces to be missing it was baby Jesus... :) So we laid McCall by it for that part.

The Pop's had his little helpers to hand out the presents from under the tree.

McCall LOVED the wrapping paper- she would grab some and crinkle with her hands, then swing it back and forth, and even get her feet involved. It was so cute to watch.

Then back to our house for Christmas jammies.

Then we got everything ready for Santa. Baylor was excited to use her window markers that she got from Nona to write a note to Santa. The girls sprinkled some magical dust in the front yard to help the reindeer see our house better and we also got the cookies plate all ready for Santa. Then it was time for bed and the so much anticipation for the next day.

Christmas Morning! It was SO much fun! The girls didn't get up until 8:30. I loved their excitement for their own gifts and also for each other when someone else was opening a gift. There were just so many cute comments like Baylor opening her makeup kit that looked like a little suitcase and she said she could bring it on holiday (thank you Peppa Pig). :) 

Paige and Baylor loved helping McCall open her gifts and again McCall was very interested in the wrapping paper and kept trying to put it in her mouth and shake it all around.

We were able to open all the Santa gifts and then took a break to get ready and go to Church. It was a beautiful Christmas service and the girls looked so beautiful in their Christmas Sunday best.

So much love and sweetness and joy in one picture!

We got back and then opened up presents from each other. Paige spoiled Baylor and got her so many gifts. In the past month, every time Paige went with Nate thrift shopping she always came back with something to give and she worked hard all month, gathering and wrapping. Baylor gave the sweetest handmade cards and candy from her Halloween bag. She even gave Paige a used light up stick and before Paige even opened it, Baylor said, "It doesn't work anymore." It was the thought that counts and got us all laughing. There is such genuine joy in gift giving and seeing your own kids give gifts to each other that were thoughtful. The girls had fun playing with their gifts and I did a lot of prep for Christmas dinner. I got to wear my Grandma Walker's apron which was a little bittersweet and probably made the rolls taste that much better. 

Then we had our Peterson family Christmas party via Zoom. We did the nativity story and then everyone opened their gifts. It was fun but I do wish we were all in person.

Our Santa candle only had a wick at the very top so it didn't burn very long on Christmas Eve and was a little disappointing since it is such a big and cool candle. So Nate got inventive and dug a hole with a screwdriver though the center and put a piece of string down the center and covered the top with melted wax. We lit it again on Christmas and it burned quick!

We had our Christmas dinner with Nona and Pops and Mike and Christy's family at our house. The little girls had their very own table by the Christmas tree. Then the girls set up a salon  in the bathroom and everyone either got their nails or makeup done. It was pretty cute and nice that the boys even participated.

Annual Christmas pictures with all the gifts. The girls sure were spoiled or according to my mom loved lots this year!

Aaron and his family also came up for the week after Christmas so the girls have gotten lots of cousin time. We had family dinners every evening with lots of visiting. Nate went on thrift store runs with his brothers almost each day. The girls had so much fun and I really didn't see them much when they were with cousins. 

The teenage boys kept everyone entertained by playing snail pace race- a very simple kids game with high stakes. :) They each signed a paper and they would each pick a color. Whoever lost got tied to a bench out on the porch and was tickle tortured. It was so funny to watch!

We also of course had a taste testing one evening and most everyone also went swimming for an hour one evening. I watched while I held McCall and it was so fun to watch Baylor as she became more and more brave with floating on her back with a lifejacket on. It was so cute to watch her little legs move herself around and see her confidence grow in the water. 

It was such an amazing Christmas and a good week filled with lots of family time!

6 Months

How has a half year already gone by?!? It has flown by but has also felt like McCall has been a part of our family for so long. We all love her so much. She is just the sweetest and cutest little thing and we all live for her cute baby smiles.

Here is what McCall is up to at 6 months:

• At her 6 month checkup, McCall is 13lbs 4 oz (5th percentile), 2 feet 1.28 inches (21st percentile), and her head circumference is in the 70th percentile. 
• She is very smiley except for the camera. We have to take SO many pictures in attempt to get a smile on camera. She loves people though and is so smiley especially after she wakes up.
• She is a rolling machine. We put her down and the next minute we look over at her and she is on the other side of the room. She loves to roll to get whatever she can get her hands on.
• Everything she grabs goes right in her mouth. She loves to suck on her hands, her thumb, her binky, any toy you give her, and her blanket.
• She loves to be rocked to sleep, swaddled in her blanket. She still wakes up 1 to 2 times at night to nurse but those quiet moments with her I truly cherish.
• She tried food for the first time today! She has been quite interested in food and grabbing for plates when we are eating and will watch me intently when I'm eating or drinking. 
• She is great with having her head up and it is the sweetest thing when she is on her stomach and then gives you the biggest grin. 
• She still has a ways to go with sitting up. We have been trying more to have her sit in your lap as she plays with toys or sit in the bumbo. This past week we put her in a high chair that is connected to the table but she is still pretty small for it so we have to pack a blanket around her to prevent her from falling over. 
• She loves her hands and to grab anything in sight. She is starting to grab her toes more and it is so cute. She loves to grab the strings on sweatshirts and when she nurses she grabs my shirt a lot or pulls on her own hair.
• She still doesn't laugh a lot but will give you quick little laughs though we all try everyday to get giggles out of her. 
• She doesn't like to be left alone for very long. She loves to roll around and play on the ground but there has to be people in the room with her or she will start to fuss. This past week she has started this cute little fake cough where if she can't see you and you are not looking at her, she does it to see if she gets you to look at her and then will give a big smile.
• She loves to scratch things and hear the sound and feel different textures. She scratches pretty much any fabric that she can reach. I don't know if she likes the sound or the feel of it on her fingers but it is kind of entertaining. 
• She took a bath last night and is starting to get into the splashing and enjoying the water. I wasn't home but Nate took a video of her kicking her legs with the cutest little look of concentration and I know there will be many more fun baths for her in the future.

One big smile with the scrunchy nose that we actually got a picture of! That smile absolutely melts me!

Oh how I love her!!!

Finding her toes

Trying food for the first time- we started with apples and Paige and Baylor took turns feeding her. It was so cute to watch. Her sisters were great at feeding her and were so excited to help out. McCall did amazing at eating and gave a few good sour expressions. She would also look at me a few times so confused looking, like why aren't you feeding me, is this normal? It was so fun to watch.

Cute little pucker face

Just a few snapshots from my phone from the past month. We are all smitten and love this little baby girl in our lives!

A whole half year of loving you and loving every minute of being your mom!

December Doings

We started December off with a snow day! It was baby's first snow and she was not so sure about her snowsuit. The only one I had at the time was 12 months and her little arms flapping around was SO cute and I was laughing way too much at the cuteness of it all.

Once we all got bundled up we went over to the park for some sledding. It really is the best place to go for young kids. Paige loved it though I think she would have liked a friend to play with and she would have spent hours going up and down. Baylor went a couple of times and then was done so it didn't last too long but was still fun and the snow was so pretty at the park- on the trees and seeing the lake with all the snow around was gorgeous.

Then in the afternoon, Paige and Baylor worked on building a snowman. It was fun to watch from the kitchen window and then once I got McCall to sleep for her nap, I went out and joined them.

All done!

Then the first Saturday of December, Nate worked all day for the city tree lighting event. It was a pretty cold evening so we just went for maybe 45 minutes to walk around the different booths/crafts that they had and were able to watch the tree lighting with Nate. Then I took the girls and we went to Wendy's for dinner and had a great view of the lit tree and all the crazy traffic of people leaving the event.

On the 7th we had a combined Relief Society/Young Women activity. This has been something on my mind that we should do since the beginning of the year. I really wanted our young women to see how amazing the "older" ladies of the ward are and that we can have fun together. We had a waffle bar and each ingredient had different signs relating to the gospel like: Waffles- don't waffle on your standards; Syrup- when life gets sticky, rely on each other; Strawberries: Jesus loves you berry much and so on. They were fun to come up with. My two counselors did an amazing job setting up and decorating and the Relief Society presidency was in charge of the food. I came up with the activity where everyone had a waffle bingo card and had to go around and have people sign the different squares of their bingo card. This allowed mingling between all the sisters and was not awkward for the young women and it really met the goal that I had to get them all to mingle together. Then each sister filled out 3 questions and I would pick one of the papers and read the name and then everyone would mark off that bingo square if they had that person's name on their bingo card. I had some prizes for those that got bingo and we got to know each other by reading the answers to the questions. 

Then on the 8th we went up to Bellevue as a family to enjoy some Christmas fun. First we stopped to donate to the Giving Machine. It was our first time doing this and it was pretty cool to see. We bought meals for an entire classroom. 

Then we went to Bellevue Botanical Gardens to see their light displays. We went here last when Baylor was a baby and it is always so cool to see. Their light displays have lots of different flowers, garden scenes, lots of butterflies, an underwater scene, and so much more. We all really enjoyed it. Baylor and Paige were excited to point out all the fun things and McCall was content in the front pack staring at all the lights. I got a cute little bear snow suit from a friend and McCall looks SO cute in it.

Then we went to the church by the temple to see all their nativities. The gym was filled with hundreds of nativities and the girls had a little clipboard of things to find. They had a winter wonderland room, a room where you could dress up for the nativity, a movie room where they were showing "The Christ Child", and my favorite part was the Christ walk. You got to walk through a room filled with pictures from the life of Christ in order of his life. It was pretty special to see and I really liked how they used the baptismal font for the empty tomb. 

Then we drove by the lit up temple before heading home.

The girls sent in letters to Santa through the library and we got our letters from the North Pole from Santa himself to each of the girls. The letters are so sweet!

I get to do art with Paige's class at school again this year. I really enjoy doing this since I get to do a little teaching along with something fun but don't have to worry about discipline since the teacher does that. For November I taught the kids about the form of photography where people take pictures of random, everyday things that look like letters of the alphabet. Then they each had to create their own name by drawing everyday objects for each of the letters.

For December I taught about stained glass and focused on the artist Jean Crotti who created the form of art called gemmail where you use hundreds of pieces of glass to create a picture, melt it together, and then shine a light behind it. The class them made their own stained glass window using oil pastels.

Then I did a bonus activity with our young women since this is something that they wanted to do. For quite a few years now, the young women have gone to the Forgotten Children's Fund to wrap presents for those in need. You get to "shop" in this big warehouse for presents for each of the people in a household and then you wrap everything up. It is something the young women really enjoy and this time I was able to also have my family go with me and Paige absolutely loved it. She loved being this secret Santa and doing the shopping for other people. We are actually going to go again this upcoming week with Nona so that she can experience it too. 

The family that the young women had was a household of 12! So they had lots to do and were so efficient and did a great job (this is in comparison to the household our family did which only had 5 people.)

Then our final combined activity for the year was something that our ward has been doing for about 20 years- cookies and caroling. The Bishop along with the Relief Society president and Elder's Quorum president came up with 30 different families to go to. The youth did amazing at all bringing cookies to share so each family probably got around a dozen cookies. Then we divided into 6 groups so that each group had 5 families to go and sing to if the youth wanted and give them a plate of cookies. It is always heart warming to be a part of to see smiles and such appreciation from ward members. I did some extra baking for it and created 2 gluten free plates for some of the people on our list.

One day Baylor decided that it was her Elsa doll's birthday. She created all these signs with pictures of Elsa and then after dinner we all sang Happy Birthday to Elsa and Baylor helped her blow out a candle. I love seeing my girls be creative and use their imaginations!

One day I worked most of the day on scrapbook pages for my mom for Christmas. This is something that started that I would do for my Grandma Walker and then I would make a copy of them for her and my mom and keep the originals for myself.  It is nice to just scrapbook highlights from the year one day and I pretty much got it all done in a day. Baylor did great playing around me and she did end up taking a little rest next to me. It was a little bittersweet this year since I would not be sending any to Grandma this year. I know that she now has a front row seat of my life and gets to witness all the moments of my life instead of getting these scrapbook pages. It is hard to not have her here in person but I know that I will see her again one day and it was be such a sweet reunion.

Then this past Friday was a busy and fun day. Paige had her fun, day before break, day at school. She took presents for her friends and her teacher and came back with all sorts of gifts from her friends. She is an amazing friend and has some really sweet and fun friends at school. Baylor also had a fun Christmas day at preschool. We got to go see her the last hour of her preschool. They sang about 5 songs for us. It is so funny to see Baylor in this type of setting since she is so different at home. When she is at home, she loves to sing and dance and really gets into it. At preschool, she was very timid and shy though she did sing all the songs and knew all the hand motions. She didn't really smile at all the entire time she was singing. Then they decorated cookies and played some Christmas inspired games. It was fun to be with her!

We had our ward Christmas party on Saturday. It was a nice evening. It was very nicely decorated and we had ham, funeral potatoes, Jell-O, and rolls for dinner with an assortment of desserts. We had some great entertainment with our ward choir singing a few songs and then a family did some Christmas songs and we also got to listen to Brother Tomlinson play his saw. They had some sugar cookies to decorate and then of course pictures with Santa. 

So cute! Baylor was in tears right before the picture but got brave enough to give a slight smile for the picture.

I truly love this time of year! There is such magic in it all especially with young kids. We are so excited for Christmas and I love these three little girls SO much!