December 2011

In December, we experienced some unseasonably warm weather. I love this because it allowed me to take Shiloh and the twins outside almost every day and not be miserably cold!! No matter what the weather is though, December is always a special month because of Christmas!
Celebrating Christmas and going to Shrek the Halls, Gaylord's Ice Experience, were by far my highlights of the month!! I'll post some pictures of Shrek the Halls!

We are in Shrek's Outhouse (all made of ice)

It was 9 degrees in this room and Shiloh asked to touch the ice.  This is her reaction :)

For Christmas this year, we spent Christmas Eve with my mom's side of the family, Christmas morning with the 5 of us (I still love saying that!!!) and Christmas Day with Marc's family. All three celebrations were great fun; although, I cannot leave out the most unexpected part of Christmas this year, which was Shiloh's attitude Christmas morning.

Leading up to Christmas Day, I had been teaching Shiloh the real Christmas story and using a nativity scene to do it. I was excited about this because I thought it would make it extra special on Christmas morning when we read the story from the bible. Marc and I have decided that our family tradition will be to read the actual story from Luke and then exchange gifts. SO...

Christmas morning arrives and I was excited for Marc to read the story while Shiloh and I acted it out with our little nativity pieces. Unfortunately, Shiloh did NOT like that plan. She had been up way to late Christmas Eve and was in a horrible mood on Christmas morning. She did NOT want to listen to the story and was throwing a fit every time Marc tried to read it. In retrospect, it's actually rather comical, but at the time we had no idea what to do. Do you put your kid in timeout and potentially make her hate reading the bible out loud??? OR do you not read the story?? or what!!! That was what we were feeling...

3 timeouts later we completed the story and then exchanged gifts. Shiloh was excited to receive the tee ball and the bat from us.  It definitely took much longer to get to exchanging gifts than we expected.  We then went over to Marc’s parents’ house and read the story of Jesus’ birth from a children’s book with a different nativity and Shiloh loved it… at least she enjoyed one of them.

Although gifts are a wonderful part of Christmas, our goal is to make sure that our children know the reason we exchange gifts is to celebrate the ultimate gift we have been given, Jesus Christ.  Exchanging gifts to us is symbolic of that and I pray that we can instill that idea into our children’s Christmas celebration memories!! 

Here are some pictures from December and from Christmas:

Decorating the Christmas Tree

Sweet sisters sleeping (McKinley on the left and McKenzie on the right)

3 months old!  McKenzie on the left and McKinley on the right

Play date at the Galleria's indoor play park

Our play date friends; Melissa and Andrew and Abby (little baby in her belly) and Levi

McKinley smiles

McKenzie

McKenzie smiles

McKenzie on the left and McKinley on the right 

  

Shiloh Christmas morning... all that she wanted to do was dress up and play with her new zoo.  She did NOT want to listen to a story or play with her nativity. :)

Doing the Christmas Story with Oma

Fun Family Pic

Playing baseball with Uncle Mike

Pops holding McKinley and Panda holding McKenzie

Princess Shiloh showing off her dress and ring

tea party

McKinley & McKenzie

This is the first time the girls smiled at each other :)

 

Shiloh hadn't really shown any signs of being jealous of M&M until December.  She wanted me to wear her in the baby carrier and...

she wanted to take a bath in the sink like the babies

 McKinley & McKenzie

December Milestones:
Shiloh (26 months)-
- her vocabulary is growing exponentially
- she can hold a conversation on one topic
- she can jump off of things and climb really well
- she can bargain and be bribed :)

McKenzie & McKinley
- they can interact together
- they can smile and giggle
- they are starting to be more scheduled and appear to be moving to 3 naps a day
- they sleep 12 hours consistently at night

It's 2012 ... and we've got HUGE NEWS!

Although I haven't posted about December or January, I cannot start this blog out by merely updating it because I've got huge news.  We will be moving to Chandler, Arizona (outside of Phoenix)!!   I am really excited for this opportunity for our family, but I am extremely sad about leaving our Dallas life behind us!  I know that I am going to desperately miss the family that we have surrounding us here; however, knowing that this is the best decision for us allows me to be excited about our future in Arizona!
It is all happening so quickly, and here we are beginning to pack for moving tonight!  We also just got the house that we will be renting for the next year!  Whew, I am glad to be able to check that off of our list . . . we now have somewhere to live! 

This move has highlighted that fact that I am so thankful to be married to someone who shares different strengths than me!  The task of moving our entire family feels so overwhelming to me; however, Marc is great at planning each task and prioritizing which should be done first!  Thank you Lord for providing one of us with that ability!  With Marc's gameplan (I threw in some ideas too, but he wrote it for us), I no longer feel overwhelmed at moving.  We've made a list of what we are accomplishing on what day, and as long as we follow this list our transition will be as smooth as we can make it!  Again, I just want to thank the Lord for blessing me with an amazing husband who can empower me to accomplish the tasks set before me!! :)

Highlights of November

Pictures from the end of October:

McKinley on the left & McKenzie on the right

This is what the twins were doing during Shiloh's MDO Halloween Parade

me, Shiloh, McKenzie & McKinley

Copy & Paste

Mommy's little "helper"

McKinley & Daddy

After November's hiatus from blogging, I am back.  My goal is to write once a month, track the milestones of all my girls and keep up with what is going on in the Marc and Reci family!  November flew by without me even realizing it. 

Highlights of November:
M&M were 2 months on November 8!  I realized that almost every picture I had for the first two months of their lives is of both girls together.  I wanted to get individual pics, so Sami, her daughter Evie, me and the girls took a trip to one of my favorite places . . . The Dallas Arboretum.  While we were there, I got some great pictures of the girls!

After a few years of missing Baylor's Homecoming, this year on November 5 we were able to go!!! I was SO excited to be back at my alma mater with all three of my beautiful girls and my sweet hubby.  I went to the homecoming parade every year I was a student and I loved it.  This year in order to make it to the parade, we had to wake up at 4:30 am to get everyone fed, ready and out the door by 6.  We did it and made it on time to the parade!!

I always dreamed of the day that I'd get to bring my kids in their cute BU clothes to homecoming!  This year was a dream come true because not only did we go to Baylor, we all matched in our cute BU gear!  (When my girls are a few years older, we will all get to go to Pigskin . . . I can't wait for that day either!!!)

I ran into Erin and Jenny Coulter Lawson!!  Jenny is holding her precious son Asher :)

Marc and me in front of our bus of a stroller!  It worked wonderfully!!

Our family in front of the winning float, which also happened to be my sorority and Marc's fraternity!

The whole time I was a Tridelt I wanted to do the float with Phi Chi, and of course they waited until several years after I graduated to do it together :)

Our family on a hill on Baylor's beautiful campus (Marc and I have a picture on this same hill from when we were engaged)

aforementioned picture on the hill :)

Just the two of us!

Another really special time in November occured when Joanna & Sarah, my roommates from Baylor, came to visit along with Sarah's daughter and husband Jesse!  Sarah and I shared a room during my junior and senior year, which was such a sweet time in my life!!  It has been so challenging for me that almost all of my roommates are far away, and I miss them dearly (so glad your close by Jo).  I savor any chance that I am able to catch up with any of them!! 

Joanna holding McKinley, Sarah holding Clara, me holding McKenzie & Shiloh

Sarah had her first baby, Clara, 7 days before the twins were born.  I was really excited to meet Clara and see Sarah and her husband Jesse, especially because they are leaving this coming June to be missionaries in Asia.

Now for the Thanksgiving updates:  Shiloh had a Thanksgiving Feast at her mother's day out, which I attended!  It was the first day I've spent time in her classroom and watched her interact with her school friends.  Watching her filled my heart with joy as I saw her happy disposition and sensitive nature.  Anytime another kid became upset, Shiloh would run over there, hug them and ask them "you okay?"  (This was a vast improvement from September, when she had a little bit of a pushing problem)

The weekend before the actual holiday, my dad and Molli came to visit.  That Sunday CJ, Stephanie, my dad, molli and my family got together at our house and had a Thanksgiving meal.  This is the first time I've made a turkey that I wasn't even nervous about it.  I've heard so many horror stories about turkies being undercooked and everyone getting food poisoning.  This thought feeds my fear every year.  Finally, I am confident that I can cook a turkey, that it will taste good and that I won't poison everyone eating it! 

Another special thing about that Thanksgiving celebration was that I feel like I am getting to know Stephanie better!  I am so excited to have another sister-in-law and that my brother has found the girl he wants to marry; now, I am getting to know her better, which completes it all!!  (I am VERY excited about their upcoming wedding this May in VEGAS!)

For our actual Thanksgiving Day celebration, we went over to my Aunt Tina's house.  We had a wonderful time seeing everyone!!  I am close to my grandparents on this side of the family and I love getting to see them be GREAT-grandparents!  This year we took a picture of them and their 7 great grandaughters (crazy that all 7 of their great grandkids are girls and my cousin Katie has another girl on the way).

My cousin Matt and his family hold a special place in my heart because they had a girl and a few years later they had identical twin girls... obviously we followed that same pattern.  It is really special to watch their children and see a glimpse into our future (right now Campbell is 5 and the twins are 2). 

Our family at Thanksgiving:

The Friday after Thanksgiving we hosted our 4th annual Friendsgiving!!  This is a really fun tradition we started our first year of marriage with one other couple.  Now we invite all our friends and celebrate with those who can make it.  This year we had 21 adults, 7 toddlers and 4 babies! --Sadly I am never good at taking pictures of this event.  Next year though!!

The Saturday after Thanksgiving we typically celebrate the day with Marc's dad's side of the family and a big paintball tournament.  This year we drove out to East Texas and had our feast there.  Marc looks forward to this Thanksgiving every year because of the paintball war.  Everyone wears camo, splits up into two teams, and then plays a big game of paintball in the woods. Afterwards they all come in and we eat!  Great fun!

The Sunday after all of this ... we rest!  The past two years our super schedule feels daunting, but we love it while we are doing it.  Seeing so many family members from all over is really enjoyable and special.  We are so thankful to have our nucleur family, blessed extremely by the extended family and so grateful for our friends that we can call family!! 

NOW IT'S CHRISTMAS SEASON!!!  (December's blog coming soon :))