Cheese!

Not that there were any doubts, but Laurel has proven she is one of us.  We introduced cheese recently and she can not seem to get enough.  Hmmm... wonder where she gets it?

Christmas Weekend

Such a wonderful Christmas.  We are so very blessed and the girls have been very spoiled by all.

Christmas eve was spent with the Sarion Family.  They came over to our place, brought a feast, played with girls and kicked off the present opening.

Grandma, Grandpa and Uncle Roy

 

Digging into the gifts... Maya helped Laurel open all of hers.

Maya picked out cookies for Santa and apples for the Reindeer.

We woke up Christmas morning, had a great family breakfast and then settled down to open more gifts.

Santa brought the green rain boots Maya asked for.

 Stockings!

Mid morning, we made our way down to celebrate with the Knowles family.  Had a great time playing with cousins, eating more great food, and of course, more presents.  Grammy was in town and it was so great to see her and the girls really enjoyed their Grammy hugs.

Overall a fantastic but exhausting holiday weekend.  We were happy to have Monday to recover and spent the day lazing around the house with zero obligations.  Maya slept in until 9:30, Laurel took two full two hour naps, we played with all of our new toys and had a family-movie-quiet-time in the middle of the afternoon. 

Merry Christmas!!

Pulling up...

And proud of it!

The Holiday Season

We have fully embraced the holidays this year and Maya is absolutely loving it.  She is obsessed with Christmas lights and loves driving around to look at the houses all lit up.  There is a house in our neighborhood that has decorated their house in true Griswold style which Maya has dubbed, "lotta lights".  She requests to drive by it every time we get in the car.  She met Santa, she didn't want to sit on his lap but gave a little wave from a safe distance.  She has asked Santa to bring her treats and a green present.  Jingle Bells is a new favorite song.

We kicked the season off by heading to the Reindeer Festival at Cougar Mtn Zoo.  Maya had such a fun time; she got to feed reindeer, wave at Santa, write a letter and put it in Santa's mailbox and listen to a Christmas story time.  Laurel slept through most of it :-)

Next we took advantage of a beautiful Seattle day and headed to the tree farm to pick out the perfect Christmas tree.



We made batches and batches of Christmas cookies.

And tonight we decorated the tree.  Maya caught on very quickly and strategically placed each ornament on the tree.  Laurel secured a spot under the tree and just stared up at all the lights!



8 months!!

Time is flying and Laurel is growing.  She and Maya are becoming great buddies and will often simply look at each other and start giggling. I love listening to them and watching them get excited when they see one another.

- She is sticking with the army crawl, although she occassionally gets up on hands and knees.  She is fast though and I often find myself wandering down the hallway to figure out where she has gone.  All this army crawling is giving her great upper body strength!

- She is starting to pull herself up and gets to about her knees.  She is just so curious that she pulls herself into all sorts of baskets and toy buckets and closets because she wants to see what is inside.

- She has started dancing along with music.  Which is so fun since one of Maya's favorite activities right now is to put on a dress to dance and spin around the room.  She loves that Laurel joins in on the fun.

Hugs