Christmas Pics...

I only have a few minutes tonight, but I wanted to post some of my favorite pics from the holiday.

Heading out for Christmas Eve at my in-laws...

Too bad she's such an unhappy child. HA!

With cousin Christa and her fiance, Brent...

With Aunt Teresa...
Christmas morning showing off her favorite stocking gift...

Surveying the gifts to open...

A Dora and Boots chair, WOW...

I love her kicked back, legs crossed pose...

I LOVE my kitchen...

and Elmo loves to ride in the shopping cart...

Stocking the kitchen shelves...

My new tricycle is totally cool...

Christmas day evening, heading out to my brother's place.

She loved the wood cutting fruit...

Heading out to check the mail with Baba and Lucy...

If there is anyone still out there clicking on my tiny space in Blogville, I'd like to wish you a

Merry Christmas!!

For those of you still waiting to bring your little ones home, don't give up hope that your day will come. After all, this is the season of hope so there is no better time to renew your faith that things will work out and those referrals will continue to roll out and maybe even speed up. I'm counting on this for you all. By the way, Kim B, I loved the way you included Isabella on your card...it brought tears to my eyes.

Sitting here this Christmas Eve, I am SO grateful for my little family of three and for the pure joy that Lauren has brought into our lives. There is nothing else that makes me happier than being her momma...it's the best thing in the world! I'm so grateful that we get to experience parenthood with this amazing little girl and it's already hard to remember what it was like before she was here.

I'm looking forward to the merriest Christmas ever and I hope you all have that too!

Updates

This month is flying by at extra high speed, don't you all think? I'm off work for the rest of the week since I had vacation hours to burn (I know, poor me) and I'm hoping to catch up on some things I've been wanting to get done.

First off, I wanted to take a few minutes to share pics of a few fun things over the past couple of weeks since I last posted.

We visited Shamrock Farms, a local dairy farm that has an annual holiday event for the kids called "Joy to the Herd". It includes a tram tour of the farm, face painting, Christmas crafts, snacks, carolers and a visit from Santa. Lauren loved the "moooo cows" and it was pretty interesting to see how a dairy farm operates.






It was fun decorating the tree this year with my little helper. Here she is picking the perfect ornament to hang...


and figuring out where to put it.


The placement has to be just right...


I have to pat myself on the back for not re-hanging the ornaments she hung. I left them exactly where she put them. Anyone who knows me knows that was tuff! ;)

My favorite part of the Christmas decorations is this...the sight of Lauren's stocking hung between ours. I can't tell you how many times I've stared at this and thanked my lucky stars!



This past Sunday I reserved for baking. I started early by making a batch of the Ree's cinnamon rolls. Don't let all the steps to this receipe scare you away. It's definitely a production, but not hard at all. Actually, it was my first successful experience with yeast. My previous attempts at yeast recipes have always failed miserably. Here's the final product baked in holidays pans with lids for gift giving...


Yummy goodness...



These rolls were delicious right out of the oven and the tins we brought our neighbors were still warm, but I also brought a few tins in for people at work and I'm not sure how the rolls held up overnight. I'm thinking they are really something that needs to be eaten right away while warm or frozen then baked later.

After the cinnamon rolls, we made pecan pizzelles (an Italian waffle cookie that's made with a pizzelle iron). My Mom has made these for cookie exchanges in the past and a friend of mine wanted to learn how. They are labor intensive, but so worth it...light and not overly sweet. They are great with coffee and tea.

Then it was time to make butter cookies. It's a recipe from my Grandmother on my Dad's side and we been making them for years. I wanted to keep this tradition up with Lauren, so it was nice when she woke up from her nap just in time to decorate her own tray...





I love these cookies with the cinnamon candies on them. Something about the melt in your mouth butter taste with the cinnamon...yum!


Also on Sunday, Lauren had a play-date with her friend Lily and Joe took them over to the play ground in the wagon. Don't look they cute swinging together...





Oh, one more thing...we took Lauren to get pics with Santa on Saturday morning. She's seen Santa a few times already and has sat in his lap and talked to him. It seemed on Saturday she was a lot more apprehensive because of all the noise and camera lights flashing. At the mall it was all about getting the kids onto Santa's lap, getting the pics and getting them out. They didn't let the kids have even a minute of chat time with the big guy.



I do like that we can buy the pics on a USB and download them to the computer for scrapbooking and printing.

Well, that's just about it for updates. I'm hoping to get Lauren's gifts wrapped tonight after she goes to sleep so I can move onto other projects for the rest of this week. Have a good one!

Polar Express

Last weekend, we headed up to northern AZ for the Polar Express train ride on the Grand Canyon Railway. It started snowing while we waited for the train, which really added to the holiday mood. I don't even remember the last time I saw snow, so it was really fun and a great trip. Lauren loved seeing Santa and it was so much fun to experience everything through her eyes.

Here's a little video from the trip...

Kitchen assembly...done!

I had decided months ago that Lauren's big gift for her first Christmas would be a kitchen. We had some ideas in mind...we knew we wanted wood, we wanted it to spark her creativity without a lot of bells and whistles, and we wanted it to be super fun and played with a lot. On top of that, we wanted it to look good so it could have a place in our family room/kitchen area without sticking out like a sore thumb.

After toy store shopping and LOTS of internet shopping, I ordered the Little Tikes Deluxe Wooden Kitchen and Laundry Center. Joe put it together yesterday and I LOVE it! It's totally solid and the colors fit perfectly in our house. It looks SO much better than most of the plastic kitchens we looked at.

Joe said the assembly went very smoothly, although it did take about 3.5 hours to put together. There were no missing parts and no damaged pieces. We unpacked it together and I put all the parts in alphabetical order so he could easily find the pieces as he needed them. My mom and I took Lauren out to a few stores and by the time we got back he was done.



The laundry center is adorable with the little washer, iron and laundry basket...


On most wooden kitchens the oven door hinges open on the side, but on this one it's hinged on the bottom to open like a real oven. The image on the oven door is cute. From one angle, the muffins just went in...


and from another angle, they are popped up and ready...


There's even a little cell phone and chalk board message center...


Okay, did I say that I LOVE this kitchen? Oh yeah, I did! I'm SO excited to see her face on Christmas morning when she sees this sitting next to the tree. Have I told you how many years I've dreamed of this...our first Christmas with our daughter? Let's just say LOTS of years and I'm going to enjoy every moment!

We love Kai-lan...

I just had to show off this adorable Kai-lan outfit we found on the Target clearance rack. It's a sweatshirt type top and pants all fully decked out with Kai and her friends...



Paired with her ultra cool Skechers, I think we're good to go for the day...


Have a great weekend! The weather is perfect here...in the mid to high 70's.

This and That...

I took this pic this morning and when I pulled it up on the computer I thought...oh my God, look how big my baby is getting! Doesn't she look older in this pic? When she wears jeans, she thinks it's really cool to put her hands in the front pockets. She'll walk around the house like this after she gets dressed.


Today she actually wore the bracelet that Michelle made for her and didn't take it off all morning, even through a trip to the store.

I made my first recipe from the Pioneer Women's cookbook this past week...Chicken Spaghetti. The only thing I did differently was I cooked the chicken in the crockpot overnight instead of boiling it on the stove. A friend of mine said she cooks chicken this way all the time and that it gets very tender. She was right, it was falling off the bone as I was taking it out. The messiest part of the recipe is shredding the chicken. It was super easy, but it's not my favorite thing to do...


Here's the completed recipe ready for the oven...


and here it is with the cheese nicely browned and ready to pop into my insulted bag to head out for our Wednesday evening girl's night/play date.


It was a hit with everyone and Lauren loved it. Can't go wrong with chicken, cheese and pasta for the kiddos. This recipe will be a regular in our house for now on. Also, the leftovers taste just as good, if not a little better, than the first day.