I'm walking!

This child has been crawling for MONTHS now, so I thought for sure that she'd be our earliest walker....until miss Lilly got wind of this. No doubt this kid is the most stubborn baby of the three thus far and once she figured out that it was something we were encouraging her to do, every time we tried to hold her hands and walk the kid would go limp, stubbornly plopping herself on the floor. It wasn't until two weeks ago at a party for her Uncle Matt that the convenience of walking finally occurred to her whilst watching another little boy two months older than her doing it (thanks Max!). She's pretty stable now and as it turns out is right on time with her big sister Annie's walking debut.

Good job Lilly!

How old am I?!?!

I have to say that although I'm fighting it I'm indeed feeling the fact that I recently turned 31 and not 21. Now I know that's not all that old, but I have a few complaints. Such as....I can not for the life of me sleep for longer than 8 hours in a row (not that I have the opportunity to very often) and quite often I find myself saying things like...."I love you too much to let you grow up to be a little girl who etc, etc, etc" prior to delivering a spanking, argh. I suppose that's another blog post for another day, but all that said....

....for a brief 2 minutes or so on Christmas Day I did not.

The girls got these plasma cars for Christmas from my parents. They had a blast riding them around and around the garage until nap time...then it was our turn.

My brother, his wife, Josh and I took them outside to the hill- the pictures tell the rest, hehe!

Don't they look ridiculous? I love it!

Christmas #3, what's not to like?!?!

The girls quite happily navigated their third large Christmas celebration this morning, here they are ready for the onslaught! Now that they're finally getting used to all this craziness we're done....until next year that is :)

Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night, whew....

Christmas #2

Yesterday we celebrated Christmas #2 with Grammy, Papa, Uncle Nick and Aunt Lindsay- good times were certainly had by all! Now it's off to GA to have Christmas #3, stay tuned :)

Merry Christmas!

The "Activity" Scene

Annie and Elle both had Christmas Nativity plays a few weeks ago at their school in London. Now that we're here in the States the girls decided that we needed to have our own version. So they assigned everyone a part and we've had multiple "practices" now, the finally one being last night. Here's the cast...

Mary...........Annie

Joseph........Daddy

Angels........Grammy, Lindsay, Elliott

Innkeeper..Grammy

Gabrielle....Papa Scott

Donkey........Papa Scott

Sheep...........Uncle Nick

Here's the innkeeper scene, notice the "pregnant" Mary riding on the donkey

The sweet angels...although I have to say Grammy is looking a bit mischievous!

Papa as Gabrielle with Mary and Joseph

And last but certainly not least....Uncle Nick as the sheep.

After the practice Grammy asked Annie how she thought everyone did. Her critique was that

1) Papa needed to go over his lines a bit more and if all else failed he should write them down and

2) Uncle Nick needed to work on his sheep routine because all he did was lay on the floor.

Ha!

Christmas Baby

Although Lilly's birthday was yesterday we waited til today when Uncle Nick and Aunt Lindsay came to celebrate...

Here's Lilly's big sisters helping her blow out the candle...

Before...

and after....

She obviously enjoyed her birthday cupcake AND has her mama's sweet tooth!

Yum!

I'm ONE!

Elliott has been saying for months now, "Annie is 4, I am 3 and Lilly is zero." Well, she can't say that anymore because as of today Lillian Charlotte is finally on the charts, according to Elle that is. It's so hard to believe that an entire year has gone by since this sweet, funny and sometimes stubborn child graced us with her presence. So much has happened during the course of the last 365 days and in that time she has gone from infant to baby and now is transitioning to toddler- absolutely amazing!

She's not walking unassisted as of yet but I think we're days away. She's pretty much obsessed with pushing this cart around and around the house.

And every now and then she takes a well deserved break!

Happy Birthday sweet girl, we love you and are so proud of you!!

Ice Skating in Hyde Park

Last week the day before the girls' last day of school we picked them up and took them on a special adventure, ice skating in Hyde Park! Here's Elle and Grammy on the bus- we got the best seats in the front of the bus, yay!

Somehow they had gotten the idea in their heads recently that ice skating would be SO fun. Here's Annie getting fitted, can you tell she's excited?

And off they went....

...actually this picture is rather misleading- it was quite a disaster for the first 30 minutes, the girls could NOT stand up to save their lives. Eventually they began to figure it out, oh well we had a blast!

There was this precious little Christmas market as well. We didn't actually have time to stop and shop, but it made for a great picture :)

A great memory was made!

Christmas morning, a few weeks early

We're headed off to the States soon to celebrate the season with family in NC and GA so we had our Christmas morning with the girls yesterday morning. It's been so fun as each year goes by watching the girls get it a bit more- the Christmas story and the meaning behind it all as well as the gifts.

Lilly was pretty oblivious to it all, but LOVED crawling through the paper. Here she is with her present from Elliott- although I have to say, I think Elliott enjoyed playing with it than she did!

I put this pic in because the tag was so cute, not sure if you can tell but Annie wrote her name after I wrote "from" on this present from her to Lilly, so big.

This was Elle's big present this year, and wow, has it been a hit. As I unpacked everything the night before I started to worry that it was too advanced, but no way. She knew just what to do, and she's been playing with it ever since.

Annie has been asking for a bike for several months now. She was very specific that she wanted a PINK bike, but we couldn't find a decent one in the requested color. A few tears were shed, but it didn't take long for her to change her tune. Josh has taken her on several trips around the block now, but I got to go for the first time tonight and was so surprised at how fast she was!

Good job Annie!

Happy Christmas....as they say on this side of the pond!

Christmas Pictures!

I can't even tell you how many pictures we had to take to get these few worth posting. But after all that trouble, here they are....

Merry Christmas!

Call me Scrooge...

It was 10pm and they were still awake. So, sadly, the tree is dark- FYI.

Ba Humbug...

The most wonderful time of the year!

Josh and I obviously LOVE Christmas and all the meaning and tradition it brings and it's been really neat to see our kids "catch" some of that excitment as the years have gone by.

Tonight the girls and I were at the local Hombase store (Lowe's or Home Depot in the states) getting a few things for our big tree when I was struck with inspiration.

They needed their own Christmas tree!!

As you can imagine the girls were thrilled at my mentioning this plan and immediately had their hands on every ornament and string of lights they could reach. We finally decided on a tree, ornaments and a set of lights and set off to decorate. On the way home I again was struck with inspiration and pulled into the "Old MacDonald" parking lot which has never happened since we moved here as we are never in our car except on Sundays to go to church- but that's a whole other post. Anywho...you should have heard the excitement in their voices when they realized what was happening. Elliott said, "Oh Annie! Now we get to have MORE fun!" As if we never ordinarily have any fun at all, that kid cracks me up. So we grabbed dinner and then headed home. After a quick bath they got their PJs on faster than I've ever seen and were ready to decorate the sweet little tree for their very own room- what fun!

Here's the finished product....

Now, they begged and begged to keep the tree lit during the night and I caved. What could possibly be better than being allowed to fall asleep with a lit Christmas tree in sight?!?!

We'll see how it goes, they're still not asleep and it's been 35 minutes- oh dear. I might need to play Scrooge soon, ba humbug....I'll keep you posted :)

Merry Christmas!