Merry Christmas!!!

Christmas was so great this year! Cade and I will definitely admit that it was very different this year- having 2 kiddos now! Things are more complicated than years past, but still wonderful.

On Friday evening we drove up to Bountiful where ALL of my siblings were able to be together! It is so wonderful to have us all together. Who knows how many Christmas's will be like that. The weekend started with Emma getting sick...which was sad but not surprising. Without fail, Emma has gotten sick every single holiday this year. We were, however, VERY blessed. Usually her cold/cough turns into a fever and gets worse. But luckily she just stuck with the cough and a little cold and nothing more! Friday night we just hung out and ate pizza together. Saturday I went out to shop for one more item (went to 7 stores and didn't find what I wanted for Emma). Then the rest of the day was just being together and getting ready for Christmas Eve night. On Christmas Eve we always have a nice cordon bleu dinner and after dinner we gather in the family room and read the Christmas story in Luke, sing Christmas carols, and open our "gift from the hearts". This year we acted out the story in Luke and we'll just say that it wasn't the most reverent nativity scene :). We gave our gift from the hearts to each other which is always SO much fun to see what everyone gave. Kristen gave me a DVD of a slideshow she put together of our 2001 Africa trip. It was so neat and I loved it! The highlight was Steph and I giving our quiet book to Kristen (on the post just before this one). It was so great to see her face and give something that took countless numbers of hours to work on. After our evening together, we got ready for Santa to come and watched the Disney/Jim Carrey Christmas Carol.

Christmas morning, since it fell on a Sunday, we woke up and got ready for church. It was a very memorable one because President Eyring (member of the 1st presidency of the church) spoke in our ward. Not many people get to have that wonderful privilege, but since he is in our ward we got to hear from him that morning. Definitely a morning to remember! Both Reese and Emma were VERY good during church!!! I shouldn’t act surprised…but am :).

After church we went back to the house and got to bring Emma into the living room where all of the presents and her new pink kitchen was! Christmas is just SO exciting now that we have a toddler to give to. It is amazing to see the joy in her eyes! After breakfast, my whole family gathered in the living room and opened presents together. My wonderful husband surprised me with a Cricut! I LOVE making crafts, so I was extremely excited for this surprise! I had NO idea he was getting that for me. I have been wanting one for a while and he got it for me :). Christmas day was a happy day for everyone!

Some of my absolute favorite times with my family are when we stay up playing games and laughing and talking. Christmas night we all gathered in the basement and played the game "Things" together. It is a hilarious game especially when it's late at night :). We had SO much fun laughing at each other. After playing that game, we got out old pictures from when we were little and looked at tons of hilarious pictures. I was crying from I was laughing so hard at some very funny pictures and memories. It was one of those times with my family that are precious and bring us closer together. Then it started getting really late and the video at the bottom of this post shows how goofy and tired we all got!

Here are some highlights from the weekend:










Bryan in the past many years has given homemade pies as his gift from the heart. So as part of Cade's gift to Bryan, he gave a pie with 6 different slices together:


Kristen being the "star" for the nativity :)



Christmas morning:









This video I'm sure is hilarious to only me and those that were there. There was a possessed toy that we could not stop the aweful sound coming from it. And since it was about midnight things just kept getting more and more and more funny!

Lovely Christmas Sweaters :)

Last Christmas I had posted pictures from our Fishbowl Christmas party with Cade and I and Bryan and Jennie with our ugly Christmas sweaters. Well, this year after seeing our wonderful attire, the Fishbowl party was dedicated to tacky holiday clothing. Cade and I found our "ugly Christmas sweaters" on ebay. We thought we picked out amazing sweaters....until we showed up at the Fishbowl party and man were there some incredibly ugly and tacky clothing!!! It was so fun to see so many people dress up. Here are some pictures from the party:





We also used the sweaters for our family Christmas card this year. It was fun! Emma's I have to say was the ugliest. But we kept telling her it was cute so anytime we got it out she'd yell, "Cute! Cute!" There's nothing wrong with telling her that, right? :)

My quiet book!

[WARNING: this post is solely for me to remember the making of this book. It may be boring to most. If so, just look at the pictures :)]

I have been wanting to post this for a while, but had to wait until Stephanie and I gave Kristen hers. Now that we gave it to her on Christmas Eve, I can post about it!

This is the Quiet Book that Stephanie and i made over the period of about 6 months! We did some research about our favorite quiet books and made a list of all of our favorite pages. Then we divided out the pages and started to work! We made 3 of each page- one for Steph and I and one for Kristen. Each page took a large amount of time and a lot of Tylenol. Some pages were easier than others, but some took hours and hours just for one page!!!

I really wanted to get this huge project done before Reese came so Emma could have something to do during church to keep her busy. Well, I was able to finish the middle of November with my pages and then Steph and I got together to sew the pages together (she had had her pages done for a while). It was SOOOO exhilarating finishing those last steps together! We discussed what our price would be if anyone ever asked if we'd make them one and we both agreed that no amount of money would be worth it :). Steph did go to the Primary Children's Festival of Trees and found a book similar to ours that sold for $1400! See what I mean? Hours and hours and hours of headaches can't have a price tag on it :). Granted that is a charity event, but still! It gives you an idea of the amount of work.

Now that it is finished, it is totally worth it! Emma has played with it for 4 Sunday's in a row and has not gotten tired of any of it. Last Sunday, she played with the note pad and mail box for at least 30-40 minutes alone! I am very, VERY happy to have it done, but am happy that Steph and I tag teamed it. I knew I could count on Steph to do an amazing job and put forth just as much time and effort as I did. Now we have a wonderful book that will hopefully keep our children entertained for years to come!

Now for the book!



All of my pages:



All of Steph's pages:



The beauties all together:



These 4 pages definitely took the longest and gave me a run for my money. I learned a lot of things (mostly the hard way).

My machine would NOT do button holes no matter how many times I read and re-read the instructions. So I had to go over to Steph's and use her machine. Then after hand-sewing a blanket stitch around the flowers on my page, I didn't for the other ones...WAY too time consuming! But I think this page turned out cute. I love the bright colors.



The shapes page seemed like it'd be really easy! Nope, after trying the snap fastener (the easy way), the snaps were extremely hard to get on and off. So I went to go buy smaller ones, but all they had in the tiny snaps were hand-sew snaps. So here I go again...doing it by hand. It wasn't hard, just took lots of time.



This car/road page I was really excited about! My mom had one like it in her quiet book and I always loved that page. All of the pieces took so long to sew on to the page, so eventually I just started hot-gluing :). I love how it turned out though!



This is one that I started first but finished last. I wanted it to look just the way I pictured in my head. It ended up being more difficult than I thought (surprise, surprise :)), but I love the little finger puppets.



One of my very favorite pages is the fishing one Steph did. It has a fishing pole and each fish has velcro on it so you can "catch" the fish. Not to mention, it turned out darling!

For the most part the book was enjoyable to make. Am I happy I am finished? DEFINITELY! But the best part about projects is seeing the finished product. Thank you Steph for putting forth SO much work too! It was fun to do it with you!

My happy newborn

Reese is only 3 weeks old and smiles for us already! This video is pretty dang cute too. She is cooing some as well! Next week we're going to work on crawling :).







Update on Reese's condition:

As you can hear on the video, Reese's breathing condition makes her a very loud breather! Sometimes it's a lot louder than the video too. I took her in to the ENT and she indeed has Laryngomylacia (floppy throat) and it is something she will grow out of in about a year. This condition has caused acid reflux which has made her pretty uncomfortable at times, but she's been on prevacid for 5 days now and we think she's feeling better already. Poor thing...it just sounds like she can't breathe! Cade and I are getting used to sleeping through it at night listening to her. Reese is a pretty good baby. I told my sister that Reese is a perfect angel...as long as I am holding her all day long :). We're working on it. Luckily at night she sleeps in her bassinet. During the day she just wants to be held and cuddled.

Definitely sisters :)

Do you think they look alike? For the first week of Reese's life, I kept thinking we'd gone back in time 2 years and had Emma again. It felt really weird :). But now I'm getting used to the fact that Reese is not just an Emma with hair.

Emma's newborn picture:




Reese as a newborn:




I know they change so quickly, but it will be fun to see if they continue looking alike or at least like sisters. I love my girls!

Going from 1 to 2

Emma really has been a trooper so far. She loves to wake up in the morning and go see Reese and say "good morning." But that's about the extent of her interaction with Reese right now :). Emma is such a social bug that she craves attention from everyone she is around. And mommy currently has to give lots of attention to her new baby sister. I can imagine it would be pretty hard to have your whole world turned around in just a day. Emma can be pretty needy right now, but overall it's not too bad. The nursery leader last Sunday said Emma was all of a sudden so possessive over toys and very needy. I told her to be patient as we'd be working on helping her :).

This has been my first 3 days with just me and the girls. Last week was HEAVEN having my mom here all week! I really enjoyed having her here to clean, cook, and especially play with Emma ALL DAY LONG. But so far, these 3 days haven't been as bad as I was expecting :). I have been surviving just fine! The first couple hours in the day are hard because of lack of sleep it takes a couple hours to wake up and not be grumpy :). For the most part, things are great so far! Reese is a good baby and eats every 2 1/2 to 3 hours. I took her in to the doctor yesterday and she is almost 8 1/2 lbs. She is around the 50%ile for all 3 categories...it is so wonderful to have a baby that is average and that we don't have to stress out about her gaining weight!

Reese does have a condition (at least we think) called laryngo-mylasia (sp?). We are taking her into a specialist Friday to get things checked up and have an appointment already schedule for Primary Children's for right after Christmas if she needs to have a more extensive check-up and possible surgery. Her airway is "floppy" and keeps her from being able to breath easily. It sounds like she is snoring/grunting all the time. Usually newborns will grow out of it, but sometimes surgery is needed. Her pediatrician hasn't been too alarmed because her oxygen levels are good so it's just something we have to look into more with an Ear, Nose, Throat specialist. Poor thing. Last night was a rough night. She was breathing SO loud and then coughing and it kept Cade and I up a lot because we were so worried about her. We pray Friday will bring some answers.

Well, before this little bundle of joy came into our lives, it was just Emma (if that isn't obvious). But here are some pictures before Reese came of some good times with her.






One of Emma's absolute FAVORITE places to go is Kangaroo Zoo. She talks about it almost daily. She is just a climber and dare devil that this place was made just for her :). She even attempts the biggest and tallest slides (and almost gives me a heart attack).







We visited the "Up House" in Herriman where they made this house looked just like Disney/Pixar's house on "UP". It is SO cute! Cade and I are big fans of Disney and had a blast seeing this amazing house.





Emma sure loves her Auntie Boose! She is coming Friday to play with Emma and I am very happy :).