Eleven Months!

Our little Ben is growing up fast - he's now 11 months old and growing fast! He's steady on his feet and starting to give Kenzie something to chase. Can't wait until they are running laps together round our house. Ben does the laps now but at a pretty slow pace. This morning Ben and Kenzie were having a nice stroll through the downstairs with both of Kenzie's doll strollers. Unfortunately Ben kept trying to lean his weight on his stroller so I couldn't get a good picture.

Ben - Eleven months!

McKenzie at 11 months - she definitely had more teeth than Ben at this age! He's still sporting two on the bottom and four partials on top.



Hair update: On Christmas morning Matt took Ben in the shower and washed his hair with the baby shampoo I had in there and when he came out his hair was as flat as could be. We have tested using that shampoo and using other different shampoos since Christmas and the verdict is his hair is still wild but somehow this Huggies Calming Touch shampoo and body wash has a calming touch on Ben's hair! Good to know if we want some downtime from the hair.

Check out the 'calm' hair vs the full glory!

Wrapping Up The Year!

I can hardly believe another Christmas has come and gone. Time flies when you're rushing from one fun thing to another. We wore the kids out with all our activities. We started on Christmas Eve with Grandma and Grandpa C, Aunt Kacey, Uncle Eric, Nathan and Kayla coming over for Christmas brunch then we packed up the kids and headed to Matt's Uncle Dick's house to see that whole side of the family then we did Christmas morning at home with just us and then headed out to Grandma and Grandpa Z's for more fun with Aunt Anne, Aunt Jennifer, Uncle Chris and cousin Claire. Overall it was a great holiday and it was so fun to see McKenzie really understand what was going on.

Here's McKenzie intent on opening a present. Immediately after getting wrapping paper off each gift she would say 'Daddy, I want opie' (open)


Here's Ben sitting in a tiny chair that Aunt Gail and Uncle Dick gave to cousin Claire. For some reason Ben loved it and was very proud of himself for sitting in it.


The Christmas tree after Santa had come. Santa even took time to draw the kids a picture on their new easel! What a guy!


Ben's first experience with the wonder of Christmas - it's so much nicer to have a baby at the beginning of the year so they are able to really interact during their first Christmas.



Here's both kids tearing into the presents!


We are very blessed to be able to have a great Christmas with our friends and family and to have wonderful gifts under our tree. We worked hard this year with McKenzie to have her give to others. She had a great time giving away some toys we purchased because she got to get on a bus to donate the toys!

The tree and decorations are down and all the gifts have found homes within our home. Maybe next year I'll unpack the kids toys before Christmas and then put them in big Tupperware bins and wrap those under the tree! Save myself some of the mess on Christmas. I feel bad for the garbage man this week.

Santa's Little Helper

I've been working a second job lately as Santa's public relations rep. We've been building up to today's Santa visit since well before Thanksgiving. I decided early on that I had a chance to avoid the crying Santa picture if I didn't just spring the guy on McKenzie but built him up as the wonderful guy he is. These poor kids don't get to spend much time with the guy until Mom and Dad plop them down on his lap and then run for the sidelines. So back at Thanksgiving we launched an aggressive Santa is great campaign and it seems to have paid off!

For days now McKenzie has been ready to tell Santa what she wants for Christmas. She was super excited and shouting it out at strangers when she got out of the car. She was so excited when she saw him for the first time as we were waiting in line. Then she did really good on his lap and did tell him her Christmas wish. "A Barbie. A pink one." Santa heard her loud and clear!

Here are our Santa pictures from the past few years.

2007 - McKenzie's First Christmas, six months old. Santa and Kenzie both have rosy cheeks!



2008 - McKenzie, 1 1/2 years old, not talking to this guy.


2009 - McKenzie 2 1/2, Ben's First Christmas 10 months old.


I do wish McKenzie wasn't so far behind Ben but they both do look cute. McKenzie sure looks serious about her business with Santa! Maybe it's Ben's puffy hair causing this problem, it's got a life of its own! The other thing we really noticed in this picture is how different their skin tones still are. When Ben was born we really noticed he had a lot more color than McKenzie who is as fair as can be. Ben's coloring has really stuck with him as he's grown. It will be interesting to see this as they get older.

Hope I make the 'nice' list this year for helping Santa with his public relations!

The Fun Never Ends!

And neither does the laundry, but at least I finally figured out what's keeping me from getting all the laundry folded and put away.

That's as good of an excuse as any! Those two certainly never tire of fun!

We've been enjoying this holiday season more than ever because for one thing it has not been snowing forever making us housebound, I'm not pregnant and McKenzie is finally getting this Christmas thing! We are doing some of the things we've skipped in years past and it's made even more exciting by the pure joy she gets out of it. Tonight we decorated a gingerbread choo-choo train. The candy definitely turned out to be more exciting than the train but overall we had a great time. McKenzie should be having 'sweet dreams' right now just thinking about this train. She was being silly and pretending to sleep with her choo-choo. She had been very into pretend sleeping lately - too bad she doesn't know you're not suppose to smile while pretend snoring - gives it away every time!

We also baked our annual batch of Grandma Hunter's Fruitcake with Aunt Renee again this year. I don't have any pictures of the chefs this year - we were too consumed with the mixing and management of the apprentice chefs to take pictures. We did one batch this year instead of our usual two but I think we have more than enough to go around! Though McKenzie does think the fruitcake is quite 'Yummy' but only the little ones! Grandpa C had better watch his cakes around McKenzie.

Silent Night Part Two!

Last year at this time we were starting McKenzie on sleeping in her own bed in preparation for Ben's arrival. After some initial setbacks she has transitioned into her big girl bed and remained a really good sleeper!

This picture does not due justice to the fact that she has some hoarder tendencies and will pull anything that is not nailed down in her room into bed with her. It's amazing what we find in there some mornings.



Ben is also a great sleeper but I'm not planning on moving him out of the crib anytime soon! He'll be one of those kids that is in a crib until he turns three. He is a climber though so we'll see how long his crib lasts. He still likes to sleep with his legs swaddled up.


In all my blessings I'm counting this year - kids who are good sleepers is a huge blessing!

Christmas Trees and Sunglasses!

Doesn't get much better than that if you ask me! This past weekend we went out on our annual family Christmas tree hunt in the beautiful Seattle sun.




This year the journey didn't take us very far from home, but I think we scored our best tree ever. We got a beautiful Nobel Fir that looks as wonderful as it smells! At this house we have always put our tree by the fireplace and had a complete Christmas scene in there with the stockings and everything but at our old house we used to put the tree in our front window because there wasn't room by the fireplace. I loved seeing it glowing in our front window on dark nights. I had been thinking of proposing we try the tree out in our dining room this year. But what really sold me on moving the tree was our small mobile friend Ben who just loves things he shouldn't have. With the help of a couple of baby gates the dining room can be barricaded off to preserve a perfect Christmas scene.

So we have the tree in our dining room and I think it looks fantastic. Our dining room really shouldn't be called a dining room since I can easily count the number of meals we've had in there in the past five years. Having an official dining room was one of the requirements for me when we were house hunting. I'm still glad I have an official dining room but we use it as much more. The dining room has evolved over the time we've lived here. When we moved in it was a lovely two tone purple room with chair rail exactly halfway from the floor and ceiling. The room made me feel shorter than I already am which isn't good. Here's a before shot with the previous owners table and many wall hangings. I can't tell you the number of holes we've patched in the walls around here.


Long story short I was on a home improvement TV show - 'Toolbelt Diva' with Norma Vally, amazingly the show is no longer on the air. But they did a good job of helping me to redo the dining room.


Here's the crew that was at our house for an entire weekend - when they finished shooting a scene they would all put down their gear and start painting and nailing. It was a pretty crazy adventure!


After the show Matt got me a dining room table for Christmas and then a year or so later the matching china cabinet. We had it set up as a traditional dining room until last year at Christmas time when we had a holiday party and needed more room in there and moved the table against one wall and it made an amazing difference and we have used that room so much more ever since. Not necessarily as a dining room, more of a game play room but it's nice to actually be fully leveraging the space.

So now we're prepping for this years holiday party and the room is looking even better with our Christmas tree in there. Note: I've intentionally cut off the top of the tree in the picture so those who are wondering what tree topper we are using will have to come over to see!


This post is actually a week behind. I got busy and never posted the entry last week! More coming soon!

Tis The Season!

What holiday season would be complete without a little Elf Yourself singing and dancing?

Enjoy!

Send your own ElfYourself eCards

If you have trouble viewing here you can watch directly here!

Oh The Irony Of It All...

Tonight Ben got a bath in the laundry tub, that's where he takes a bath when McKenzie isn't getting one too. The flip side of that is if she's not getting a bath then she's helping Ben take his. I have to weigh my options, both have their pros and cons but tonight I was going for speed so bath with help it was.

Here's McKenzie helping get the bath water ready and Ben eagerly trying to climb up into the sink. For some reason McKenzie also needed to strip down to her diaper to help with the bath.



Once the kids were in bed I was talking to Grandma C on the phone and was telling her I got this cute picture of the kids but was hoping the giant pile of clean laundry behind them wouldn't show too much. She suggested I Photoshop the laundry out of the picture. Perhaps instead of learning how to use Photoshop I should just fold the giant pile of laundry. Not quite as fun.