She's Here!

Hazel Joy came on January 23rd at 4:12am
8 lb. 2 oz.
20 inches

Month in review...so far

It's been a great month so far. Aaron's brother, Adam, and his family came to town so we got together at the children's museum. We had fun making crafts and playing around.

We had a fabulous time with them. I love when cousins get together to play. It does not happen often enough for our family!

Lily and Aaron put together a dresser in preparation for Hazel's arrival. Lily is so good at building things! She can honestly put together furniture that I haven't even attempted. She looks at the instructions and does what they say. She put together a drawer completely by herself. (Do you love the overflowing laundry hamper in the background?)

Carter is outgrowing his naps. One day he fell asleep in the van and awoke enough to stumble into the house but immediately fell back to sleep once he got past the entryway. He slept for a long time like this with his bum in the air. He's so cute. Notice too that he's sleeping with his green tractor and the King.

Lily makes way cool train tracks. Carter plays on them for hours.

A family portrait by Lillian.

A couple of girlfriends threw a shower for another friend and me who were expecting babies the same week. It was fun to chat with girlfriends. I loved it. Thanks, gals!

Our neighbor's friend drove his big white dump truck into the circle and let the kids climb inside it. Carter loves to look at the huge wheels, the engine, the exhaust pipe (which he calls a "yaust pipe"), and the mud flaps. Heaven for my little guy.

Today it's raining! The kids took their new umbrellas from Santa Claus outside to play in the rain.

That's our month so far. It's going well. I think the rest of the month is going to be pretty great too! Mom will arrive this Wednesday. I'm due next Sunday. So we'll probably have a baby sister in the next week or so!! I'm very excited!

Happy New Year 2010!!

We had our annual New Year Party. The ball dropped at 5:30 p.m. and we had a great time! We stomped on bubble wrap, drew "2010" on our faces, played a game to guess which day Hazel will arrive (the person closest to the date will win a bag of Lindt chocolate balls!), and ate rootbeer floats. Mmm, mmm!

The kids had to make sure we got every last bubble popped!

Welcome, 2010!

My true loves

Merry Christmas!
May our hearts be full of love for one another and our Savior.

Great start!

I can't even say how excited I am to have Lily home from school for two weeks! Aaron only works two days next week. We are going to have so much fun together! We started our Christmas break off great! We played at the park, then ate dinner at Culvers (kids' choice), then drove around to see Christmas lights.

My beautiful girl. When Lily gets home from school she changes out of her uniform into regular clothes. I love to see her choices. Today it was an orange shirt, a turquoise skirt, and a brown sequined vest tied together with her native american shirt tie. Luckily it sort of blended in with the turquoisy sequins and skirt. :)

We love teeter-totters. Uh, I think Carter and I make a pretty balanced pair, don't you?

Aaron makes everything so much fun. The kids can't get enough of him.

Carter played with Harold the helicopter in the sand almost the whole time at the park. He used to not like the sand because it was dirty...but now he loves it!

My honey. He's the greatest husband in the world.

Ummmm, yes, I still have six weeks left.

The not-so-great part of our break, which I won't even mention, includes being up with Lily for an hour in the night cause she didn't feel real well and some exciting times with Carter's diapers. I'll say no more.

Aaron is such a dream boat. He let me sleep in until 8:00!!! I don't know when that last happened. When I got up he had made pancakes for us all.

Carter got a train pancake. He thought it was the greatest thing ever.

Lily got a butterfly. Notice her lovely lipstick.

My dreamboat, right there.

More fun pancakes: a snowflake, a saguaro cactus, a circle, and a swirl.

My special pancake was baby Hazel all swaddled up tight.

After breakfast we worked our tails off to clean up the kitchen and family room. See, what a great start to our Christmas break!

Star of Bef-hem

We had fun decorating our Christmas tree. Lily has been dying to get the ornaments out. She asked me several times in the weeks before we got our tree if she could just get the ornaments out and look at them. Mean mom said no because if we did, we'd have ornaments and tissue paper all over the place until we got the tree.

We put our tree up the week after Thanksgiving. The kids were so excited. With every ornament she pulled out, Lily gasped and made a comment like, "This is so beautiful," or "I love this ornament because...." Both kids had a great time identifying their own ornaments and hanging them on the tree.

Carter has learned a lot this year about Baby Jesus' birth and the new star that Heavenly Father put in the sky at Jesus' birth. He calls it the Star of Bef-lem. It sounds so cute when he says it!

The ritual of putting the star on top of the tree has always been Lily's privilege. However, Carter is old enough to do it now too. Both kids wanted to be the one to put it on the tree. So problem-solver Lily came up with the great idea to do it together.

Voila!