For the last couple months we have started telling stories on Sunday evenings. I'm not sure how it began but it used to be ghost stories in the winter because the sun went down much earlier so we would pull out the flashlight and tell scary stories. On one such evening, Addy started telling us a story and then said, "wait, I want to do it scary" and then she restarted with "Once upon a time..." in a super scary voice. I wish I had that one on camera!
Now that it is spring, bed time comes before it is dark enough for scary stories so we've started doing just pretend make believe stories.
Here are a few of the stories we heard tonight:
(and yes he is probably going to kill me for posting this, but I just couldn't resist!)
I promise I take my turn telling stories as well but they are always MEGA lame and definitely not worth posting!
Christmas morning has to be the best morning of the whole year. Addy came running into our room at about 7 "i think santa came, santa I heard him". So we all went to check the milk and cookies and since they'd been mostly eaten, we turned on the lights in the living room and Santa had surely come. I showed Addy her stocking and she picked up the pink bear and said, "Santa remembered" it was so cute. Then she sorta got distracted because everyone else was looking at what they got and she wanted to see too. We slowly would pull things out and she'd go show Gracie or someone else. This year some of the things Santa brought were: Chutes and Ladders, the book Pinkalicious, clothes, a christmas dress, black boots, barbie fairy, small toy story figurines, bracelets, minnie mouse coloring pages, fairy paper dolls, princess lip gloss and nail polish, the pink bear, and some treats. Santa knew we weren't going to be opening our presents from under the tree until 4:00 so he kinda loaded up the stocking this year.
Coloring our minnie pages before church.
Gotta love the two sides of my kid!
Sadly we never got pictures in our Sunday clothes before church. Addy was having a super-duper meltdown because her dress was too scratchy. It took her a good half hour to calm down which was about 2 minutes before we had to leave so we thought we would just take some when we got home. Of course we remembered after we'd all changed and Addy was taking a nap. So it goes.
We spent the afternoon playing games we'd gotten from Santa, doing our nails with this awesome kit my sister got, and coloring with the kids.
Then at about 4:00 my brother showed up so we gathered for presents. I didn't take any pictures of us sitting on Santa's lap but we all did it.
This is Addy's song. She made it up so you really can't hear or understand the words but it was still cute.
These kids were just a little excited!
They helped grandpa santa pass out all the presents.
And then we each took a turn opening them up.
a pink bah-bie.
Mitch didn't want Chelsea to be able to guess what was inside the box so he tapped two boxes together with lots of duct tape.
Bah-bie makeup, hair stuff and a dress up. Yes, barbie is quite important at our house right now!
Addy gave Mitch a Dremel tool. He was pretty thrilled with her choice.
Princess dress ups from grandma and grandpa.
She was thrilled!!
Mitch got spoiled with a new sander and skil saw. He totally deserved them!
I got a yoga mat and yoga socks. Now my carpet won't get sweat soaked anymore.
Last of all, Addy got to open the biggest present of all time.
A dollhouse for all her barbies, made by her dad! Have no fear, I will be posting more about this amazing house later on because it truly deserves its own post.
/sigh of relief/, She LOVED it.
After playing and cleaning up a little bit, we gathering in the kitchen and opened our poppers, adorned our crowns, told our jokes and ate a delicious feast.
and if you can't tell, this little girl is just a tinsy bit excited!!!
(Feel free to skip this next part, it is just my random thoughts and things I want to remember. I'm sure it is really boring for the rest of you!)
This is such a fun time of year, especially when you are a kid (or mom!) We have been doing lots of fun Christmas stuff lately and it is all exciting and fun.
One of my favorite things is listening to Addy sing christmas songs. Her favorite is Santa Claus is Coming to Town. When it comes on the radio she always says, 'Yipee, my favorite!" and tries to sing along. Here are two links since I can't get the videos to upload on blogger. The first is her practice try but I thought it was too funny. This one is a little bit better!
I also love that she isn't afraid of Santa (it could be the fact that she gets a candy cane). She's gone a couple times to sit on his lap and she just walks right up and tells him she wants a pink bear and once it was a pink barbie. Hopefully she doesn't come up with anything else because I'm all done shopping.
This year I've also started a tradition of reading a christmas story by the tree every night and then we take off a day on our advent calendar. Tonight Addy turned to me as I was reading and said, "this story is too long." I think she was ready for her treat in the calendar.
We've also gone on a couple drives looking at christmas lights around town. It is one of my favorite things and I'm glad Addy loves it too because then it is easier to convince the hubby. Since we are just going slow through the neighborhoods, we don't make Addy sit in her chair. So she goes back and forth from window to window looking at all the lights and saying, "ohh I love that one", "let me see, let me see", "this is sooo much fun", "more lights", "i love this", etc. On one of our drives we saw a house with a blow up Grinch and for the rest of the time in the car she kept asking to go back to the "winch house".
Lastly, the other day Addy had a friend over to play and I was upstairs tidying up my bathroom and bedroom when I hear Addy telling her friend about Mary, Joseph, the Wisemen and the baby Jesus. I really wish that I would've written down what she was saying because it was so cute but I didn't and now I can't remember. So sad.
Well I think that is all I can remember for the moment.
We had such a fun Christmas break, which I will share more of later, but these are a couple of videos my brother took on his phone when we were down visiting my parents. I'll let you decide what you think.
We usually play the wiggle/freeze game right after family prayer to help get the wiggles out for bedtime. It cracks me up because every time she "freezes" her mouth has to be open and arms spread wide.
This was one of those moments that you can't help but laugh because it really was quite funny but at the same time not so funny because she did just hit someone for no reason at all. Hmmm.
Addy's cousin, Gracie, really likes playing duck, duck, goose. So we tried to teach Addy and she actually caught on to the hitting of the head and saying duck quite quickly. It was the chasing in a circle that wasn't as successful, instead she would run out of the room if you chased her.
WARNING: This may be the cutest thing ever! Okay probably just to me but seriously I could just gobble this little girl up. She is so sweet and I just love her sooo much.
Those are just two of the words that she now says all of the time. A few of my other favorites are: hot- she pretty much says this anytime I put food in front of her or when I put her in the bath, bye- as she does her crooked wave, thank you, juice, pizza. And my all time favorite was the other day we were trying to get her to say "yeah man" in the Jamaican slang and after several times of us saying it, she finally repeated it. It was hilarious but she hasn't done it since.
My mom and dad have this little toy shopping cart which Addy loves to play with. Mostly she just likes to dump all the toys out of it. The first time she was playing with it, I stood her up to see if she would be able to push it. Well, it was pretty funny because she pushed and the arms went out straight but the legs stayed in the same place and then she slowly lowered herself down to her knees. Now she has figured it out and will go up and down the hallway until she gets stopped by the wall. The scary part is that pretty soon she will be doing this without the cart! Yikes!
I am finally getting around to posting an update but it will probably just be a quick one because I would rather play with my family right now since we are down in Utah. As you can see in the pictures Addy is just growing up way too quickly which is sort of fun because she definitely has quite the character and personality but on the other hand it is getting difficult to keep up with her. Now that she is crawling and pulling herself up onto things I have to find safe things for her to play with but most of the time I just try to steer her away from the stairs which in our house seem to be everywhere. Her favorite place to play is at the table and chairs because she pulls herself up and is so proud of herself that she gets too excited and tips over which has caused a few bruises and tears.
One of our favorite things that she just started to do is dancing. I had the music on the other day and look over and Addy is swaying back and forth to the music which will happen on occasion but usually just for a second and it is just a little movement. Well for some reason she was really into this song (which isn't that great of a song so don't really listen to the words). I laugh for a minute thinking it will stop but she kept going so I grabbed the camera and started videoing.
The best is that later when Mitch came home I showed him the video and he wanted to see if she would do it again so he put the song on and right away she started groovin'. Later when we were getting her ready for bed, he started singing a small part of the song and she did it again. Apparently she likes the reggae music just like her dad!
Addy's new favorite thing to do is spit. I have no idea how she learned to do this but she thinks it is the funnest thing. When I am holding her in front of me and she starts blowing then I have to turn her away or else I get slobber all over my face. Also she just rolled from her back to her belly today which is a first. I can't believe how fast she is growing and developing but it is sure fun to be a part of it!!
I may have said this before but one of my favorite things about being a new mom is watching how Mitch and Addy interact. She LOVES her daddy because he is very silly. Most of the time I just shake my head and wonder what is wrong with him but Addy loves everything he does. She is very happy when he comes home from work and even if she has been sad with me all day, Mitch will pick her up and she will be all smiles.
I had to add this because the only reason Addy is smiling so big is because Mitch was making faces at her.
This morning while we were eating breakfast, Addy was getting whiny because she has been a little sick so Mitch started making these funny sounds and faces and right away she started grinning and laughing. Thank goodness the camera was right next to me so I quickly grabbed it and started filming. Mitch thought I was just going to take a picture and didn't realize I was filming this or else he probably would've stopped a lot sooner. Hopefully it puts a smile on your face like it does mine!!
So after being gone for a couple weeks over the holidays, it was very nice to pull back into the driveway and be home. It is always nice to see family but now that we have a kid it is just easier to keep a regular schedule when we are home. Although I am sure that in a few more weeks I will be wanting to go visit again :)
While we were in Utah, my brother in-law works at Kiddie Kandids so we took Addy in to get some updated pictures. It is just amazing how fast kids grow. I feel like we should be taking pictures every month to keep up with her but that will never happen. We definitely got some cute ones of her but we never could get her to give us a big smile, maybe next time.
I love this picture because Addy looks so cute because she is staring at Mitch and Gracie was done with pictures and just wanted my sister to hold her.
Here is a cute video of Addy playing with her new christmas toy from grandma and grandpa. I just can't believe how fun she is getting. If you watch her mouth in the video, she starts doing this sucking action. This is her new thing that she does with ALL toys that she sees because she desperately wants them in her mouth hence all the drool and slobber. She has also started giggling, it is really cute but it doesn't happen very often so hopefully soon I can get it on video.
I know I'm really behind but last night Mitch took me to see Twilight at the two dollar tuesday movie theater(one reason I love Rexburg). We took Addy with us because I'd kept her up all afternoon so I thought for sure that she would just sleep through the whole thing. We learned our lesson because ten minutes after the previews she woke up and Mitch ended up standing at the back of the theater until the last ten minutes. What a great husband I have!
As for the movie, I absolutely loved it. There were definitely parts that were only funny if you had read the book and I obviously still think the book is way better than the movie. But overall I was very impressed with how they stuck to the story line and by the end of the movie I was totally impressed with each of the characters. I can't wait to see what they do for the next book.
