Lily and Peyton

Over the last couple of months, Lily has really grown close to her friend, Peyton, who is about 6 weeks younger than her. Peyton's dad, Chris, and Ryan used to work together at Opteum, but both left for other jobs. Chris has recently enlisted in the Army and for a couple of months before he left for training, he stayed home with Peyton more. So, on most Tuesdays when Ryan is typically home with our girls, Chris and Peyton would come over to play. His wife, Hannah, and I enjoy spending time together too, but we don't get the chance to get together as much as Ryan and Chris.

On Christmas morning, when Lily opened her "glass slippers and tee-taras" set, one of the first things she said was "I can't wait to share these with Peyton!" She and Peyton share a love for all things princess related. When Chris and Peyton came over on the 26th, they immediately each put on a princess dress and a pair of glass slippers as you can see from the picture below. They had a ball playing games, grocery shopping and building a house together; they were running around, talking, laughing and having so much fun together. It's lots of fun for Ryan and me to watch them!

We were going to meet Chris and Peyton at the playground yesterday (see the previous post), and when we told Lily, she got so excited. She said multiple times, "Peyton is a friend, and I am a friend! We're both friends!"

Chris is leaving on Saturday and will be gone for 6 months in Army training, so we won't see him for awhile. While we wish him all the best while he's at training, I hope we will be able to see Peyton and Hannah a lot while he is gone, so we can keep Lily and Peyton's friendship going. They are such sweet friends!

Fun At the Playground

I took Tuesday off from work because I wasn't feeling well. I had taken some medicine for a head cold, and it knocked me out. I slept until about 1 PM. I finally came out of our room just after Ryan put the girls down for their naps, so then I was able to rest for a couple more hours. When the girls got up, we were all going a little stir crazy, so we decided to go to the playground. Our friend, Chris, and his daughter, Peyton, called right then to see about getting together while their wife/mommy, Hannah, was at work; they decided to meet us there. It was a pretty chilly day, but as long as the wind wasn't blowing, it was a nice day. Here are a few pictures from out time there.

Mia loves to swing!

Mia liked the slide too, but she wasn't very productive at climbing up it.
Lily and Peyton about to go down the slides together.

Lily helped Mia on the slides too.

Lily and Peyton had fun climbing up these little steps too.

More than anything, the girls had a great time just being outside and running around. There are two playgrounds at this park, and these pictures are on the smaller one. The big girls had tons of fun on the bigger playground because it has some pretty big slides and climbing rungs. Mia of course liked being here too but it made Ryan and me a lot more nervous for her to be on the big playground! This was a lovely afternoon!

Christmas Night

After a wonderful Christmas morning, the girls went down early for their afternoon naps. I think they were both overwhelmed by all the mornings' activities. While they napped, Ryan and I both took little naps, and then it was time to get cooking for the evening. For the past several years, we have gone over to my brother's house around mid-morning to have Christmas brunch with my family. We all love this meal and look forward to it each year. Garlic cheese grits, eggs-sausage casserole, apple-cranberry casserole, croissant poppy seed casserole, bacon and biscuits...yum!  I'm already ready for Christmas 2010 to arrive, so I can eat this again!  However, we decided this year to do it in the evening, so all the kids could stay home in the morning and not be rushed; we also gathered at my parents house which was nice so neither my brother's family nor us had to worry about cleaning up after the morning.

Here's Lily ready to see the presents get distributed.

Papa kept an eye on Mia and Zac.

Mia hung out with Wayne for a few minutes.

Showing Mia a new toy. I think Lily will enjoy Mia's toys just as much as Mia!

Lily was so excited to get this digital camera from my parents! She loves taking pictures, and she is getting better at it. She is going to love this.

Molly practicing on her new guitar.

Mia is really starting to love books, and I think she likes this new Sandra Boynton counting book.

Christmas Morning

Christmas morning is here! Here's a picture of the trees with presents before we went to bed last night. It had all the presents from us and all the out-of-town grandparents under them. The presents from Santa were stuffed in the stocking and on the couch. Now we just needed the girls.
We had set our alarms to wake us about 7:30. We figured we would get up before Lily to head her off from going into the living room. The last couple of days, she has been waking up about 8 and going straight in to play with her toys. Well, about 7:15, we heard her coming out, so Ryan jumped out of bed and asked her if she wanted to come get in bed with us. She readily agreed without asking at all about Christmas or Santa. We all fell back asleep until about 8; Ryan got up to take a quick shower and started our cinnamon rolls for breakfast while Lily and I watched Special Agent Oso on Disney. Finally, Lily said she was hungry and wanted to go see Daddy, so we got out of bed. As we walked past the living room, Lily caught sight of the gifts from Santa, so we went in to check them out. She was very excited about their new gifts!

Just then we heard Mia, so we went in to get her and say Merry Christmas. When we came back out, Lily noticed the stockings were filled. We went in to see what was stuffed inside. Lily could see the Belle doll sticking out the top of hers, so she was anxious to dig in. She loved the princess stickers, Little People Pixie and Snail, Hello Kitty toothbrush and Nim's Island movie that was there.

Mia enjoyed opening her stocking too. She received Goodnight Moon, a small animal book, Little People animals and a new Cedermont Kids DVD called Songs of America. They both liked reaching into the stocking to see what they could pull out.

After emptying the stockings, Mia was ready to play with one of her presents from Santa (fyi, Lily loved this same vacuum a couple of years ago...shhh!).

A few minutes later, the cinnamon rolls were ready, so we went to eat breakfast. Mia enjoyed her peaches and yogurt plus a few bites of cinnamon rolls, but the other three of us loved the rolls. Here's Mia in her special Christmas bib; isn't she adorable?

While we were eating Lily said "When we're done eating, let's go play with our new toys, okay?" I replied "Don't you won't to open more presents?" to which Lily said "Where are more presents?" She had not yet noticed all the wrapped gifts! We told her they were under the tree, so she leaned out of her chair to see them and then started saying "There are gifts under my tree! They are not under your tree, they are under my tree!" She ate one more bite and then said "I'm done. Let's go open gifts!" We told her we had to wait on Mommy and Mia to finish, but she could get down. She went in and played with her Santa gifts while we finished up.

It was so much fun for Ryan and me to see the girls opening their gifts and enjoying them. It makes us so happy to see them enjoying the gifts we have picked for them. Lily seemed to love each gift while Mia seemed to love the tissue paper that came with each of her gifts. To each her own I guess!

Lily loved her princess shoes and tiara set! There were 6 pairs of shoes, and she called each one of them her glass slippers. She insisted on wearing her glass slippers and a tiara until nap time.

It cracked me up to see her wearing the shoes and tiara!

Mia loved the Learning Puppy (another gift that Lily enjoyed a few years ago, so again...shhh).

Tearing the tissue was a favorite activity of Mia's. It made a lovely mess, but she was happy, so we let her go to town on it.

Her other favorite gift was this white box from Grandpops and Grandma Jan. We liked the beautiful charm inside, but she had a great time with the box!

Lily was so excited to open these rhyming word puzzle cards. She really loves rhyming words right now and puzzles are always a hit, so this was great.

Bama gave Mia a little baby doll that we named Mary (Mia's middle name). She loved it! She kept giving it these big hugs and smiling so big at it. Absolutely precious!

The last gift was the big surprise gift under the blanket that had come all the way from Birmingham. It's an art easel with drawing paper on one side and a chalkboard on the other. It also had this cute little smock. Lily couldn't wait to start drawing!

She actually started by tracing over the "Merry Christmas" writing. She is working on learning to write her letters, so this was fun for her. After she did that, she asked for more paper so she could draw on her own. Luckily the paper spins so there's plenty more to go.

While Mia napped, Lily had fun with her new Color Wonders Finger Paints. I love Crayola's Color Wonders products. They are amazing. They only work on the special paper. Kids can finger paint or color with markers anywhere they want (walls, floors, etc.), but they don't show up! Lily loves them too!

Sitting with my Snow White princess.

Just before lunch time, my parents and Meme came by to see the girls and see how our Christmas was going. It's always fun to visit with them.

Lily had a great time playing her new Candy Land game with Ryan. It took her a few turns to get the hang of it, but then she figured it out and played great. She took turns, moved to the right spaces and was happy when either she or Ryan won. It was neat to see her learning how to do this.

This was a wonderful Christmas morning filled with lots of love and fun!

Christmas Eve

What a relaxing Christmas Eve. Ryan and I made sure we completed just about everything before Christmas Eve, so we could spend the day enjoying our time with the girls, relaxing and having fun. We all enjoyed a yummy Chick-fil-a breakfast, and I told Lily we were going to make cookies for Santa. For the next hour or so, she asked me every couple of minutes if we were ready to make cookies. I kept explaining we were going to wait for Mia to go down for her nap, but she was so excited to get started. I gave her all the cookie cutters so she could see the different shapes. She kept looking at them and changing her mind on which one she would make first. Finally, Mia went down for her nap, so it was time for us to make the cookies.

First things first, we have to wash our hands.
Then we needed to preheat the oven. Lily likes to push the buttons to hear them beep.
Now comes the fun part. We measured out the flour, baking powder and baking soda. Lily enjoyed pouring the ingredients into the bowl and then mixing them together.

So excited to be making cookies!

Watching intensely as I cream the sugar and butter. She was fascinated by the mixer.

Using the mixer with a little help from Mommy.

She decided to make the snowflake her first cookie. Here she is pressing the cutter into the dough. We were able to get a few cutters at a time on the dough, and then we would roll it back out and do it again.

Having fun!

A picture of all the unbaked cookies on the cookie sheet. She made one of each design and then we made an "L" too.

While the first batch cooked, we rolled the rest of the dough into little circles and flattened them out; we also made the letters "D," "M" and "A" for the rest of us.

Concentrating on rolling out her dough.

Okay, so I love to cook. However, I am not a baker in the least. I love baked goods, don't get me wrong, I just don't do it very often. I say this to explain why I didn't think about the fact that the cookies would really expand while they cooked. They came out of the oven huge! Most were mashed together too. Lily didn't care though, and to be honest, they tasted really good. She had so much fun decorating them. First, we put a little frosting on each one. Then Lily used our 6 different colors of sugar sprinkles and rainbow non-perils to decorate. She used all seven items on each one. She would carefully choose the order she wanted to decorate each cookie with too; it was pretty fun to watch her because she was having such a great time.

She chose to decorate the candy cane first. Here's what it looked like.

Ready to dig in! She enjoyed every bite!

Of all the cookies, Lily wanted to give Santa the big "M" one. We frosted it, and then she decorated it. First the green sugar in the middle, then yellow sugar on the bottom of each side, blue sugar a little above the yellow, purple above the blue, pink next to the purple and orange between the pink and green. She decided not to use the non-perils on this one. It was interesting to see how she wanted everything to be symmetrical. I wonder where she gets that from...

After we made the cookies, we enjoyed the rest of our day. Here's a picture of Mia relaxing with Ryan later in the day.

After we put Mia to bed for the night, we let Lily hang our stockings. We hadn't put them up because the hangers are really heavy and would have hurt Mia or Lily a lot if they had pulled the stockings over.

Here's Lily putting Santa's cookie by the fireplace; we put the milk down a minute later.

We also had to put some water out for the reindeer. It was raining, so Lily choose to stay inside and watch.

One last picture before bed time. She is such a sweet little girl.

We're looking forward to a great Christmas tomorrow!