Happy New Year!

New Year's for the whole family :) We celebrated New Year's Eve with Kevin, Aliza, Griffin and Maya. We all had a great time and I'm hoping we keep this as a tradition every year.

I had planned some stuff for the kids to do but they were having such great time playing with puzzles and being surprisingly calm we just let them have their own fun. We did do sort of a new year's egg hunt for them. Which happened to be the only thing I took any pictures of the whole time :( After that the kids when to bed and we played board games, no, no Dick Clark for us.

Clara thought it was awesome that she got to sleep over at Griffin's house and then got to play again in the morning. It would have been even more awesome if she would have fallen asleep at bedtime and not 2 hours later. Keeping her sister awake that whole time too. Thank goodness Griffin is a heavy sleeper and couldn't hear them in the next room. What happen to those great babies I had that would sleep anywhere? Anyway, thanks for having us over guys!

Christmas, finally.

Now that it's been over a month since Christmas I'm finally getting around to catching up with the blog. iPhoto is up and running once again (Wish I could say the same for iWeb.)
(I know I'm back dating this. It's actually Feb. 3 today ;P)

I honestly can't even remember much of the Christmas details. It was a nice holiday. We celebrated for many days, from Christmas Eve on Thursday all the way through Monday, with various family. Christmas day was actually spent here at our house just the four of us, no driving. It was awesome :) Clara was really into Christmas and Santa this year. She was so excited to leave cookies for him and was extra excited to see what he brought her Christmas morning. The super fantastic Lego "Cow Farm". Hazel was really excited about the doll she got, Amelie, as well. We now have tons of new stuff from Aunts, Uncles, Grandparents, etc. I'm on a mission to try and get rid of some of the old baby toys to make room for all the new stuff. Time to organize!



In addition to all the receiving, I tried to show Clara the great part about Christmas, the giving. The girls (and I) made pinecone ornaments with their picture attached to give to relatives. Clara, on her own decided to make Christmas cards for everyone. She drew pictures and wrote out names and signed them, with a little spelling help from Mommy. I'm really impressed with how well she is doing with learning how to write her letters.



It really was a fantastic Christmas. It was so much fun this year with Clara really being into it. It was neat to see her experience all the traditions and be excited about them. She loved decortating the tree, making cookies and crafts just as much as she did opening presents. I'm really looking forward to next year when Hazel will be able to enjoy the experience just as much too. To check out more Christmas pictures look here.

Hazel at 18 mos

Hazel is now a year and a half. I said that I was going to take photos of her and I finally got around to it. Here they are :) and here's a little bit about the nut at this point in her life.

Hazel's Favorites:

Brushing her teeth
The color Yellow
Candy
"Pedape" Penelope - her purple ugly doll, who is looking quite sad at this point.
Blankie
Shoes
"Tines" - Clementines or any citrus fruit - all called "tines"
"No" not actually no but snow. Since it snowed she looks out the window for long periods of time talking about the snow. In actuality she wasn't a huge fan of being in the snow.

Hazel's talking more and more each day. She will pretty much try and repeat any word and has recently started combining them. Here's a small video from a few weeks ago, when I "interviewed" her. Her sister, of course, couldn't stand being quiet during recording.

Basket Head

I took this last month on a lazy morning

Christmas Art

Clara has created some pretty fantastic Christmas cards. I had to share with everyone. Some lucky people will be receiving these this holiday season.

Santa with long fingers


Santa with a big hat


Santa with a tall hat and big beard


Santa on his sleigh


Rudolph


A Christmas Wreath

Snow Santa

Since the demands of a snowman were met yesterday, Clara upped her request today to a snow Santa.

Bumbo the Christmas Elephant

We finally got around to making our cut out cookies yesterday. Both the girls were set to help me out. Unfortunately, the dough was a pain to work with so I did most of the work myself while Clara played with the cookie cutters and Hazel ate the flour. Clara insisted in addition to making the traditional shapes, stars, trees, reindeer etc., we make an elephant. She called him Bumbo and he is our Christmas elephant. Clara decorated all her Bumbos with lots of sprinkles and one chocolate chip each for their trunks.

Snow

Our winters off to a good start. It's not even Christmas yet and we've already had two decent snowfalls. Yesterday we got about 8" worth. It was sort of a bummer because we had lots of plans that were canceled but it was also pretty cool to just be home baking cookies and watching the snow fall. Hazel was very excited. Check out the video.




Today we were out playing in the snow of course. Clara kept insisting on the creation of a snowman despite the lack of proper snowman making snow (the wet kind not the light and fluffy stuff). We managed to create a small one. You can see some photos here - http://gallery.me.com/brydeemer#100054

Super Santa

Clara the Super Santa

Clara this morning

This morning we were looking at our cookie recipe book while eating breakfast. I was also writing out our grocery list. Clara doesn't want to go to the grocery store. I told Clara we need eggs and milk. She said, "Oh mommy, we can just walk down to the Minnie Mouse to get eggs."


This week she insisted we take the alligator when we were at the store. This made me think of my friend Liz's blog. Apparently Kai isn't the only one who gets alligator and elevator confused.

Clara writes her name

For weeks now Clara has been working on writing her name. She knows all the letters in her name and what order you spell it in. She was getting really good at writing "C" and "L". Then mastered the "A". Today she did the whole thing. I helped remind her what direction to write them in, she hasn't entirely grasped the left to right concept, but she wrote them all by herself. I had to take a picture of course. She was so pleased with herself that we then wrote Hazel, Mom, Papa, Stella and Grandma, with my help of course. She has already been doing great with some of these letters, I think with her new toy, she'll have the rest of her upper case letters mastered in no time.

Santa in Candyland

Today we went to the annual Sonoco Children's Christmas Party. It's really a great thing my Mom's work does for the employees. It had a Candyland theme this year since apparently Candyland is celebrating their 40th anniversary. They had a whole assortment of jars of candy to guess the amounts in. Clara won one of these by legitemently guessing 15 liquorace strings. Hazel won three since mommy was on a roll of lucky guesses ;) In addition to a visit from Santa they had Candyland set up to play, lots of food and a magician making balloon animals. Clara got a yellow parrot from the magician and Hazel got a crazy hat with a smiley face. Hazel loves her hat and Clara . . .




loves the candy canes. After everyone was all sugared up, Santa came. Clara made a card to give to Santa. She was so excited to see him and told me over and over again for days she was going to tell him what she wanted for Christmas, a Cow Farm. See earlier post for more on the cow farm. When it came time to actually see Santa, Clara was somewhat unsure of him. She did not want to sit on his lap and did not want to even get close enough for a picture. She did tell him that she wanted the Cow Farm after me prompting her not to moan weird sounds at him and speak. Hazel did not scream but was holding her arms out for me the whole time. Not exactly the best pictures with Santa. Each of the girls got a very nice present from Santa. Clara got a LeapFrog Alphabet tablet and Hazel got a roll along pony with a basket to put her baby in. They both love their gifts. Thanks again Sonoco for a wonderful party and a chance to meet Santa.

Merry Christmas to me :)

Yesterday my new appliances arrived. Oh, dishwasher how I love thee! My sink is clean and empty, my counters are spacious and my cupboards full :) It's been almost a year since our nice, expensive and not that old dishwasher broke :( I'm so glad to have one back in functioning order.

We also got a new stove to replace our 1980's gross, old one that was starting to near it's end. Now my burners actually look clean when I clean them, go figure. Today the girls and I baked sugar cookies in our new oven. Get this they have this light you can turn on and see inside the oven when your stuff is baking ;) Clara and Hazel were totally fascinated by this concept. I'm looking forward to baking Christmas cookies this year :)

Snow bunnies

The girls were having fun playing in the snow today. Clara can't get enough of it. She has been peeking through windows since it fell on Saturday to make sure it's still out there. Unfortunately, for her I don't think it's going to last much longer. Here she is with the snowman we made today.

(Excuse the fuzzy photos. I found a little girl fingerprint on the lense.)

Big Girl

Clara and I made strawberry banana smoothies for breakfast today. I decided to give Haze some in a big girl cup with a straw. She was so happy and proud of herself.

Shots and Such . . . Hazel is 18 months old.

We had Hazel's 18 month check up today. She's growing great. She's in the 70% for height - 32.5" and 40% for weight - 23 lbs. 9 oz. Her language skills are excellent and she's developmental skills are all good.

Bryan and I talked about whether to get the flu and H1N1 vaccines for the kids and decided we'd do what the doctor recommended. She said it's a good idea so we went ahead with them. Poor kid had to get 4 shots :( She was a trooper and only cried for a little bit. Clara on the other hand was completely ridiculous. She's always been great at the doctors, in fact she likes going and getting check-ups, really likes it. She's never been super bothered by the shots either. Well not today. She found out she was getting one and was hiding in the corner saying she didn't want any. She only got one and the other was a nasal spray. She freaked out about the nasal spray as much as the shot. I had to really hold her down and I felt horrible about it. Hopefully, it was worth it.

A day in the life of Hazel

. . . usually involves two things. She gets stuck in some completely insane predicament at least a dozen times throughout the course of the day. "duck! duck! DUCK!"





She insists on using her sister's potty because she has to pee. "Pee-potty!"


(She has not actually gone to the potty but hey it's a start.)

Christmas Crazies

Clara has now reached the age to grasp the concept of asking for specific presents. She's become obsessed with this Lego farm. She calls the Cow Farm. "I want the cow farm for Christmas. I'm getting the Cow Farm for Christmas. Santa is bringing me the Cow Farm." And she's pretty sure she's getting it too. I blame this on the influx of Lego catalogs that have recently permeated our household. Hmm . . . I wonder how those got here.

Lazy days

We seem to be having a lot of these lately. Not for lack of things that need to get done; dishes, laundry, etc. Time ticks by and that what happens, not much. I'm finally, getting caught up with this blog so I think I can let people know it's here. So, check out the older posts if your reading now. I've got lots of video clips I need to edit and post too, I'm always behind on those. Don't think I'm not doing anything. It seems like not much but imagine how much more time I would have if I didn't have to feed someone every other hour, change diapers, accompany a certain little girl to the potty, let dogs out, track a deaf dog down to bring her in, you get the idea. Plus, there is all the brainstorming of ideas to keep Clara occupied ALL DAY LONG. There are only so many times I can play Candyland before I feel the urge to scream at the top of my lungs. I really miss naptime. I love spending time with my kids but it's so nice having that hour or two of total quiet during the day too. And now I have to go, my twenty minute are up and I'm being pulled away so I can attend a trip to the sandy beach, at least it's not Candyland :)