Merry Christmas!

We've had a WONDERFUL morning enjoying all of the fun gifts that Santa brought.  By far the biggest hit of the morning was the Barbie Jeep from Santa.  We attempted to put the battery in to send the girls for a little spin, but they wanted no part in that...I think that kind of power will take some warming up to.  However, they COULD NOT get enough of the Jeep inside, where all that they could or wanted to do was climb in and out and turn the radio on and off.  We did have to spend some time "practicing" our sharing skills, but, again, it's something we will continue to work on, and, for the most part, the girls assumed their roles pretty well...Macy appears to be the driver, while Makayla controls the tunes while being chauffered!  :)

The girls also got to open up gifts from Mommy and Daddy, of course, and some cool stuff from Uncle Jared, Aunt Tonia, Connor, Uncle Jason, Aunt Jen, Reganne, and Riley.  The were especially pleased about their new ball popper (the old one "blew up" a LONG time ago, and we debated replacing it then, but I think it's much more appreciated now that they have had time to miss it!) and their Kangaroo stepper.  Thanks to all of you for sending such awesome gifts! 

Other than that, we've had a lazy day at home catching up on laundry and playing with Christmas toys.  It's been a fantastic day!

As mentioned in the last post, yesterday was a busy day, starting with brunch at our friend Matt and Ashley's, followed by a nice nap, and then a trip to Mamaw Eunice's for the Traditional Christmas Eve celebration.  Again, the girls got great presents (including gigantic dolls from Mamaw Eunice), had a great time playing with their cousins, aunts, uncles, and grandparents, loved helping Mamaw "cook" Chicken and Dumplings, and especially enjoyed the corn on the cob and cake fed to them by Papaw!  After a busy day, we made it home and went straight to bed so Santa could visit.  He really enjoyed the cookies...:)

MERRY CHRISTMAS TO ALL! 

Love,
Macy, Makayla, Mandy, and Gary

Silly Cousins

 (This post is actually from early yesterday morning, I just didn't get the pictures uploaded in time to actually publish it, so it's a little "out of date")
The girls have had the pleasure of a visit from their cousin Emmy Cate this week, and they have had a BLAST!  Uncle Nathan and Aunt Lauren came too, and, of course, we're all happy to see them as well, but we've hit the point where the kids are much more excited about the little people who visit instead of the big ones!

On Wednesday, we took the girls to Discovery Place Kids.  It was chaos, as expected, and the girls had too much going on to play a lot with one another, but they each had a fun morning doing their own thing, and they were able to re-connect on the way out!  :)  After that, we grabbed a "busy" lunch at McAlister's and brought them home to crash.  It was a bit difficult, since we put Emmy in the same room, and they were a little too wound up to fall right to sleep, but, eventually, a small nap was had by all and they reconvened to play for the rest of the afternoon!  Mamaw and Papaw visited as well, and the parents snuck away for a grown up dinner while the grandparents graciously stayed behind with the kids.  Unfortunately, the girls were pooped, so they didn't get to really spend any time playing, but they made up for it the next morning!  During the visit, we went for a wagon ride, watched Elmo, and played hard!  I think the girls really enjoyed their first "sleepover", and we were all able to eagerly anticipate many fun sleepover nights in the future!

Last night, we all reconvened at Mamaw's house for fried chicken and presents!  :)  The girls again enjoyed playing with one another and being the center of everyone's attention, and were spoiled rotten with a bunch of awesome presents!  All 3 girls especially loved ganging up on Papaw, and of course he and Mamaw were in "hog heaven" as Papaw would say!  The hit of the night was the shopping cart from Aunt Lauren, Uncle Nathan, and Emmy Cate...so much of a hit, in fact, that a full-out sibbling brawl broke loose, so we had to take it away completely.  After that, Mamaw and Papaw saved the day with a new tunnel toy that all 3 girls LOVED!!  We had a great night and are very thankful for our awesome gifts (for the whole family), including the new playhouse that required a visit across the street in the cold, and the girls don't even quite understand it yet (it's still in the box to be "delivered" to our house), but I'm sure they'll love it when they figure it out!

This morning we've spent some time working on our sharing skills, and, by now, the girls are happily playing together with the grocery cart...we do have still have some occasional meltdowns, but I think the girls handle the sharing concept pretty well for 16 month olds!

In a little bit, we'll begin the festivities again starting with brunch at the neighbors and then the yearly visit to Mamaw Eunice's for the Christmas Eve tradition.

Cookie Monsters

The girls and I made our first venture into holiday cookie making together this weekend, and it was so much fun! Granted, our sanitation grade was probably rather low, since we did all of the prep work on the floor, and I'm pretty sure about half of the chocolate chips actually hit the floor...but the experience was too much fun to be bothered with that detail! At least the floor had just been mopped! :)

I started by pre-measuring all of the ingredients and setting them out across the floor...the girls had NO idea what this fun mess was about! I tried to let them help dump ingredients together, but they were much more interested in working on the flour/sugar/baking soda/salt mixture...I think it was well mixed by the time I was ready to add it to the dough! Macy decided to taste this dry mess, not once, but several times, and they both enjoyed spooning it out of the big bowl into smaller bowls...and onto the floor and their legs! What a mess!

 They weren't at all sure about the electric mixer, until I let them take a taste...

and they LOVED the task of adding chocolate chips to the dough...Macy couldn't get her hands on them fast enough...hence the reason that she raked most of them onto the floor in order to speed up production!

At this point, the girls were flour-covered and pooped, but they were still excited to help me clean up the mess!!  Such hard workers!  :) 

After that, I put them down for a nap and finished the process myself...I guess it should have dawned on me that, in the end, the amount of flour that went on the floor and on their clothes wasn't trivial, so we ended up with some fairly "runny" cookies...but, believe it or not, they look horrible, but they're actually pretty chewy and moist, and everyone LIKES them...especially Daddy!

Oh, and I couldn't leave without posting a shot of Makayla's new accessory for the weekend...some old Dora glasses that she found in her closet...it's snowing outside, and she wouldn't take them off, even to watch her animal movies in the car!  Silly Girl!

Santa, Take 2!

This past Sunday, Mimi and Aunt Sally came for a visit, along with our little surprise visitor, Haley!   Even though it was a QUICK trip, it was so good to see everyone!  Unfortunately, I had to work all day Monday, but I think everyone had a great time hanging out and the girls LOVED playing with thier cousin!  She was just TOO COOL, and I think Haley liked spending time being idolized as well!

On Sunday, the girls and I met up with everyone at a "Cookies with Santa" event hosted by my Mothers of Multiples club.  The girls enjoyed coloring, socializing, and, of course, they loved their first taste of mommy's famous Snickerdoodles!  After that, we headed down to watch Santa...HOPING that spending some time observing from a distance might help them to warm up to the idea of sitting in his lap...NOT A CHANCE!!!  Macy LOVED looking from afar, and has become quite proficient at recognizing the old guy and pointing at him.  Makayla still screams at first sight, and usually won't even be bothered with saying his name!   

We still gave it a shot, and Haley participated like a pro...then, she TRIED to get her cousins to go along with it too...I repeat, NOT A CHANCE!!  :)  We settled for a screaming picture keepsake and another quick, terrified family shot, and decided to relieve the poor jolly giant and walk away.  Knowing how scared Haley has been in the past, we're happy to know that at least there's hope one day!

After visiting with Santa, we grabbed dinner and took a quick trip to "Zootastic", a new attraction in T-TOWN!  They have a pretty impressive light setup to drive through, then you end in a big barn where they have snacks, a few weird animals, and quick access to a petting zoo and pony rides...it was much too cold for that, and the back room had yet another version of jolly old St Nick.  We walked in and quickly exited, not interested in enduring another round for the girls or ourselves!  :)  Needless to say, we didn't go to far, but were pretty entertained by the kangaroo, the weird South American "racoon" (there was a much cooler sounding name for it, but I have NO idea what that was), and a couple of parrots.  It was a short excursion and the girls were SLEEPY, but we definitely found a cool place to go back to in the spring.  After talking to the owner, we can't wait to take a look at all of the exotic animals waiting to make their appearance!

Thanks to Mimi, Sally, and Haley for their visit, and Thank You Aunt Sally for the awesome first Christmas presents! (notice Makayla's latest obsession...her bibs have been replaced with her new wooly lamb hat that she rarely takes off...She literally wears it ALL day (even at school and during naps) almost every day!) We had a great visit and can't wait to see Mimi, Haley, and all of the rest of our families over the coming weeks!

The Season of Giving

A friend of mine has managed to raise two amazing little girls with incredibly giving hearts, and she's given me a lot of advice on simple steps that she's taken to instill that.  One of the ideas that she gave was around teaching her children to give back to those less fortunate at Christmas.  Her method is to have them pick out several gifts from their birthday "haul", set them aside until Christmas, and then donate the gifts to Toys for Tots.  The key is for them to understand that they shouldn't pick out their least desired acquisition, but, instead, find something that would truly mean a lot to another little boy or girl their age.  Obviously at 1, this is far more difficult of a lesson than they can digest, but the important thing for us was that the tradition start early, knowing that later they'll be able to take pride in the fact that it's something they've done since birth.  Since this is all new and we are very concerned that we not appear ungrateful for all of the awesome gifts that the girls recieved this year, Gary and I just picked out a few gifts that were duplicate.  Going forward, however, we hope that our children will understand the concept, and can be active participants to sacrifice a gift that they love, but know another child would love also! 

We took the girls to the Toys for Tots drop off at my office just after pictures with Santa, and considering how tired they were, we figured that throwing cool new toys into a bin where they can't be retrieved may not go over well...we were very pleased when our girls EAGERLY donated the loot, and weren't at all disappointed to move on (after making their deposits, they had a blast running around the lobby of one of our buildings, and even got to meet our CIO!)  Anyway, I know they really had no idea what they were doing, but it made for neat pictures, and allowed us to feel a sense of the true Christmas spirit for ourselves...I know there's so much more we could do, and as the girls get older, I pray that we figure out how and when to be the example that they need, but sometimes it's the simple things that set the foundation, so we hope this makes an impact!

Dear Santa...all I want for Christmas is...my Mommy and my Daddy...

We took the girls to get thier pics with good ol' Saint Nick today...and, as expected from most 16-ish month olds, they were NOT having it.  I couldn't even get Makayla to slighten her grip, and Macy was ready to break down in tears, so rather than fight the fight, we decided to make it a family affair.  Unfortunately, Gary and I weren't smart enough to dress the part...even though we'd been warned by several others.  So, excuse our non-Christmasy outfits, and the terrified looks of our little munchkins...

One day they'll be WAY TOO COOL for Mom and Dad...so we're just going to enjoy it while it lasts!  And Santa will be there through it all!  :)

With Thankful Hearts

We've had a wonderful Thanksgiving holiday, hanging out around the house and doing things as a family! We started the LONG weekend with getting our pictures taken by Auntie Melissa! The girls had their uncooperative moments, but did much better than some of our previous photographic adventures, and Melissa's an AWESOME photographer anyway, so I CAN'T WAIT to see what she turns out!

On Thanksgiving day, we spent a quiet(??) and relaxing (???) morning at home! I started working on the tree, and we all watched the Thanksgiving Day Parade. The girls LOVED the parade and even sat still for several periods of time to watch the giant floats!

They LOVED the music too, and clapped and danced their little hearts out! It was definitely the best time I've had watching the parade! I wanted to do some kind of craft, but was pretty low on supplies, so we made Indian feather hats. Excuse the neon colors...maybe we were indians from the 80s! :)

Later in the afternoon, we loaded up and headed to Great-Aunt Judy's church for Thanksgiving with the Childers crowd...and what a crowd it was! I think there were over 30 of us there! The girls had a great time playing with and watching their cousins, but were definitely EXHAUSTED when we left! I think they had passed out in the car within 5 minutes!

On Friday, we started the day with a trip to Discovery Place Kids where the girls were happy to show Daddy around, since he missed the last trip! We had a great time, hit the famous "Lupie's Diner" across the street for lunch, and then spent the afternoon decorating the tree and eating chili...one of the few true joys of winter for me! :)

On Saturday, we spent the day hanging around the house cleaning and playing while Gary smoked turkey and fish for our neighbors. We ended up with a pretty big crowd, and, as usual, Daddy faked everyone out to believe he is the master chef!  (JUST KIDDING! :) It really was an awesome meal, and the girls got to play with several of their neighbor friends until it was time for them to hit the sack.

Today, we hit our usual church hour, came home for naps, then headed to Grandma and Papaw's house to stuff our faces for one last round of Thanksgiving celebration.  The girls hammed it up for the entire table, and then decided their favorite toy for the evening would be the box that Grandma and Papaw's toys are kept in!  Simple pleasures...

For general updates, it seems like Macy's vocabulary is finally starting to ramp up, and she's showing a lot more interest and ability with her words.  Both girls LOVE to sing "Row, Row, Row your Boat" and "If you're Happy and you Know it".  They're still a bit obsessed with cows (especially Makayla) and Dogs (especially Macy) and LOVE to go through the farm animals and make their noises.  They have become very excited about their "boppy's" - Belly Buttons (??) and LOVE to show them off.  They're not very thrilled when I put them in onesies anymore!  :) 

They can still fight with each other like sisters do, but they've also started to bond in an amazing way.  It's so cute how they tend to "look out for" each other, and have learned to share, say "please" and "thank you".  It's not always easy to get them to follow through, but they definitely get the concept. 

Another concept that we know they get is "No, No"...they are definitely "text-book" toddlers for trying to challenge EVERYTHING, but we know that they get it, and they do eventually listen...usually!  The new temptation of the Christmas tree and all of its "balls" has given them the ultimate forum for "testing" us out!  

They're both still Daddy's girls, but Makayla still opts for her mommy about half the time, so it allows me to feel a little less than shattered when Gary's in town.  Makayla's current obsession is BIBS, of all things...you'll probably notice her sporting quite a variety in several pics within this post.  They both love shoes, and spent half the night last night playing with one of the older kid's crocs!  They also really get a kick out of some of the simpler things...like an old pair of cheap sunglasses.  I taught them to say "cool dude" and it's so cute!

As I said last year...So Much for Which to be Thankful! 

Happy Thanksgiving!