Merry Nicholl Christmas

Today we celebrated Christmas with my mom's side of the family.  Meghan had picked out great outfits for the kids.  Unfortunately, I'm apparently out of touch with girls' fashion, as I totally botched their shawls when I was taking the kids' picture while Meghan finished getting ready.  Once we got to Mom and Ron's house, we got things corrected, and I snapped a quick picture of the grandparents/grandkids while Nick was taking his.  This was a notable picture, as Benjamin has joined the party this year.

We decided to try a picture of the grandkids/cousins by themselves.  This quickly went from not too bad to, well, bad.

Hannah still fancies herself to be a baby sometimes, and she saw Benjamin's baby swing and desperately wanted to get in it.  She happily swung for quite awhile in it.

Clara seemed to have an especially fun time this year.  She got to spend time with various relatives and even got to hone her photography skills when Nick, who is fantastic with the kids, let her take a picture with his camera and then view the results, which delighted her.

We then enjoyed an excellent Christmas meal.  It was one of those meals where literally everything is good.  We had such a large crowd that we broke into two full tables.  Thankfully with Mom and Ron's new house, you never feel separated from anyone else, as all the living spaces flow together on the main floor.  This was one of the reasons they moved, and I think it definitely paid off.

Later we did presents.  The four cousins all received quite a few things, but that didn't stop Joshua from immediately eyeing Clara's loot to see if it was something he wanted to take for himself.

Meghan took the kids home so they could nap, and I stayed for a little longer to play games and to eat shrimp cocktail and more of Grandma's Christmas cookies (this year cooked by Guest Chef Uncle Brent).  It was a super fun day.  I am looking forward to next year's Christmas being less of a reunion than it normally is, as we are expecting and hoping that the parties traveling from Iowa and Texas decrease and the parties coming from within the state of Kansas increase.  Having more of our family closer is always a good thing!  Merry Christmas!

Happy Birthday Clara!

Today Clara turned two. It seems much longer than two years that Clara has been a part of our lives, but it also has passed in a blink of an eye. Clara is growing and learning all the time. She speaks very well and has a lot to say. She has strong likes and dislikes and is very strong-willed. She likes picking out which hair bows she will wear each day and has a keen fashion sense and is overall very girly and likes pretty things, babies, and purses a lot, though she also really likes cars and trucks. She still does not really like food that much, though she is doing really well weight-wise and recently hit twenty pounds, finally. She is in the third percentile in both height and weight, which is a big improvement for her and is the first time she has been above the first percentile in quite some time.

We don't do really big parties after one (well until they are old enough to ask for them. Then we will probably start them again), but we still do have a party so this afternoon our family as well as Julie, Andrew, and Benjamin and Grandma Peg and Grandpa Ron came over.

I try to have each kid's favorite foods on their birthday. With Clara that's pretty hard because her favorite food is probably ice chips. But she does like carbs a lot so we had rolls and mandarin oranges for lunch and then pizza for dinner. Because she is lactose intolerant, to her pizza means breaksticks, which she likes but doesn't love. But we also let her have some pop with ice chips and eat her beverage with a spoon and she really loves all those things, so even though she doesn't exactly have a favorite food, she liked her dinner a lot.

After dinner, we did presents, which made her very happy. She really seemed excited about most of what she got (possible exception is the blanket I made her, because blankets are a step up from clothes when it comes to gifts, but I think she'll enjoy it when she uses it) and kept saying "Oh Wow". Joshua was totally happy to help her out with the gifts. After we opened gifts, we took a brief break in festivities for Clara to talk to Aunt Josie on the phone. She isn't quite able to have a real conversation on the phone yet, but I think she's getting closer.

After phone time, it was time for cake. Clara likes cake, but Joshua loves cake so Joshua had spent all day talking how good the cake was so Clara was pretty psyched for it since she trusts Joshua on stuff like that. But she was a little confused. I made cupcakes for everyone, but she had a special purse cake that Jason made for her. But she didn't realize it was a cake so she was a little confused.

But she figured it out and gave herself a round of applause when people sang happy birthday to her. She enjoyed her cake, though being Clara she is very self-regulating and told me she was done with it after several bites. She was happy to share with Joshua, though, who thought this whole "one cupcake" thing we have going on in our family is for the birds.

She had a really happy birthday and I was a little sad to say goodbye to her baby years, but we were all happy to celebrate with our sweet big girl who we all love so much.

Happy Third Birthday Joshua!

Today Joshua turned 3. We started the day by decorating his door. Since he is just 3 and easily scared, I didn't get too carried away with it, but I think that's a fun tradition that can grow with the child, and Joshua really enjoyed it, especially the balloons.

The fun continued with outside time and then a lunch of grilled cheese, fries, a pickle, and a root beer float.

There was a brief interlude in birthday activities and Jason took Joshua to get a haircut (which I am sure wasn't the best time ever, but he's luckier than Hannah. On her birthday, I took her to get a flu shot, so it's totally better than that) and then he took a nap. But after nap, Grandma and Grandpa came to celebrate with us and the kids had Angry Bird snacks.

Next we did presents, followed by a dinner of pizza. I normally do not give him soda and when he asks for "bubbly" he normally gets carbonated water with a bit of juice. But tonight he got root beer (non-caffeinated of course), which he loved. He was really excited by all his presents, but his immediate favorite may have been the broom. I really debated whether that would be worth getting, but I am glad I did since even if he doesn't play with it ever again, we probably got enough enjoyment out of it tonight to make it worth it since it was not exactly a high dollar item.

After dinner there was some brief time on the deck to look at the moon with Grandma and Grandpa. The moon and stars are extremely exciting in our family, so this was definitely something he enjoyed. So much so he wasn't really ready to look away from the moon to take a picture.

Finally, it was time for cake. Jason did a great job on the cake (Well I also did a good job, which is why it tasted good. But Jason does anything artistic and that includes sculpting angry birds out of fondant and writing on cakes) and it was super cute.

Next year we might do cake earlier in the day. Joshua LOVES cake. Like loves it. He started asking when he could have cake before breakfast. And there is really nowhere to store it he can't see. He notices it in the microwave and oven, which were my previous places when he was younger. Plus I often need those things which requires moving the cake. We could put it in the fridge, but that tends to dry cake out. So I will probably try to have cake at lunch time next year unless it suddenly stops being his favorite food or something. He can barely think of anything but cake if there is cake in the house.

But finally it was cake time and he got to blow out his candle.

And enjoy. He chose to eat an angry bird as well as have a slice of cake.

It was a fun day that will hopefully be the start to a fun year with a preschooler in the house.

Resting with Grandpa

Mom and Ron watched the kids today, as they do almost every Wednesday.  The kids stayed later than normal today and had dinner there, so it was close to bed time when I went to pick them up.  While Joshua and Clara had plenty of energy, Hannah was quite tired but was not yet ready to fall asleep.  Ron was holding her, and Hannah wanted nothing more than to rest on her Grandpa's chest while the rest of us chatted and casually watched the baseball game on TV.  Here the sleepy little baby looks up at me while contentedly spending her time with one of her favorite people in the world.

Meeting Benjamin

Today we went to Ron and Peg's for a family gathering. While there, we had the opportunity to meet sweet baby Benjamin, who is our very first nephew/cousin on either side and just 10 days old. Joanna is also in town right now (not coincidentally) so we also got to hang out with her and see everyone else as well. We weren't able to stay a super long time, but it was nice to see everyone and meet our newest family member.

Celebrating Family and Independence

Meghan and I have gone to the Olathe 4th of July fireworks show for several years now.  Last year was Julie and Andrew's first year in Olathe, so we invited them.  This year Mom and Ron were available (and as a bonus it is Ron's birthday today!), so we invited them to come over as well.  Everyone came over mid-afternoon, and we had time to hang out and enjoy some great food that Meghan made for us.  We even had some fun red, white, and blue drinks which leveraged specific gravity of various liquids (I was the only one who seemed to enjoy thinking about it in those terms) to create a cool-looking drink. The kids were wearing their festive gear, as you can see.  Also, Julie humorously and accurately recreated a sad Hannah face.  As darkness fell, we left for the mall.  We got a decent parking spot and set up shop.  Meghan and I did some unofficial car seat inspecting (Baby Fouts' arrival is imminent) and we all then watched the show.  Joshua liked it quite a bit.  Clara had some trepidation at first, but by the end she had warmed up to the idea and was happily shouting "Boom!  Boom!" and making explosion motions with her hands.  (Notice a certain someone's trademark pigtail silhouette in the last picture.) Hannah watched with no fear, but if the pattern holds, next year will be her turn to request a retreat to the car.  It was a fun day, and it was great that a lot of our family could be together for it.