Christmas Lights Around Town

For the past few years, we have made it a tradition to go up to Gigi and Papa's house, have dinner, get in the car, and drive around and look at Christmas lights. This year, we continued the tradition last Saturday night. Gigi and Papa are both pretty camera shy but we did get some cute pics of the girls.

A couple pictures of our yummy pizza dinner.


I love this picture of Daddy and Charlie with Gigi's reading glasses on. Look at how big her eyes look. Just precious!

We bundled the girls up in hats, scarves, and blankets so that they could have their windows down while we drove through the neighborhoods. They loved every minute.

Teddy Bear Christmas Sing

Last Friday was Teddy Bear School's annual Christmas Sing. This was Charlie's first and last one (probably) and definitely Ryan's last so it was very special. They sang their little hearts out.

We were in the very back of the room so it was hard to get a close up of Ryan because she was in the back row.

But... since Charlie was in the front row, I got to be "one of those parents" that would sneak right up to the front to snap a photo! Hee-hee!

The best part for the kids is that EVERY parent brings a dozen cookies to share. I swear, it's better than Halloween! All those holiday cookies to choose from, divine!


An attempt at a photo without a cookie in the mouth.

And a family photo!! Our last big event at Teddy Bear School.
Both the girls will most likely be attending McGaugh full-time next year! It makes us sad, we love this school so much!

Baby Wyatt's First Birthday

Charlie and I had a great time at Wyatt's first birthday party. Ryan was home sick and Steve stayed to take care of her. Erin had thought of all the perfect details for the cowboy themed party. I mean, my goodness, just take a look at that cake... it's perfection!!

Cowboy Wyatt thoroughly enjoying his first bites of cake.


Charlie made fast friends with sisters, Emma and Grace. They are almost exactly the same ages as Ryan and Charlie.

Celeste, Claudia, and Dana pose for a cozy pic.

Megan Lieb and her oldest, Thomas. I know you can't tell here but the boys and girls were pretty evenly matched at this party. It was cute to see so many around the same age.

Carson and Michelle working on a craft. All the kids were big fans of the glue!
My little Char-Char . You can't tell but she just got her balloon from the "clown." There wasn't really a clown but all the kids kept calling one of the uncles, Paul, a clown because he was the one filling up the ballooons and had a beard and a cowboy hat on. In the mind of toddler, add those three things together and you get a clown!

Charlie was very "star struck" by the clown! LOL

Happy Birthday Wyatt!

Midweek Family Field Trip

As the girls are starting to get older and naps are becoming non-existent, Steve and I are realizing that we have to come up with more creative ways to fill our afternoons. If all the girls do during the day is go to preschool and then home to play around the house, they get "cabin fever" by late afternoon/early evening. Ironically, this is the same time of day that Steve goes to bed. This cabin fever turns into the "crazies" in a blink of an eye. So the math ends up like this- one parent with two overly bored toddlers and one daddy trying to sleep who can't because of the literal bouncing off the walls! So the solution has to be to tire them out in the afternoons so that the evenings are a little less daunting. It's hard though... Steve and I both work and are exhausted too. We'd love to just let them play at home so we can rest or get chores done around the house but we have to suck it up more often until dance class (for Charlie) and softball (for Ryan) starts up after the new year.
One of last week's afternoon field trips was to the Santa Ana Zoo.

I love this picture. If I didn't already have the whole Christmas card photo picked out, this would have been a cute choice! It took Charlie a while to realize these animals weren't real before we could convince her to climb aboard!

Ryan always likes to look at the lemurs when we go to the zoo.
She sings and dances from Madagascar and hopes they'll join in...
"I like to move it, move it! I like to move it, move it!"

Charlie spent most of her time on daddy's shoulders. She still wasn't quite sure of the whole fence thing between the animals and her!

Ryan posing to show Charlie that it is okay to get on top of the stone animals in the play area.
Can you believe she is almost 5 years old? What a big girl!

By this point, Charlie was ready for a horsie ride. She was saying, "Getty up Lizard, Getty up!"