Christmas Fun

We made gingerbread houses last night! I bought WAY too much candy!!

Eric with his masterpiece.

He kept making architectural comments the whole time, so funny.

We helped Kate put on the frosting and then she decorated it with candy all by herself, she did great! And of course ate as much as she put on probably...

Sunday morning the girls spent some time at the piano, Whitney LOVES it and Katelyn sang us a medley of Christmas songs with her accompaniment. They were so cute and we took a long video that wouldn't load on here, too bad.

I love their blurry hands, moving so fast!

Mary bought these beautiful dresses for the girls! They would not pose for a picture though.

So we got a family one kneeling by our tree using the timer. Yay for Christmas clothes!

In trouble

Yesterday I was doing dishes and Katelyn came down the stairs saying "Merry Christmas" and carrying a wrapped up blanket. She gave me my "present" which she said was oranges, and I was appropriately excited and ate some delicious oranges. I thanked her and turned back to my dishes. A couple of minutes later I heard her little voice saying "please mom, please can you go to sleep?" (side note: this is one of her favorite things to do lately, mostly to Eric. :) She tucks him in and tells him a story, sings him a song, kisses him goodnight and turns off the light and leaves. It's hilarious. One day after a minute in the dark he was like "kate can I come out?" and she said "in a half an hour!") Anyway, back to the story, I said "sorry honey, I have to finish my chores before I can play." And she said "well, I guess I'm going to have to take away your oranges" I was like "what?" and she said "I'm very sorry." At this point I was on the verge of busting up laughing, and then she said "you can have them back after you go to sleep." and picked up the "oranges" from off the counter. I was just dying! She was punishing me! SO funny. I laughed for a couple of minutes and hugged her and said I would work for five more minutes and then play. We ended up playing "Christmas Eve" several times, she'd put me to bed and wake me up for Christmas and I would go down and open my oranges present. Fun fun.

Also yesterday Katelyn asked me what I wanted for Christmas and I said "a kiss from Katelyn." She said "no, that's not a good idea, they don't sell kisses at Wal-Mart!"
Apparently Wal-Mart has everything you could ever want for Christmas. She ended up telling me I wanted a Thomas. Of course. :)

The Christmas Season

What a wonderful Christmas season we are having!!! Katelyn "gets it" this year and we've had so much fun with our advent calendars, Christmas stories, nativity sets, and Christmas songs! Here she is decorating our tree.
Here she is decorating Whitney. We can't wait to dress up and act out the Christmas story!

Some pictures of our decorations, mostly for my mom and Allison's benefit. :)

After much thought I decided to hang our stockings here since we don't have a fireplace. I like it.

Katelyn has been so cute playing with the nativity sets we have, there are two that are kid-proof. I found this the other day, we had built this house for her cars earlier but when she was taking a nap I found it had been turned into the stable.

This shepherd and wise man were outside, I think they were riding a "camel" and a "donkey".

Katelyn keeps telling me that I'm the angel and Eric's Joseph, and a shepherd and a wise man. She's Mary and Whitney's the baby Jesus. She spent a whole day calling Whitney "he" and "him" and trying to wrap her up and put her "in the manger". Obviously Whitney got a little tired of it, and now Kate uses dolls, animals or cars for the baby Jesus. Oh and the other day Eric was getting on Katelyn's pajamas and I was feeding Whitney in the family room. They came down and Eric started arranging pillows and blankets in a certain way, and Kate was obviously excited about it. I just waited to see what would happen, and after a minute Katelyn said "okay dad, now can you put me in the manger??" and he laid her in the "manger " he had just made. So funny.

Also, our ward had a nativity scene at the ward party, and my friend Melanie and her husband and baby boy were the holy family, it was so cute. A lady sang O Holy Night in the background, and Katelyn LOVED it. They had an angel come to shepherds, and wise men came, and as I pointed out each thing Katelyn kept smiling and just watching carefully- we had told the story many times and she loved seeing it in person! It was so cute and almost made me cry. I'm so happy that she loves the story of the Christ child better than any Santa story or anything. Although she is excited about Santa. :)
We had a few inches of snow last weekend, so we busted out the present Whitney's giving to Katelyn and let her try it out. :) Eric was so excited, I couldn't say no. :) Here's cute Whitney getting a little ride from dad inside.

And here's katelyn's first sled experience! She liked it until she fell off the first time. Then she just wanted to run around and make "trails".

We are also loving making and taking treats to our friends (someday when our kids will sing with us we'll carol-- Kate knows like 10 Christmas songs but she refuses to perform!) listening to Christmas music, planning secret presents, and putting christmas lights on our HOUSE! So fun.

#1 Finally!

The #1 Awesome thing about our trip to Hawaii was:

Family

We were so happy to be together, with All of Eric's family and also as our own little family, for 8 days straight! Eric is my best friend and we had so much fun together! It was great to relax and laugh a lot and just be with him. He got tons of quality time with Kate and Whitney too. The girls and I missed him when we got home and he had to go back to work!
It was also fun to watch Katelyn become totally comfortable with everyone and run around and play and make everyone laugh. Whitney also delighted everyone with her smiles, but she's still a mama's girl. It was fun to chat with Kurtis and Elizabeth by the pool and go to dinner with everyone every night. Here we are in Lahaina, the closest town to our hotel.

ah, beautiful Hawaii

Here's the nice family picture we had taken at the hotel. We couldn't do one out on the beach because of Katelyn :)

the girls with their Murray grandparents!

Katelyn getting a ride

Grandma came on some adventures with us!

Just another picture Mary took of our family.

Eric and Katelyn are so funny together. They are like siblings or something- they can have so much fun but they also know just how to bug each other the most! Here they are making faces at each other at dinner one night. :) I love it that Eric helps me so much and is such a fun, crazy dad.

Well, that was our trip, mostly! We loved it.

#2!

#2 is the GORGEOUS weather!!

It rained the first and last day we were there. The rest of the time it was between 70 and 85 degrees 24 hours a day and sunny and beautiful and HEAVENLY!! I absolutely love being warm: early morning, late at night, middle of the day, all beautiful perfect weather... oh I miss it :)
The picture below illustrates my point: it's a cute picture, but notice that it's night time and look what Whitney's wearing!

Every morning we would watch the sun rise over the mountain out on our balcony (since the girls were on Utah time :)) It was lovely.

I caught this awesome picture on our last day. It had been rainy but the clouds made for an amazing sunset!

I didn't know what other pictures to use for this, but really, this was our #2! We had marathon sunscreen application sessions every day and we still got GREAT tans. I love being tan! I also got to run a few mornings in the beautiful weather. And I really just adore the free feeling of walking outside barefoot with no coat. Something I can't do at least 6 months out of the year here in Utah. Sad. :)

Top Ten Reasons Why Our Vacation In Maui Was AWESOME #3

#3 is.....The Food!!!

First of all, we got an amazing breakfast at the hotel every morning. Waffles, French toast, tropical fruit, bagels, sausage, bacon, an egg chef making custom omlets!, juice, smoothies, cinnamon rolls and cereal for Katelyn, it was breakfast heaven. I LOVE love a good breakfast, but I pretty much can't handle cooking more than once a day, so we eat cereal. We stuffed ourselves every morning in Maui!! Here's the proof, one morning we asked
katelyn if she wanted any thing else to eat and she said " No, I'm full" and did this to prove it!



We started giving Whitney bread crumbs at breakfast and she loved them. Here she is eating bread and being cute. It was wonderful to eat 50 yards from the ocean under palm trees.

We also enjoyed some summer treats while we were there:

I've already written about the Luau and Thanksgiving Dinner, here's Eric with his meat again.

The rest of our meals were awesome too, and we had GREAT pineapple smoothies... However the real reason the food is making #3 on our countdown is that I did not have to cook for a whole week!!! :)

#4

So, I should have done a slideshow for this one, because we have so many pictures of #4...

The Pools!!!

Since Katelyn was afraid of the ocean, we spent hours every day playing in the 4 pools at our hotel. Luckily they were lots of fun and gorgeous. There were several waterfalls, an awesome and a little tiny waterslide, basketball and volleyball areas, and a cave thing where you go under a waterfall and can explore. And you could see the beach like 10 yards away over some bushes, so it still felt tropical. :)

Here's a picture I love!

First I'll show you the pools. This is the one we were at most of the time.
You can see the white waterslide up above this one.

The 4th pool we didn't really go to.

Here's Eric and Kate coming out of the kiddie slide.

Okay now some beach pictures to prove we were really in Hawaii! These are from the first day, before Katelyn's "rogue wave" incident.

Then the last day I wanted a couple more pictures of Whitney on the beach:

Katelyn LOVED the water and spent hours "swimming" around with Eric,

and Kurtis

and me a little bit. And Elizabeth, but I don't have a picture of that.
Katelyn developed a new way to say cheese for pictures, while making this face:

And her absolute favorite things to do were "clean the floor" around the pool by spreading water everywhere, and give people "baths". Here's Kurtis being made to lean back so she could wash his hair. :)

After she washed his hair she gave him a kiss on the forehead!

She spent a little time in her version of sunbathing.

The second day I decided to try to put Whitney in the pool, even though it was pretty cold when you first got in and I didn't think she'd like it. Well she screamed for about 30 seconds and then she LOVED it!

The second day she kind of yelped when I first put her in, but every day after that she didn't even care, she just loved the water and wanted to go in! So cute and fun. She was such a happy little cutie.

Here she is with Aunt Elizabeth, who she really liked. The second day when we went to church, Mary was holding Whitney and she kept reaching for Elizabeth! Cute.

Wow, so much fun in the sun.