The most wonderful time of the year!

Yay for Christmas time! I know, all you Thanksgiving lovers out there are holding out until Friday, but I just can't wait. I love everything about this season (except the lines at Target!). In fact, if you were to ask my husband what my most prized posession is, he would tell you it's my Christmas decorations. I actually started decorating my house last Monday, but we just got our tree last night. The tree is my very favorite thing in the whole world. I love how my house smells, the lights sparkle, the star shines and the whole house seems more complete when our tree is up. Last night at the tree lot Ben said to Julia, "Can you smell the yummy smell? That is pine." This morning I overheard Julia say to Adria, "Do you love the smell? It smells like pie!" Pie, pine, sugar cookies...I love it all!

As we were walking around the tree lot wondering why there were no employees out there (what's up Home Depot?) Ben explained to Julia that the fun part of getting a new tree each year is that we get to hunt for the perfect tree. She looked around for a while and then pointed to one and said, "There Daddy! That's the most perfect tree in the whole world!" Ben held it up and we spun it around and could see it was in fact a very nice tree with no holes or weird angles and since Julia had her mind made up, we got the most perfect tree in the whole world. As was the case last year, all the string on the ground was Adria's favorite part of the tree lot. She even tried to help tie the tree on to the car which is one of my favorite pictures of the whole night.

We continued our tradition of letting the girls buy a new ornament for the tree. They were as excited about the ones from last year as they were about the new ones. This year, Julia got Strawberry Shortcake

Adria picked Mr. Potato Head. So fitting of their personalities.

Hot chocolate face!

So excited about the tree

Christmas trees don't seem to photograph well, but here is the finished product. I really love how our tree looks this year. It feels like the most Christmas-y tree ever!

One last picture

The girls wanted to hang up a stocking for their baby sister. Ben and I both noticed that somehow with Kara's stocking up there, our family feels so much bigger. I love it!

Let's make pie

I want to thank Ben for teaching me how to relax and let my kids just be kids. If it weren't for him, I think when I found this I might have freaked out a little bit. Instead, I got my camera and added some more water. He reminds me that if it isn't hurting anything, I just need to sit back and enjoy the smiles. So I did. Just for the record, they got into the mud during the 60 seconds it took me to water the tree you see in the background there. The girls totally enjoyed themselves for almost an hour before it was too dark to stay outside anymore. Plus, now I have a patio full of mud pies! Win win!

Photography 101

One great thing about a digital camera with an 8GB memory card is that you can pretty much take as many pictures as you want. My kids (and youngest siblings) will never know how to load film into a camera. This pregnancy has been quite exhausting so the other day when Adria was taking a nap and Julia wanted to take pictures with my camera while I was resting on the couch, I didn't really care. She took some pictures of me (totally my best look!) and around the living room and then at some point, I fell asleep. While I slept Julia took pictures of the entire house. In fact, she took 293 pictures. Like I said, that's the great thing about a digital camera! Here are a few shots (I won't subject you to all 293).

Before I fell asleep.

My pantry shelf. Exciting, right? She really did go around the whole house.

Self portrait The toy room. I guess she dumped out all the toys to get pictures of all of them.I love this one!Adria on her way to wake up mommy.

With Love, From Daddy

To our sweet girls, I want you to always remember how much your Daddy loves you. This week he brought you flowers just because. It made you both so happy! Today he spent the whole day taking you fun places. I forgot my camera, but I wanted to write it down so we would remember. First he made you both your favorite breakfast - Adria and Mommy got eggs and toast and Julia got pancakes. Then he took you to the park with your cousins. He let you have Jamba Juice for lunch because you told him you wanted smoothies. Then we went and saw the biggest fountain you'd ever seen in Fountain Hills. It can go up to 560 feet! We walked all the way around the lake and Daddy helped you climb at least 10 trees. Then Daddy bought each of you a beautiful dress on our way home. It was one of the most wonderful days I have ever spent and I know you both loved it too. So remember that Daddy loves his family more than anything.

Just to make you smile

The girls are always saying things that make me smile or laugh out loud. Recently, Julia has started talking back. Like last night when I said she needed to share with her sister. Her response was, "I hate sharing!" I said that families share and that Jesus wouldn't want her to say that. She replied, "I just said 'I love sharing' in Spanish." She uses that all the time. She will tell me no but then say, "It means 'yes' in Spanish."

The girls also love looking at pictures of the baby in my pregnancy book. They talk about Baby Kara all the time. Julia likes to feel her kick. Adria puts her hand on my (huge) tummy for about 3 seconds and then tells me Kara kicked her. Adria also loves to tell me that Kara is hungry for whatever food she doesn't want to eat. This morning it was a banana that had been sat on. Julia brought me some water on Monday. (The girls bring me water all the time because they heard Ben tell me I need to drink more water. They also don't let me lift ANYTHING! They are very good helpers). I started drinking the water Julia had brought when she said, "Is that going to go through the power cord to Kara?" I'm sure she meant the umbilical cord.

Anyway, here is a little video (for Maddi) from Julia's jazz dance class yesterday. They are dancing to "Itsy Bitsy Spider."

Halloween 2010

Our Halloween this year was not too focused on Halloween itself. For some reason since moving to a town with so much family around we have found our Saturdays are crazy busy. In a good way of course! Julia and Adria love to have so many cousins to play with. Adria makes me laugh because whoever we are going to see that day is her "very favorite cousin." Basically, she loves them all. So this Halloween we got to spend the day with my grandparents and Matt and Ali. It was a combined party for their two oldest and my girls loved every minute of it. It was lots of fun to have my grandparents come visit. We got to swim at their hotel, eat out at Barrows (yummy!) and take lots of cute pictures (which I need to get from Grandma!)

The point of all that is to say sorry for not having some amazing Halloween pictures with a cute backdrop, etc. By the time we got home, ate dinner and got the girls into their costumes it was totally dark outside and Ben and I were exhausted!! We went to our ward's trunk or treat for about 45 minutes and called it good. It's not like my kids needed the sugar or realized they were missing out. What we all needed was bedtime! I'm such a boring mom! But they really did enjoy themselves. Adria knew how to work the crowd at the trunk or treat. If they told her how cute she was or asked her about her costume, she would respond by asking for extra candy. The people thought that was adorable and of course gave the girls extra candy. If people weren't looking, Adria would try to empty their whole bowl. I didn't allow the bowl-emptying, but I didn't have the heart to stop her from using her charm to get more treats. About 2/3 of the way around, Adria looked in her bucket and decided it was enough. She sat down and refused to walk any further, she just wanted to eat the spoils! Well, here are the pictures I did take of my adorable little munchkins.