Happy New Year!!

I can't believe another year has come and gone!  2011 was a really great year for us and I hope 2012 is just as good or better.  Having a baby is a big event and I can't imagine our lives now without Kate.  We were blessed in so many ways.
Its always a little sad to me though to see another year over.  I'm reminded how quickly time is passing.  Cohen will be turning 4 next month and Kate is almost 7 months.  I wish things would slow down a bit.  This is why one of my New Year's resolutions is to slow down and enjoy life more, to have "more fun!"  I'm a tad bit on the OCD side and I tend to get caught up in things being just right or thinking I need to be doing one thing when really I need to sit down and enjoy my kids and even myself!  We'll see how this goes.  I have finally managed to get all the Christmas decorations put away, which is also sad to do :(  I love Christmas and the coziness that comes with it.  I also enjoy seeing so many family members so we are just going to have to make sure we do some "fun" things to make January a little more exciting.  It tends to have a bad reputation in my mind of being cold and depressing.  Maybe I can change that this year.  I'm going to plan some fun "date nights" for me and Kelly and also some fun things for me and the girls.  I have good intentions anyway!!  Planning Cohen's birthday is on the agenda too.  It will be here soon.  I would love to have a snow like we did last year.
I also want to become more organized in all parts of my life.  That's the OCD in me as well but I think it will help me to relax and be more at ease.  Now its time to start living all this out and see how it goes!  Happy New Year to everyone who reads this, and I hope you and your family are blessed in this new year!!
Here is the one picture I took on New Year's Eve before we went to our party.  Cohen and Kelly making 2012 with their fingers!

Kate's "Stare-y" Face

A few days ago Cohen had a cute funny that I have to blog about because this blog is almost like my journal.  We have really been enjoying ourselves while being out on Christmas break.  Cohen was playing with Kate while Kate was sitting in my lap.  I was working on the computer real quick and I wasn't paying too much attention to what Cohen was doing other than I knew it was some sort of Peek-a-boo game where she would go behind my chair and come up on each side to make Kate smile or laugh.  After a few minutes of this Cohen said to me, "Mama, save me from Kate."  I laughed at her and asked why such a big girl like her would need to be saved from a baby like Kate.  She was so much bigger than Kate was.  She in turn replied, "because I don't like her "stare-y" face".  I got a big kick out of this, and Cohen has told me this before when she would be playing with Kate.  I decided to play into this and told her I was going to sit Kate in her Bumbo and as soon as she made her "stare-y" face to tell me so I could take a picture of it.  I did, and then I asked Cohen to do her best "stare-y" face impersonation for me, which she did...this is what I got...

Kate's scary Stare-y face

Cohen showing me what Kate's face looked like when she stared

and again...

 On another note, Cohen left shortly after all this for her very first sleepover with a friend.  She has stayed overnight with family and her cousin Savannah but never with a friend.  She was SO excited to be going to Josie's house.  It was all I heard about all day and it really was a great tool to use to get things cleaned up!  I also have heard about how much fun she had since she's been back.  Here she is leaving to go, and its real funny after I looked at this picture and saw that she was so excited that she forgot to button her pants back up.  My crazy girl!

Christmas Day!

What an exciting Christmas we had.  Not only was my Christmas exciting with the car, but the girls had a great Christmas as well.  I have a feeling that its going to take a while to get our house back in order.  Our living room was covered in stuff for everyone.
Cohen got up around 7:30 and just could not believe it was Christmas because there was no snow outside.  I think between Christmas movies and books she now thinks that it has to snow to be Christmas.  My mama stays with us on Christmas Eve so she was telling "Bebe" that she didn't know if Santa had come or not.  We had to run catch her before she ran in the living room so Kelly could get the video camera ready and I could attempt to snap a picture.  She just stared when she walked into the living room, and then came over to immediately investigate her pile and Kate's too. Her first thing was to look at her stocking.  She must be like me, and I love to pull out things from a stocking!  Kate on the other hand was snoozing away and didn't wake up until much later.
After enjoying our Christmas morning and breakfast, we had to get ready to head to church.  After church, we went to Sug and Pop's house for lunch and to open presents.  It was like Santa all over again!  We came home for a brief period of time, Cohen fell asleep from being so tired, and then we headed out the door to Suzy's house for Christmas with my Daddy's side of the family.  I always love this family time and even though the family continues to grow, we have the best time with each other.  We finished our Christmas day by going to my mom's to open gifts with her, my sister, and my nephews.  Cohen was thrilled over her new dress up clothes from Auntie P and a Barbie house from Bebe!!  I think I'll have a turn with that house, I always wanted the dream house as a little girl :)
It was such a great Christmas for all of us and I can't thank everyone enough for everything.  Now if I only had someone I could get to come clean my house and put up decorations.  I hate taking it all down :(

Santa came!!

Taking it all in

Trying on her new dress-up dress and jewels

Opening presents at Sug & Pop's...the crown is still on :)

Watching the paper fly

Little baby went right to sleep on Uncle Davis

More dress-up from Auntie P, wearing her new jammies from Jessica

Tiny TOMS from Mommy & Daddy (SWOON)

Best Christmas Present EVER!!!!!

This is what I woke up to on Christmas morning!!!  Hubby really surprised me on this one.  We got up to see Cohen with her Santa stuff (pictures are coming soon), and then we opened our stockings to each other.  I went through fun goodies and there was one wrapped box which I saved for last since it was the only thing wrapped.  It was a small Belk's box with a jewelry box inside.  I thought I was going to open some kind of jewelry but inside was a key!  We let the garage door up and there sat this Explorer!  I was beyond excited.  Ever since we had Kate in June we found out real quick that we were going to need something with more room if we wanted to ever carry more than us four.  We just recently began to seriously talk about cars and the new Explorers were at the top of my list.  A big thank you to our neighbor Richie for not only helping Kelly throughout the buying process but also for delivering my present in the middle of the night :)  Talk about good friends and neighbors!  I know now why Kelly wouldn't go outside with me on Christmas Eve night to sit and look up at the stars.  I think he sent a text saying we were in bed right as I came in the room asking to go outside and enjoy the stars.  Kelly said "of all nights to want to do something like that!"  He mumbled an excuse of having a sore back and I gave up :)  Had no idea what he was up to.  What a sweet Santa I have!

Christmas Eve!

On Christmas Eve we had a pretty relaxing day.  We were home all afternoon getting last minute things ready for Christmas.  I had several things to wrap and we had to do a big playroom cleaning to get ready for what Santa might bring.  I am a huge organizer and the craziness of Christmas overwhelms me slightly! It was nice to have some calm before the storm though.
At 5:00 we went outside to leave some of our reindeer food before heading to church for the Christmas Eve service, which I always love.  Its always so cozy and really helps start the holiday.  It also reminds us of why we celebrating this season.  Its so easy to get caught up in all the madness and lose sight of what its really all about, our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ!  How awesome that he came to us as a precious baby on that night so many years ago.
After the service we headed to Sug and Pop's house for one of the most delicious meals!  Sug always goes above and beyond on Christmas Eve and we look forward to it every year!  Aunt Vicki came up to join us and we had such a fun time.  A funny story, Cohen knows exactly where to look for all of Sug's Christmas goodies.  At one point, we heard a chewing sound coming from inside the kitchen closet adn when we peeked inside there sat Cohen with a bucket of buckeyes eating away!  Sneaky little girl!

Caught eating the buckeyes!

This is the container sitting on the stool that she had so carefully gotten down

Guilty face!

Aunt Vicki gave everyone an ornament to open (a tradition we do every year) and every year it is so much fun to see what the ornaments are.  This has helped decorate our tree and each year when we are hanging our ornaments we talk about what year we were given each ornament.  It is such a special gift and I can't even express how much we appreciate the time she puts into picking out a special ornament for each of us every year.  Especially now that our families all keeping growing!
Cohen unwrapped the "big" book (The Night Before Christmas) and Pop read the story to everyone, another Christmas Eve tradition.  After the story we had to pack up and head back home to get our cookies ready for Santa and put out more reindeer food.  We had to do some major singing on the way to keep Cohen awake!  We got home and she picked out just the right cookies for Santa and we tossed the last of our reindeer food outside.  It was straight to bed after that and I think she was asleep in record time.  We only forgot one thing, and that was to tell Emma our Elf goodbye.  Since it was Christmas Eve she would be heading back to the North Pole with Santa.  Cohen was sad thinking about it, she had really loved having Emma.  It was the first thing she asked about each morning when she woke up.  And crazy me gets sentimental about this stuff and sad when I think it will be a whole year before we do it again!  I'm such a softie!

Feeding the reindeer

sweet girl

Kate opening her first ornament from Aunt Vicki.  She loved the tissue paper

Reading "The Night Before Christmas" 

Making sure Santa gets the right cookies

Christmas Eve Eve at Nana's

Friday we started our family Christmas celebrations by going to Athens to celebrate with Nana and the rest of the family.  This is a get together we always look forward to.  Nana always has her house so pretty at Christmas and its always so much fun to be with everyone.  I think this is one time where the entire family is there.  We usually do a big group picture but we forgot to do it this year :( Anyway, we had a blast and the girls were so excited to open a present!  The first of MANY!   Cohen and I had made more oreo ball snowmen to take so she was very excited to show those off and more excited to eat them.  Her and her sweet tooth. What a great way to start our Christmas weekend!

First Christmas!

Cohen enjoyed coloring with her cousin Matt

She loves Oreo balls...

Precious girl taking it all in

Our Week of Christmas Fun

Christmas is almost here and we have been non-stop this week!  I wish we had a few extra days to just be home and enjoy everything.  Tonight was the one night this week when we didn't have a thing planned and it has been so nice.  I have spent some afternoons wrapping and baking with Cohen since school has been out.  We started our week on Sunday with a family Christmas dinner with my mom's side of the family.  That side of our family is very large and we always get together at Christmas.  I look forward to it each year because a lot of these family members I don't get to see much at all.  We had a great time seeing everyone and the food was delicious! (as always).  I snapped a few pictures of the girls in their Christmas dresses. They both have been wearing Christmas outfits constantly so we can get our wear out of them!  I love Christmas outfits so I'm going to be sad to see the holidays end.

Christmas cuties!

Cohen Loves her baby sister!!

First Christmas

Sweet girl

Monday was our last day of school.  We had a Christmas party and everything went very smoothly.  I was so excited to be out so we could enjoy being at home doing fun Christmas things.  Cohen has been so excited about everything this year.  She has helped me wrap presents, and I even let her wrap her gift to Sug "almost" entirely by herself.  She had to have a little help but not much.  She is excellent in helping me pick out the bows and put them on the boxes and also placing everything under the tree.  I always loved wrapping with my mama so I know how much she enjoys it.  We also have FINALLY did some Christmas baking.  I have been looking forward to this and so has Cohen.  I absolutely love Christmas cookies so yesterday we got to make them. Cohen enjoyed using the cookie press and her favorite part was adding the sprinkles (other than eating them of course!) 

Wrapping her present to Sug

Carefully choosing bows for our presents

Ta-Da!

My little baking helper

SPRINKLES! (I love her face looking at them!)

*LOVE* and see my sweet baby peeking out back there :)

Sunday I made some "melting" snowmen balls for Sug's birthday party.  I thought these turned out pretty cute.  They were peanut butter so we have gobbled them up this week.  We will be making more of these!

Last night we continued our Christmas fun with our neighbors.  We had our Christmas party and did a Polar Express theme for the kids.  They each wore their pajamas and were proud to show them off.  I think they lost interest in the movie pretty quick with everything else going on but had fun which is all that counts.  We are so lucky to have such fun neighbors and we always look forward to our get togethers.  We snapped a quick picture before we ate and the kids scattered :)

I can't believe its only a few days until Christmas.  I know there will be lots to blog about real soon with all the other Christmas get togethers.  We start it all tomorrow. I did want to post one more picture that we took of Kate playing in the lights.  I have got to take some time to do Christmas pictures of her since it is her first Christmas and she is 6 months old!  You would think I would be on top of it but not so much, shame on me!  Thank goodness for snapshots!!  Merry Christmas!