Christmas Eve 2010

This year we stayed in town for Christmas and as per tradition, headed to mass on Christmas Eve before dinner. We got there 45 minutes early and barely got enough seats!
Quick family photo before mass:

It has always been my family's tradition to open up our immediate family gifts on Christmas Eve. After church and dinner, we got right to it!
Not before trying to get a cute sister pic in with their sweet dresses.

Taylor showing off her pretty dress:

Opening up a fun present from Grandma. The Night Before Christmas with Grandma's voice reading it to her! This was a favorite for weeks after Christmas.

Pretty pretty dress from Auntie Katrina. Can't wait for summertime so she can wear it, so excited!

Both Cassie and Taylor got Longhorn piggy banks with their names on them from Kolin and Alexis. Fun! Taylor now loves putting change in both of their piggy banks. She thinks the change in Al's pocket every day is "her" money and she splits it between her and Cassie's banks. So funny.

Pretty pumped about the bank!

Big present from mommy, daddy, grandma and grandpa! Perfect size too, fits great in our family room without taking up a ton of space!

Stay tuned for Christmas-day pictures!

Cassidy's First Haircut!

It was inevitable. Our baby girl Cassidy was going to have her first haircut before she even started crawling. Her mane had become out of control and while cute, it was getting in her face way too much. When Taylor's hair was getting to this stage, she was a toddler and it was a lot easier to put into pigtails. It's a little harder with a 7 month old. Especially to do it every day.

Fortunately for us, Cassie's godparents (Libby and Lincoln) came to the rescue and made an appointment for her while they were in town for Christmas. Of course her first haircut could not be at any old kid's hair place so Libby made an appointment at her favorite salon, Salon Lili. It was fabulous. :)



Before-shot of Libby and Cassie, look at that mess of hair!

During the haircut. I was impressed with both Cassie and the stylist. I can't imagine how difficult it was to get a decent trim with a wiggling baby. Cassie seemed content for most of it, then got fussy towards the end and wanted to be done.

Finished product! Overall experience was really great!
I was a little sad that her messy locks were gone, but it looked SO much better and when it started growing out again, it was more even.

Big BLUE eyes:

Cassie's other fans, Lincoln and TJ, came along for the show:

Thank you Libby and Lincoln for a wonderful first haircut! It was great to see her eyes again! :)

Macy's 8th Floor

Short post today, just want to document another fun Christmastime tradition.

Every year, the Macy's downtown has a fun display on their 8th floor. This has been a tradition for years, back when it used to be Dayton's and before then..
This year the theme was Elf Workshop. This was very fitting for Taylor since we had just introduced our Elf on a Shelf to her this year. At the end we got to see Santa and get Taylor and Cassie's pictures taken! I don't have a picture of that here..unfortunately I would need to scan what we had taken and we don't have a scanner! Maybe an idea for next Christmas?? :)

Taylor and Al walking down the corridor:


Cute opening picture before we entered:

Singing Christmas trees. Taylor was not a big fan of these. Honestly, I don't blame her, they were a little creepy!

An elf bakery!

Elf workshop. All the characters were animatronic so it gave every little scene some life.

It was a great outing and one that we will definitely repeat in the future. It's free and the only item we paid for were the pictures of Santa. He was a great Santa too! Cassie was in awe and Taylor even told him what she wanted. A "hard" Buzz Lightyear doll. :)

Miscellaneous December

Some fun miscellaneous pictures of the girls from December.

Cassie is growing like a weed and such a happy baby. She will definitely be a handful though. VERY curious and short attention span (with most items). She likes to check out the next thing the second she gets her hands on the first. I have a feeling she will be keep us and her big sister busy! I honestly have found myself treating her like a rabid dog when I see her bee-lining to something I don't want her to get into, I will quickly toss another toy somewhere on the floor and her attention will be temporarily diverted. Like throwing a raw steak at an attack dog! LOL. She is a fast one!

Taylor is still SO sweet with her little sister and loves to "hold" her and give her lots of hugs and kisses. We couldn't be more proud of our sweetTay and how she has embraced the big sister role.

Cuddle time on the couch:

Taylor is also growing into an amazing little girl. She is so mature at times and says the sweetest things. One of her favorite responses if we ask her to do something is, "Oh, sure." Very adult-like. At first I wondered where she picked that up, but soon realized that we both say that a lot. ;)
Some things that Taylor is into right now: She likes to have dance parties and most recently, likes to have mock-rave parties with daddy. This involves listening to some DJ music and turning off the lights in the family room and jumping around with flashlights. It's hilarous.
She also loves to play "going to work" and "meetings". For obvious reasons this is not our favorite game, but we humor her "magical thinking" since it seems so fun to her. She will find out later on that they are not what they are cracked up to be!

Taylor cheesin' it up after coloring some thank-you card pictures.

Sister bath! This is a new favorite with Taylor. Cassidy is now big enough to sit up by herself pretty well, but it's still a little challenge bathing her in the big tub. She loves the water though so that's good!

Taylor likes to get into Cassidy's crib with her and lay by her side. It's the sweetest thing.

Fun times in the crib! This is one of Cassie's classic expressions. I made a face like that when I was a baby, "the hippo face". :)

Sweet baby in her headband. Need a haircut??

More sister-bath fun.

A present from Libby (Cassie's godmother/my BFF). She altered her bridesmaid dress from our wedding 6 years ago and made it into a dress-up gown for Taylor, with a matching shawl! Taylor was in heaven. She has shown a recent interest in our wedding pictures and video and loves seeing all the people she knows in our video. This made her day.

Libby had originally cut the dress short DURING our reception because she was hot. Amazingly enough, she saved every piece and was able to make thick straps and a shawl with the piece that had been cut off 6 years ago. So resourceful!

More holiday fun to come soon!

Christmas Cookies!

Happy February! Seems like a perfect time to post about our busy holiday season, right?

I am going to struggle to stay current the next few months (more than usual I guess) as Al will be in tax season and hogging the computer every night. Guess I need to make the most of our weekend then, right?

So let's travel back in time a couple of months and relive our very busy and very fun holiday season.

One of our favorite annual traditions is making Christmas cookies with my parents and godparents. Every year, my mom and I both make a quadruple batch of cookie dough the night before and then the next day we take over Joan and Bryan's kitchen and set up shop! We have the whole process down and always have a lot of fun.

We had one teeny-tiny kink in the plan this year. Friday evening we got hit with the beginning of a very long snow storm. It was horrible conditions outside and we were expecting 12-18 inches in the first 24 hours. Thankfully J&B only live about 7 miles away so we decided to make the (slow) trek and not let a little snow get in our way of our annual tradition. Besides, what else was I going to do with a quadruple batch of cookie dough?!

The night before Taylor got to help mommy with the dough prep. She loves to help me bake!

Or maybe she just loves to reap the benefits of "cleaning" up.

Get every last bit....

Getting set up the next day after we made it to Joan and Bryan's!

Cassie is ready to go!

We have all the sprinkles ready....(have no idea what Cassie is doing here):

And all the gear...but we're missing something pretty important...

Cookie sheets!!!
Funny story: in all the preparation, mom and I forgot to bring our nice baking sheets over so Joan called some of the neighbors in their cul-de-sac and we were able to scrounge up 4 or 5. Thank goodness! No one was wanting to drive in the weather to pick up some.

Here is a picture of Al and Bryan all bundled up to walk 4 houses away to get some cookie sheets from 2 different neighbors. It was quite the sight.

Our heros!!!

Finally we were able to start. The assembly works well. Mom and I roll out the dough and prepare the sheets with cookies. Then they are ready for decorating. Bryan and Al get pretty creative, sometimes too much so. We have to nudge them to move a little quicker at times. But their cookies are pretty! The decorators are usually dad, Bryan, Taylor and Al, but there is some rotation if someone needs to do some playtime with the toddler, or tend to baby!

Then Joan normally mans the two convection ovens to make sure all the cookies are being tended to. Great group effort! Of course the final product is always delicious.

Stay tuned for more holiday fun, we squeezed in a bunch this year!