Florida baby!

We are here in warm sunny Florida and having a great time.

Day 1: wake up 3:30am, get a to airport and had a pretty smooth flight. Piper was an angel sitting in her car seat. Reagan on the other hand was miss fidgety pants and didn't want to sit still for anything. We landed and the girls got to the house, Piper stripped her clothes off and went straight for the pool while Reagan went straight for her high chair to eat. We took it easy and napped, enjoyed playing in the pool and in the grass. Reagan had fun collecting rocks from the gardens.

Day 2: we went boating and both girls loved it. Reagan hasn't enjoyed wearing a life jacket or being on a boat since she was born but this trip she was laughing and checking things out. She loved watching the birds. No dolphin spotting again (in all the years I've been down here I've only seen them once).

Day 3: coming up...I think our New Year's plans are our tradition, we eat at the Pickled Parrot on Ft. Meyers Beach and then we head to the bars and beach to watch fireworks. This year should be fun, Claire is 21. We have designated Clayton as our driver for the evening. Should be fun!

If I find an internet connection I'll add pictures, I have hundreds from Christmas and just a few from our trip so far. We still have 7 more days of fun to be had.

Christmas

Hi everyone, yes we are done with Christmas and we all had a great few days. It gets hectic but I am one of the crazy ones who loves seeing as many family members as possible because each Christmas we start on Christmas Eve and start running and don't slow down until several days later and then as we take a breath, we hop on a plane and run away to Florida. We don't have it so bad do we?

The girls made it through, they were troopers and even though I don't think they've eaten a decent meal in days they behaved very well. Sure we had a few little incidents here and there but really, Jason and I are so lucky.

I will try my best to get some pictures up and running, we have a busy day of packing and getting things done before we head out very early Monday morning to Florida. I am not sure of the extent of my interent connection down there so I may not get any pictures uploaded until we get home. Just trust that we are having a good time and enjoying playing outside in the pool, yard, beach, park, and yes we are going to Chuck E Cheese too for an early Birthday celebration for a little bug in the family. I hope we can sneak some sleep in there too. I'm not sure I remember what that is.

Christmas with friends

On Saturday Jason and I went over to Heather and Brant's to celebrate Christmas and Amber and Matt being back in town. The girls went to Mom's for the evening so we could have a break (even though they were supposed to come with us).

Amber and Angela

Matt and Annika

Matt and Amber

Aydan and Harley, they had such a blast playing in Aydan's crib, they were hilarious

Rob and Amber

Lisa and Annika

Piper's Christmas Program

Piper had her Christmas Program on Friday morning. It was just adorable all the cute little kids up there singing and doing their little hand gestures. Piper did pretty good, she was shy as usual but did do a little singing as well as most of the hand gestures. She also did a lot of fiddling with her dress and pulling her hair over her face.

Konnor brought her a Christmas gift, she was so shy and in shock that she wouldn't open it. Of course when we got home she was loving the gift, he picked out a bunch of very girly and cute headbands and pony tail holders, she wears them 2 at a time.
this is actually a pretty cool shot, her favorite friends are in this one, Hannah is behind her, Abby is front of her and Konnor is next to Abby

Reagan watched and watched and then found Piper and turned around, pointed and told Grandma "Piper", I think that she would have marched right up there if Grandma wasn't holding her hand

her she's fiddling with her dress, at least she didn't flash the crowd

her grand entrance

we had quite the crowd of admirers come to watch, she's a lucky girl to have so many people who were able to carve out time so watch her.




Here's a quick video of one of the songs

The weekend is gone????

Where did the past 3 days go? Seriously, what happened? Friday we had Mops (Moms group), then straight to the grocery store, my friend Tina came over to play the Wii while I baked cakes, then Saturday I finished the cake, headed out to see a movie with Amy and Summer, and then the girls went over to Grandma and Grandpa's while Jason and I went to a dinner theatre at Church. Sunday went even faster, Church, lunch with Dad and Jill and then Piper and I headed off to see the Nutcracker Ballet.

teapot cake, this is the front

here's the back, this was actually one of the easiest cake's I've made. I'd do more gentle girly flowers next time, the little ones looked more like stars than daisies. Jason actually named my future business Babycakes' cakes - something to that extent

Dad and Nanny getting a little cuddle time

Piper sang in Church today, well she missed the past two weeks so she didn't know the words and was incredibly shy but it was very cute! I didn't get any good shots of her, I was sitting too far back and the camera kept focussing on people's heads instead of the kids so I tried taking a picture of the screen

a rare moment where the girls and I got to sit and cuddle

Piper teaching Tina how to drive

here we are sitting in our seats waiting for the ballet to start and Piper gasps "There's Hannah". This is the infamous Hannah that Piper just adores. They go to school together and have played together a couple of times. Hannah dances at the place the ballet was being shown, she came all costumed up.

at the ballet

the results

Here are the cookies

no pictures of the chocolate drop, Mom took those home, I should have snagged a few more before she left

Nanny enjoyed the day, she helped peel the wrappers off the hershey kisses

and Piper the very helpful assistant hard at work, it won't be long until she's making them on her own

Both girls had their little aprons on for a while, I should have snagged a picture before they removed them. We had a lot of fun and Mom and I had a well oiled operation going on there. All cookies were baked and my kitchen was actually clean.

Cookie making day!

Tomorrow (Wednesday) is cookie making day with Grandma Mary. The girls are really excited for Grandma to come over, wait until she lets them lick the beaters.

What a fun weekend!

We had a great weekend, although a busy weekend. Jason and Reagan actually had the chance to hang out and relax together quite a bit, as Piper and I were the ones running around.

Saturday morning I got to escape for a few hours to meet up with the girls for bagels and coffee, congratulations both Heather and Summer, each are expecting babies number 2. Summer is acutally due on my birthday, good day, good day! After hanging out with the girls, Piper and I headed out to buy a birthday present for her friend Hannah. We had fun hanging out just the two of us. We returned home for about an hour before Aunt Niki came over to escort Miss Piper to a movie and dinner. They had a blast, thank you again Niki, Piper loves being spoiled like that.

This morning we laid pretty low, the flu has gone around at least one family from church (Tina) and being the germ phobic Momma I am, I decided to stay away for a week, not that Piper can't pick it up at school or the grocery store, or anywhere else, but oh well, I knew after yesterday's running around she'd be tired and need to lay low.

Ok, the Royal Tea Party (birthday party), it was held at a dance studio and the girls were instructed to show up dressed as ballerina's. I didn't count but I bet there were 12-15 girls there all dressed in tutu's and ballet slippers, oh it was so darn cute! Hannah the birthday girl walked into the dance room and did a few twirls and Piper was right on her heals, it was so fun to watch her discover the floor to ceiling mirror and watch the light bulb go off in her head, she started twirling and dancing around and once all the other girls piled in there was a group of them bumping into each other, why oh why didn't I bring my camera????? The actual dance class part was in another room where the parents couldn't watch so most of us left. She had a great time. She's not quite 4 yet but it feels like she's growing up so fast, she's already making friends and going to parties, and she doesn't "like" boys but she asks about Mr. Konner every day and was bummed that he wasn't at the party. Awwwhhh!

Tiny Dancer

Piper is so darn cute! Her favorite friend from school is having a ballerina birthday party on Sunday so I ordered her an outfit. She is such a diva already, look at her posing!

A little bit of everything

We couldn't take it any longer, we needed to get outside and run around no matter how little snow we have and how cold it was. Well Reagan doesn't do much more than stand and look around, she hasn't figured out that she can move in full winter gear yet. She can't figure out her hands with those mittens on and with the snowpants she's just a giant pink marshmallow
Piper on the other hand just loved being outside, Layla liked some attention too. I finally had to bring Reagan inside and let Piper play in the yard while I was making lunch


monkey see, monkey do?

playing in her sled





I was just taking random shots with my camera during snack time the other day




So sweet! Piper has been getting herself up around 6am lately, pouring herself a few glasses of milk, roaming the house and getting into the cupboards. After spilling milk all over the rug I thought I'd try to stop her early morning fun (mean Mommy) and put the gate across the upstairs. She complained a little bit but then fell back asleep with Daddy and let the rest of us sleep until 8am. Wow that was nice!

Such a little happy girl, this picture reminds me of one I took of Piper around the same age playing in my closet

Piper was reading Reagan's goodnight story to her. She was such a sweatheart towards Reagan all day that I decided we should whip up a batch of cookies for a treat, notice a little smudge of chocolate on her face.

our decorated tree, I'll have to take a picture at night, it's so much prettier. Jason and Piper decorated the entire thing, they did a great job but some of the lower bulbs have been relocated due to breakage and keeping them away from little Nannie

A gift from Grandpa

Again - these pictures are out of order, the site has been strange lately but Piper had a nice visit from GrandpaClaus last night. Every year Lonny has put a small tree up in Claire and Clayton's bedrooms for them to enjoy, well with them away at college I think he still felt the need to decorate, much to our pleasure.

Here is the final product, Piper's room looks magical at night, she sure loved her tree and the present Papa brought to put under the tree.
mid process, Reagan really likes the tree too, I think she enjoyed seeing Grandma and Grandpa more though

look at her face, I'm not sure what he's showing her but she's excited!

Thank you Lonny!