Sugar and spice and everything nice!

It's always fun having a little girl in the home. We can dress them up in all the cute clothes and of course the accessories come with it. Chloe got an adorable hairbow holder for her birthday and I just wanted to share it with everyone. As you can see, she has lots of bows, thanks to Sadie and Sarah Robbins. The only problem we have now is Sadie wants a hairbow holder like Chloe!:) Oh, what fun it is!

DKJ

Dakota is loving growing up, but sometimes he likes to take a flashback from when he was a baby. We got the exersaucer out last week for Chloe and Dakota just thinks it's the coolest thing. The only problem we have is when he gets stuck and can't get out of the baby toy! It is cute though when Chloe is playing and Dakota helps him!:)

Chloe-Five Months Old

Chloe also turned 5 months old shortly after Christmas! It's so hard to believe how fast she is growing up. She has experienced some new things this month. She is still spitting up a lot, which isn't anything new. We are hoping that she will grow out of this stage soon so that she can gain some weight. She decided to finally sleep through the night just before Christmas which I am so thankful for. It will begin to make it a little easier for JJ and I now, especially getting somewhat of a full nights rest. The week after Christmas she surprised herself by flipping over to her stomach, which was really cool for her. She tends to take several naps on her tummy now, which makes her happy. Chloe has a wonderful personality and seems to be happy almost all the time. If you keep her milk in her, she is doing fine. We love her so much and are trying to cherish all our moments with her together. Next update will be at 6 mnonths old! I guess we will see how much she has grown then:)

Christmas

It's always fun spending time with family at Christmas. We tried our best to help Sadie and Dakota understand what the true meaning of Christmas really is. We are hoping that even through opening all the gifts that they'll remember the birth of Christ through all of this. They were very excited this year. Sadie was in to opening all her gifts and really loved everything that she received. Dakota actually also did a really good job with his gifts also. He was able to open them all by himself with no help at all. Chloe of course just sat back and enjoyed it all by watching. I am sure that next year will be a different story for us all. Here are a few slide shows of the kids during this time!:)

Granny's Christmas Eve


Grandma's Christmas Morning


Church at Benson Grove


Christmas with Nana and Papa


Christmas with Johnston's

Bright Beginnings!

Here are a few pictures of the Christmas Party at Bright Beginnings which is the preschool that Sadie and Dakota go to!

Keeping the Chrismtas Spirit!

As we prepared for Christmas, we just had to make some cookies. In the past I have not been one to make homemade roll out cookies because it just such a mess for the kids. This year, I took a deep breath and prepared the dough and let them use the cookie stencils to make some cookies. They even got frustrated and ended up putting them in balls which I was excited about:) It was precious seeing them work together and to watch them looking in the stove to see if they're done. I am hoping that I can do this every year and the kids will remember these special times together.

Disney on Ice

One of every girls dreams is to see the princesses that they play with everyday. This year, Disney on Ice came to Raleigh and it had all the princesses in it including "Tangled". Sadie just loves Rapunzel so much and we surprised her with tickets to the show. Sadie,Nana, Aunt Manda, Savannah, Nannie, Chloe, and I went to see the show together. It was actually even better than I thought. I even enjoyed it. Sadie enjoyed every minute of it and Savannah was amazed and Chloe just slept in my arms. It was so amazing to see all the things those people could do on the ice. Seeing Sadie's eyes was seriously worth a million dollars. It makes me even more excited to go to Disney World with the kids sometime!:) She just truly enjoyed it so much! I am so glad that we were able to have a girls night out and have such an enjoyable time together:)

Farmville Christmas!

There is nothing like starting off the Christmas season with a nice Christmas parade! I truly love this time of the year. This year was even a little special because the volleyball team was asked to ride in the Christmas parade because of the successful year that we had. Sadie even got to ride the float with us. The float was sponsored by Piggly Wiggly so we even had the "Pig" with us. It was bittersweet for me as I loved sharing time with these girls but also new that this would be one of the last things that we did together since most of them were graduating. It was so encouraging riding through there and hearing them sing Christmas carols with such smiles on their faces. They were truly having a blast and enjoying every moment!