Christmas 2011

We had a fun Christmas, we stayed in Connecticut and did our own thing this year.



We did Christmas Eve with some friends in our ward.  Here is our nativity dress up.

The kids in their Christmas Sunday best.

Mesha and her presents.  She LOVES her easel (she calls it a weasel sometimes) and the Littlest Pet Shop tree house.

Griffin and his presents.  This is the face he made when I asked for a smile.  There are a few presents missing from these photos, sorry to the givers of those items.

Sweet Anya and her presents.  What a happy girl!

Here she is trying out her Johnny Jump Up.

We had a good day but we sure miss all you Grandmas, Grandpas, Aunts, Uncles, and cousins. Merry Christmas!

Anya In A Hat

Anya in a hat. Why?  Because she is cute.

Merry Christmas!

This is the photo I was going to use for Christmas cards but I got another one instead.  This was too cute to not post.  Merry Christmas!

Four Months Old

That means is exersaucer time!

Look Who's Rollin'!

Look who learned how to roll yesterday.

15 Weeks old!  She is growing too fast!

Is There Anything Better?

Is there anything better than chubby baby legs and ballerina tights? No, no there isn't.

Also, Anya got a new piggy bank.

And this makes me laugh.

Eighteen

I feel bad about not being able to give Griffin the kind of time I was to Mesha.  And I feel worse for Anya.  But there are definitely advantages to being the second child.  Griffin can already count!  He gets to 10 pretty well and after that it isn't consistent... until eighteen.  Funny boy.

Anya These Days

Our little baby girl is getting big fast.  She is now 3 months old.  Today I put her on her belly on my bed and she rolled over onto her back.  At three months!  Stop growing so fast!  She is still such a good little girl.  She is so patient and content.  We love our little Anya.

She is such a good smiler!

Halloween 2011

The festivities started with the ward trunk-or-treat.  Good times.  Monday during the day we got to trick-or-treat at Daddy's office and later that "night" (5pm) we did a short street.  The power was still out at that point so there weren't too many people home but I promised the kids we would go, so go we did.

Our carved pumpkins.

The ward trunk-or-treat.

Griffin the "ohh-ahh" and Mesha the horse (for the second year in a row!).

Anya the sweet pea.

Happy Halloween!

Really?

Really Connecticut?  An October snow storm?  ANOTHER power outage, this time in cold weather?  We were out of power for almost 6 days but some people just got power yesterday!  Really Connecticut?  On the 29th we had a snow storm with heavy wet snow.  The trees still had most of thier leaves so tons of branches broke and took out power lines.  We have electrical everything so we had no way to keep warm without power and no place to go until we did. So we drove down to the less affected areas to find a generator.  We had our refrigerator, a few lights and our space heaters powered up.  Oh and of course the DVD player, can't live without that.  We hung up some sheets to partition off our living room to keep the warm in so we ended up staying in ONE little room DAY AFTER DAY.

Our "warm room" or "cell", whichever...

Can you tell I went a little bonkers?  It was real.  It was not fun.  It was not real fun.

Happy Halloween.  Poor pumpkins, goodbye mums.

The storm at the beginning.

Boo to being cold. Later in the week it got down to 45 in the house.

New York

While my parents were in town they offered to watch Mesha and Griffin so that Sterling and I could go to New York. We just did a day trip but it was a lot of fun. It was cool and a little bit strange to see some of these places you have seen a million times in movies and on TV in real life.

Looking at "the ball" in a museum by Times Square.

Times Square.  We walked into it on accident and all of a sudden I recognized where I was without ever being there before.

The Empire State Building.  We were too close to see it very well.

Riding the subway.

On the Staten Island Ferry to get a look at the Statue of Liberty.

Manhattan Temple.  It looked so out of place from what I am used to which is why I think it is so cool.

Good ol' Deseret.

Central Park.  Sorry to Anya for cutting her out with our not so great self portrait skills.  Sorry to Sterling for the look on my face (I was running out of patience waiting for him to figure out how to put the camera on night mode...)

Radio City Music Hall.

Rockefeller Center. Anya wasn't impressed.

I haven't ever seen it without the ice rink.  It would be fun to go sometime this winter.

I can now put a big ol' check mark on my bucket list. Yay New York!  I'm still not a Yankees fan though, sorry.

Anya's Blessing

We blessed our sweet little Anya on Sunday.  Both sets of grandparents, her sister and brother, and her mom and dad were all there.  Her Daddy gave a sweet blessing.  She is such a good little person for our family.  She is so patient and hardly ever cries.  She loves her big sister and smiles at her whenever she sees her.  I am so grateful for my little Anya and for her angel baby qualities. 



The whole gang.

Big brother and sister.

Anya and her Daddy.

The girl of the day.

I had my Dad pose for this picture because I have one like it for both my other babies on their blessing days.

Grandpa and Anya.

Grandpa and Mesha.

Grandpa and Griffin.

What sweet babies and what a good family.

Mystic

We have both sets of Grandparents here with us for Anya's blessing/ tour of New England.  I went with my parents and the kids to Mystic, CT one day.  It is a seaport town and there is a Nautical Museum, aquarium, and this little 18th century looking "village" with shopping and such.

There was a duck pond.  Grandpa bought us some food and we had a couple dozen instant friends!

This was, of course, the kid's favorite part.

Especially this guy.  He loves ducks.

We found a hand pump drinking fountain.

Griffin took a drink and spit it out.  He was blowing raspberries for a few minutes before we figured it must not taste very good.  I tried it and it tasted like iron so badly.  Yuck. 

Pumping the well.

Sweet little Anya.

Right before we went home we saw an old train caboose and took the kids over to see it.  I lifted the kids up on it and left them there while I went to get the camera.  As I was walking  back Griffin was trying to get down by himself and I kept telling him to stay there.  It didn't work.  He slid off and landed on the big granite slab that was used as a step.  His whole side was one big bloody scratch.  So I didn't get a picture but Griffin got a nice souvenir.  Besides that incident it was really fun.  There was a Scandinavian gift shop there that I could spend all day in...

Bunk Beds

We got bunk beds!  Thank you craigslist, I love you.  The kids LOVE it.  We set it up in Mesha's room and were planning on moving Griffin in later this year when Anya is ready for her own room.  Griffin would have none of it.  He let us know that he was going to sleep on that bed immediately.  The first night he slept on Mesha's old box spring padded with a few blankets (still not nearly close enough to comfortable).  We bought him a mattress and big boy bedding the next day.

Next up is putting Anya's room together...

Chubby Bunny

Anya is a chubby bunny.  It is a nice feeling to know that your baby is eating well and growing.  Here are some photos and a video of Ms. Bunny herself.

Everyone loves a naked baby!

Sleeping on Mommy's bed.

She was giving Sterling fist bumps but I wasn't quick enough with the camera.  Sweet girl.

She is becoming quite the smiler and talker!

Fall Family Fun

Aunt Katie came to visit and we had some fall fun.

 We went to a pumpkin patch/farm. It was so much fun! We went on a hay ride and into a corn maze.

Find a prize in the hay!

Miniature donkeys, hee-haw.

This is the last time I stick my head in one of these things without looking at what it is first...

E-I-E-I-O

Griffin and a train, shocking I know.

I thought this boat was so fun.

We picked some pumpkins to take home.  Griffin chose the one on the left for himself and the big one on the right for Anya.  Mesha chose the little on in the middle for herself.

Later we went to an apple orchard to pick some apples!

We found some at kid height!

Griffin calls apples "bite"s.

Love these guys.

We also went to the Mark Twain House and looked around.



Hilarious.

The house.

Lego Twain.  Mesha made this face on purpose and held it until I took the picture.  Silly girl.



So by looking at the pictures you couldn't tell that Katie, Anya, or I were there but we were.  I will have to be sure to get some pictures of the kids WITH Aunt Katie before she goes.