The rest of December

I know it’s been a long time. I personally get really mad when the blogs that I like don’t post for a long time, but it’s been busy here and when I don’t post I feel like the next one needs to be really great and then I start to worry about not measuring up. Plus my internet hasn't been working. So I wanted to post a little about the other activities that we did in December besides Christmas Eve and Christmas Day which have already been discussed. First off is this super poser picture of Lily. She’d done this a couple of times, where she’d back up to a wall and stick her leg behind her, tilt her head and smile. I thought it was funny, but didn’t realize that she was imitating Mady, the little girl on her favorite show that we watch together, Jon and Kate Plus 8 (she calls the show “kids”). On the show Mady was doing a photo shoot, and did this classic pose. Even weirder is that I realized she was doing it whenever she’d wear this plaid skirt, and then I remembered that on the show Mady was wearing a plaid skirt as well, I think. It was freaky, but when I finally took a picture of her doing the pose, she seemed satisfied. So December is the time for crafts, so we made a couple which was fun. One was these pom pom trees and snowman. It went pretty well, except an incident with a tiny bit of hot glue. We also made a gingerbread house. I knew that it was going to be eaten, so we made it out of real gingerbread cookie dough and regular frosting rather than a recipe for the hard gingerbread house and hard frosting. It turned out pretty ugly but it was tasty. Lily had a good time and was pretty much bathing in frosting and candy stickiness. We took the kids to see Santa at a local grocery store and also at the ward party and surprisingly neither of them were scared at all. Lily tried Soy Nog this year and really loved it. One day she was drinking some and lovingly said “Egg Nog, I missed you.” One more great story. On Christmas Eve we went to the store. On the way out, we saw a kid with a balloon and she got all excited, so we bought her a snowman balloon. The lady took forever to get it, and it was like $3, and I was grumpy about it, but hey, it's Christmas Eve and she was so excited. To top it off, she even rode on the little horsey ride in front of the store (remember, it's like 70 degrees here). On the way home, we were a little hot so I stupidly opened the sunroof and out went the balloon. I laughed and pulled on the string, but when I got to the end, the balloon had been torn off. Lily made the most gut-wrenching face I've ever seen. We got home and she cried for at least 15 minutes. She was devastated. She laid in her bed and cried, then when that wasn't pathetic enough she went to the corner by the garage door in the dark and cried and cried. Finally when I coaxed her out, we ate lunch and she started saying that "maybe wind blow, balloon come home". I told her no, it was way up high, flying by the birds and the planes. She was still sad and exhausted and took a nap. I called Jared, who was on his way home from work, and by the time she woke up, Jared was home, and magically the balloon had blown back home and was nicely tied in the front tree. She was thrilled and we still have it. Occasionally she'll look at it and say with a smile "Balloon came home."

Jack is finally starting to move in a forward motion. Not so much a crawl, but a scoot. He also is pretty much rejecting all baby food. He won't eat anything I feed him, no matter what it is. He gets really gooey and messy when he eats, and his other new favorite thing is putting his hands on his head and getting his hair all gooey, too.

That's about it. I don't know how to wrap this up, so...The End. Here's a cute pic.