School Christmas Party

Layla had her school Christmas party and I got to tag along!  It's always fun to see her in the classroom.  She loves school!

WILD Birthday Girlies!!

Greta and Harper both celebrated their first birthdays in November and since they are only one week apart (Harper is exactly a week older than Greta), we thought it'd be easiest to combine their party (especially since we don't even have our own house to host it at:D).

 Their cute cake and they even each got their own little smash cake! 

The big kids went on a zebra safari hunt around the house which I knew they would love.  Layla still talks about the hunt we did for her Dora party when she turned 3.

 Greta has been sick A LOT this fall.   Harper and Gibs and the rest of us too (except Gavin only a little bit and Layla hardly at all--she somehow always stays so healthy!).  So of course she was sick on her party day and wanted to just sleep.  Even when the kids went in to do their hunt in there, she kept sleeping.  Eventually I woke her up so she could join in on the fun:).  This is so typical Greta with her arem around her baby.  When we put her in bed, she typically always puts her thumb in her mouth and hugs her baby with her other arm.  So sweet how much she loves little babies.  Funny, but she also gets really excited about socks.  My other kids love to take their socks off and leave them around the house and Greta will find them carry them around--she doesn't care if their clean or dirty:).  The other day Joe handed her a sock and she grabbed and excitedly gave it a hug:).

 The kids table...

The guests... 

The daddies and their daughters..

 Attempt at a family pic...

 Present time!

 

 Slowly dipping her fingers in her cake...

 After a bit she realized how yummy it was:)...

Harper loved her cake too!

 Greta with her grandmas...

 We love our birthday girl!!

 The messy end result:)...

 Silly kiddos!

Excited about all the gifts she got:).

Happy Thanksgiving!

A quick photo before church...

 After church, I let them open one present each since the presents were Christmas movies (and we would therefore want to watch them before Christmas).  They have been so excited to open these DVDs since I wrapped them.  I think they liked the cute Mickey boxes that they came with:).

For lunch, we just had to go upstairs:).  Before dinner was ready, Layla politely sat waiting at the table.

The boys have way too much energy to just sit and wait for dinner, so they played until dinner was ready:).

Harper and Greta...

 At  night we got together with Joe's family in a church gym.  It's always great to see his cousins and the kids of course loved running around!

 Last year on Thanksgiving, cousin Paula and I were about ready to pop and sat there uncomfortably watching everyone else play games.  It makes me cringe to think of how swollen I was that week! I looked pretty terrible! Thankfully Greta arrived the next day:).  It's cute now to see these cuties together.  They've changed a lot in a year!  I'm a little sad that Greta is a year old already, but I'm very glad to not be at that pregnant stage anymore:).

 

Happy Birthday Harper!!

Our sweet little niece Harper turned 1 today!  She sure has grown a lot in the past year!

We love Harpityhoo and it has been so fun watching her and Greta interact more and more the bigger they get.  Harper started crawling now too so her and Greta can now get into trouble together:).

Souvenirs

My dad and Joyce got home a bit ago from a trip to the Netherlands and Paris and brought home some souvenirs for the kids.  I thought it'd be goot to document some of this type of stuff so that the kids some day will know where these items came from.  Her dress is from Paris and the little Dutch kids are obviously from the Netherlands:).  They each got little Eiffle Tower keychains and Greta got a little Holland bear (the shirt the bear is wearing looks similar to Gibs').  I thought they looked pretty cute in their new clothes:).

Couldn't Resist

I found a few Disney costumes the other day for 90% off so I couldn't resist.

 

Layla loved hers and then wanted Greta to wear a Minnie costume too (Greta was borrowing it from Maddy when I had thought of having her be Minnie for Halloween).

 Woody and Minnie!

 And although I sold almost all of Elv's costumes at the garage sale last year (sorry, but now that we have kids, our dog doesn't really need a new costume every year.  Sorry Elv), I couldn't resist this one since it was so cheap...

Late Summer Pics

We did family pictures with my side of the family in early September.  Again, You By Julie did a great job:). 

 

Hopefully you can tell by who is in each family based on their shirt color:).  We almost had an issue with two families wearing the same color, that would have been a bit confusing:). 

 

 Worked out well that Greta had just turned 9 months, so we quick snuck a few "9 month" pics in...

  

 Not the greatest, but it'll work as our Christmas card pic this year...

And one of Grampy and Gigi...