December Festivities

This month has just flown by it seems. Lots of Christmas parties - school, PJ's work, church. We got to go PJ's work party just the two of us, while Mark and Camille kept the kids for us for a couple of hours. It is just so refreshing and nice to go out as a couple and be able to interact with people and not having cater to the kids' needs and constantly watching over them. We had such a good time!

At church, the Christmas party had a Latino flare to it. With a pinata and everything. Just a few weeks ago, our ward got split and the ward boundaries changed, so there are lots of new to us families at church. It was good to meet a few of them at the party. We ate lots of yummy enchiladas and for dessert we had cupcakes. Om the way home from the party Ophelia noted: "I ate my cupcake like Cookie monster....too fast!" :) Made me and PJ crack up!

Texas winters are kind of dry, lots of static here:

Both the kids are struggling with dry skin throughout the winter months. We use lots of hydrocortisone, which Ophelia calls "hydro-quarters".
My friend Natalie shared some Krispy Kreme joy with us. The kids were in heaven:

Ophelia's school put on a big Christmas concert this month. PJ stayed home with Emerson, since it was kind of later in the evening, but me and Grandma and Grandpa got to enjoy it. Ophelia did so amazingly great. She sang loud, she did the actions, and she truly had fun doing it. They sang 3 songs and on the last one (which I didn't get a good video of) Ophelia pretty much dominated the voices. We had friends whose kids were in the concert too comment to us later about how well and loud Ophelia sang!

Lovely Christmas jingle:

Pretty much the first week that PJ was off work, he got the flu. Not just some little flu, he got THE FLU! He was miserable. The first two days he spent in bed with chills, fever, achiness. He slept awfully. It was rough! I did my best to quarantine him from the kids, but I myself got something too. It wasn't the flu according to the flu test at the doctor's office, but I felt sick for a few days, but not nearly as bad as PJ. We were blessed that the kids did not get any of it!

My friend Candace makes the best gingerbread ever! She gave us a house making kit for Christmas, so decorated one as a family. The kids loved the project. Emerson was more interested in tasting all of the candy though, but Ophelia got into sticking colorful candies all over the house.

We had a quiet family Christmas Eve with just us four. It was neat to do our new tradition as of this year of the 25 days of Christmas with a Christ-centered message and a symbolic ornament to go with it each day. Emerson looked forward especially to videos about Jesus and Ophelia loved opening the gift box with a different ornament each night. On Christmas Eve we drove around as a family and delivered goodies to neighbors and friends in the area.

Just in time for Christmas, everyone was finally well enough to spend time with family in Oatmeal. Whatever germs we had, we shared like this:

Cousy love is powerful and there's no way around it! Here's the beautiful tree. I love that Mom always has a live tree for Christmas! I love its smell, because it reminds me of my childhood and our end-of-year festivities. I also love eating mandarins all December long because that's what I did as a kid. One time I ate so many mandarins that I got a rash all over my body!

Grandma playing with Emerson. This Sesame street house is one of the kids' favorite toys at Grandma's house:

Mark and PJ played some lovely Christmas songs for us:

And then Ophelia played some too :)

She's got the guitar hold down. Now we just need to teach her how to make the right notes on it:

The table is set! Looking good:

Grandma got Ophelia and Emerson a little play kitchen for Christmas, which they love! But they also loved playing in the huge box that the kitchen came in. As a bonus, check out Em's huge mouth :)

A few Ophelia-isms that we've heard lately:
* She told PJ one morning: "Papa, you make the best breakfastes!" I giggle at the grammar that she uses, but then I turn around and speak just like her, because we hang out so much together, I talk like her too :)
* As a proper dietitian Mom, I have been talking to Ophelia about candy and junk food, so she is starting to figure out what's good for our bodies to take in and what isn't. One day she told me: "Candy infects moods and makes us act like a baby and a spoiled rat." Petty much...nailed it :)

We had our annual dumpling night in Oatmeal. Auntie Jane was there too and Emerson developed a special love for her:

We made a few attempts to take a good picture of all three cousins. Here are the best two tries:

Someday we won't have that problem any more, of trying to have all three look at the camera and smile and sit still for just 5 seconds!!!! Here they are playing ring around the rosie:

Emerson has a special place in his heart for Grandpa. It is so sweet! Whenever I tell the kids that we're going to Grandma's house, Emerson always adds "Grandpa's house". Also when Grandma stops by on occasion, on her own, while running errands in town, Emerson asks her "Grampa go?", meaning "Where did Grandpa go?" Emerson is always so excited to see Grandpa, to give him a hug and a kiss, or to have Granpda hold him. Here Emerson is singing with Grandpa:

The kids had fun hanging on Aunt Judy:

On one of our visits to Oatmeal, Auntie Cami did some beautiful shots of the kids. Sure makes me want to get a nicer camera!

I just LOVE this one:

This boy is just so incredibly sweet and polite! He even gets excited for his sister. Like when Ophelia shows her artwork to Emerson, he says :"Awesome, Awa!" Too cute! He is starting to pronounce her name correctly most of the time nowadays. He says "Opheya" or "Opheyaya".

Emerson is getting really good with speaking in sentences too! Here are some dinner time Emerson-isms:
* "I like it strawberries." He's learned from Signing Time to says "I like it" and "Don't like it", so he plugs the "it" in his sentences when he talks about his likes and dislikes.
* When calling Ophelia for dinner to the table one evening: "Awa, eat sushi papa make it!" Blew my mind how he put all those words together. Love that boy!

Novemba In Da Houzz

We are so proud of our little girl! She worked hard to memorize all 13 Articles of Faith throughout this year. The incentive was a big chocolate bar. So finally this month Ophelia was able to pass off the final, 13th article and she stood up and said it in front of the whole junior primary. Such a big girl! Of course, she loved getting a whole chocolate bar all to herself for that:

Here is a video of her doing her last article:

I love that whenever we eat dinner, Ophelia touches, snuggles, or rubs her Papa's shoulder. It's the sweetest thing! I had to capture it:

A few things that Ophelia has been saying:
* "I almost falled, but I holded on"  This stage of her language development includes incorrect verb usage, PJ can tell you all about it. But it's kind of sad and funny at the same time that I've started talking like that too. I guess these are the people I hang out with all the time, but now I am starting to talk like them. Shouldn't it be the other way around???
* One day Ophelia comes out running out of her room and says to me: "Mama, there's a lawyer in my room!" Me, confused: "What is a lawyer?". She says:"It's a scary, scary monster!"  Me: "Did you know that Unkie Mark is a lawyer?" Ophelia: "Oh...." Following an explanation from me on what a lawyer is, I had to text Mark :)

Here is our other little munchkin. Although he doesn't touch me during dinner time on his own accord, but whenever Ophelia does something to PJ, like a kiss on the cheek, or whispers something in his ear, Emerson HAS to do the same to me. Just being a little brother who wants to to everything that his sister does! Most of the time I make sure Emerson does not touch me though during dinner, because despite forks and spoons being available to him, he usually at least once grab the food with his hands! This is so different from Ophelia, who couldn't stand having her hands dirty when she was Emerson's age. Emerson could care less, but he does comply with the routine hand and face scrub down after mealtimes.

Ophelia is for sure a little OCD about having clean hands and face. Whenever eating she HAS to have a napkin. She dabs her face with it after each bite. And I stopped asking her to wash her hands after meals, because she always keeps them clean!

Here is Emerson signing different emotions for me:

 

That little sweet boy loves wearing hats! And I think he looks pretty adorable in hats too, but I may be bias :) Whenever I brush Ophelia's hair and she asks for a bow on top, Emerson asks for a bow too, then I tell him that boys don't wear bows, boys wear hats, after which he proceeds to pick a hat from hit "hats" bin. This is our routine pretty much every morning these days. I'm not really concerned that he loves doing all these girly things, like bows, necklaces, headbands, but I think he probably needs more boy playmates around here!

So, we had Winstie with us for a few hours one Saturday afternoon:

Cousy time! Winstie got his hair properly brushed :) Then snack time is always ten times more fun with more kiddos:

Me and Ophelia went to a neighborhood party that day too and she got her face painted. Of course, she wanted a rainbow. Whenever you ask her what her favorite color is, she'll tell you "all of the colors of the rainbow, and black and brown". She is just such a bright and colorful little person! She loves lots of bright colors!

Emerson has been really into playing hide and seek lately. It's pretty confusing though because he runs to a "hiding place", closes his eyes with his little chubby hands and begins counting: "one, two, four, six, seven, eight, nine, ten. Come! Not!" (which means "Ready or not, here I come!") He can count to ten, but always skips 3 and 5. Go figure! But it's still confusing whether he wants to seek or hide :) It's a combination of both kind of game, I guess. He also loves playing "roll the ball." In fact he is crazy about balls. He can name off the different types of balls: baseball, basketball, soccer ball, football. And in the store we can't possibly pass by a basket with balls without Emerson asking: "Ball, please!"

He is such a polite little fellow. It is absolutely adorable and how can anyone ever say "no" to an almost-two year old who says "please", with no prompting? He does better even than Ophelia with saying his nice words, "thank you" especially.

Here is my little pijama crew (Emerson with a ball, of course):

I got a new haircut! This is the shortest my hair has ever been! I loved the layers that the stylist did, but I can never lay them the they they do at the salon on my own.

Oh, here is another one with Emerson and his eating style (I should've taken Ophelia's picture for contrast with her amazing cleanliness skills) :

Emerson has been sooo into the "Brown Bear, Brown Bear" book series. He wants me (or any willing poor soul) to read it to him over and over and over and over! He loves reading other books too, but the "Brown Bear" ones are always the first ones that he finds on the shelf and wants to read.

I also love the way Emerson wakes me up in the morning. He starts yelling out of his crib: "ARE you, Mama?!!". I can't describe his exact intonation, but it's as if he was saying "where are you, mama?" but dropping the "where". That's what it sounds like. Super cute! Or sometimes he yells: "DooOOR!!" To mean "open the door" :)

November 25th, PJ and I celebrated our 10th wedding anniversary. Crazy, unbelievable, where has the time gone??? My love wrote a sweet message for me to find in the morning when I woke up:

We're looking forward to some quality one-on-one time on our Caribbean cruise this coming January! Can't wait!!!!

This year Chuck and Nancy were in Chile during Thanksgiving, so we got to go to the Gills for the big dinner. The kids always have a blast together:

The food was amazing! How could we have not stuffed ourselves? Impossible!

Ophelia on the hammock at the Gills' home backyard:

Boys being boys! Emerson with a ball in hand (of course):

Winston and Emerson have been starting to have a harder time getting along. Winstie always seems to want whatever Em has. This was fine before, when Emerson could care less, and would quickly move on to something else after Winston would take a toy away from him. Now Emerson is at the stage where protests, grabs, and fights back...Thus we enter the joyous journey of teaching our little boys how to share:

The AKs:

The CPKs:

Ophelia does not have trouble sharing with the boys and she does a great job of exciting them up to jump, run around, and play tag. But here she stopped for a good chunk of time to play Go Fish! with Joyce. She loved playing it so much, she talked about it for days later. That might have been her favorite thing about Thanksgiving this year :)

Ooooo! I have to share this picture of our amazing bed, built by my amazing father-in-law. It's been almost a year since we had it, and I just LOVE it! I love the 7 drawers on the bottom of it. Only one of them is currently empty. Lots of much needed storage space! I love the wooden look of it and the natural tongue oil smell of it. I love how sturdy it is. This will be a piece of furniture to be passed along to the future generations for sure! Also, PJ and I love having a king sized bed. It's huge, I know, but it's so incredible comfy!

Welcoming a few cold days this winter, we got out the winter gear. Emerson is ready for this Texas winter weather:

Just playing around, making a collage of Ophelia's emotions picture and Emerson's "scared" picture too:

Wait, didn't we just have a cold day last week? Nope, just kidding, it's still Texas fall, with warm lovely weather. It's November and the leaves are finally falling in our backyard. The kids were excited to make some leaf piles to play in:

Christmas is in the air! I am starting this new tradition of 25 days of Christmas, with a special spiritual message relating to Christ each night from Dec 1 till 25. Each night there is a little symbolic ornament to be put on the tree. That meant I had to get the tree out before December 1st. So here it is:

The kids were super excited about the tree. I remember when I was a little girl and how exciting it was when my parents brought a tree home and we got to decorate it. Now my kids are doing it and it's so much fun watching them and being excited through their eyes :)

This is another one one of my LOOOONG posts. But here is one last bit of news. Ophelia got to be the line leader in her class at school, which not only includes leading, but also being the weather person for the day, reciting a song about vowels and taking this little stuffed monkey home with her and making a journal entry about her adventures with him. His name is Bonzo, but PJ gave him a nickname of Gar-Bonzo, which I thought was funny. So, the whole week, Ophelia took Bonzo everywhere with her! She had to feed him each time she ate. And she asked me to take a picture with her and Bonzo about a dozen times a day:

This last picture was my favorite with Gar-Bonzo. Ophelia had to have him in pijamas, so I dug up a pair that was too small for Emerson.

What can I say, raising these kids is a blast! Every day is a new adventure for sure!