Tis the Season!

We have all had such a good time this Christmas season. Julia is truly a JOY and makes everything around here more fun. My Aunt Amy and Uncle Jim sent us a homemade fruitcake in the mail this year. Miss Julia picked the nuts and cherries off the top and left us with the rest!

See that look in her eye? She knew exactly what she was doing!

John, Julia and I had a great time at the Cross County Library's open house. The Kinders (a couple who writes and performs great children's music) came to entertain all of the kids. Julia LOVED the music, but wanted to stay close to me towards the back. We met Sol there and he wanted to be right on stage with the Kinders in the middle of the action!

Here's Julia and Sol dancing and singing!


Sweet baby girl Rose had a good time too. I had to post this picture because this was the night that she officially stole my heart with her sweet smile!

Then it was on to Santa's workshop where every child got to go in and pick out a book. Julia picked a book about snowmen that we have read and read and read and read.....


I let Julia pick out her own cookie and of course, she picked the biggest one on the platter. I think all this good food around the holidays has been one of her favorite parts!


This was her Christmas party at Miss Melinda's. She cried when turned on the street to head to her house thinking we were going to leave her there. She had to sit on John's lap at first just to hold him down and make sure he wasn't going anywhere.

The cookies did help make it a little more tolerable!

Opening presents at Miss Melinda's!

We took Julia to see Santa twice this year. This was our second try when he was at Eldridge Court. She just wasn't having it and I never did get a good picture! She was only interested in grabbing the candy canes that he was offering her and running the other way!

Even with me standing beside Santa and patting his leg, she still wasn't having it!

However, she did love the blow ups at Eldridge Court this year. I spent many nights circling this area! She would scream, "other side again!" as soon as we finished looking at one side! She loved the Christmas lights that lined Falls and the ones on people's houses. What I used to think was ugly Christmas decorations has now become beautiful! Everything looks different when you see it through the eyes of a child!

Cleaning out the toy box to make room for the new!

Julia and her new handmade mittens from Aunt Jane! The only reason she took them off was because she realized that she couldn't suck her fingers with them on!

We bought Julia some new sheets, down comforter, a soft mattress pad and a new pillow for her big girl bed. Ever since we put them on, she has not looked back! She LOVES her new bed. John even took down her crib today. I have to admit, I was a little sad. It seems like its the end of an era!

In other news, John graduated from EACC with an Associates degree in Business management. His GPA was pretty remarkable and I never dreamed our lives would have headed in that direction. I am so proud and more importantly, grateful that he was able to take these two years to be at home with Julia as much as he could. We have certainly been lucky to have been given this opportunity at such an important time in Julia's life. We'll see where his years of work experience and now college degree will take him.

John has been playing alot of gigs and music lately.....which he loves. I have been sewing until my fingers bleed....which I love (well, love most of the time!) What a bonus that we can both make money being creative and doing what we love!

Here's some stockings that I made!

Julia is still the center of our universe. She has started to love singing. Her favorite songs are Happy Birthday, Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer, ABCs, and Night Night Night (a song my mother made up and used to sing to me at night). She knows all of the colors....even the hard ones like gray! She can recognize all of her letters and only gets a few confused every now and then. And her vocabulary is unbelievable! She can hold a conversation like an adult now and is very expressive. She keeps us rolling with what she says. You never know what will come out! She told me a couple of weeks ago while eating some dried cranberries that she was eating "cranbooties!" She refers to herself as my. Like, "look what my made."

Here she is with magic marker caps on her fingers telling me that she is 2 years old!

She tells everybody that she is "mommy's itty bitty and daddy's sweetheart!"