It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year

We've been having so much fun so far this Christmas season.  Christmas is so much fun with little kids!  They love doing all the christmassy stuff that I like to do.  Ryan just doesn't love sipping hot cocoa next to the tree like I do - but Lucas and Paige do.  We've been watching Christmas movies, and listening to Christmas music, and making Christmas cookies all month long!  I love Christmas!

We started off the season by decorating the Christmas tree.  We actually did it on Thanksgiving morning while the turkey was cooking.  I let the kids put the ornaments on the tree themselves, which was really hard at first, but they were having so much fun I just went with it.  They aren't very evenly spaced, but it still looks pretty.

Something about Christmas makes me want to bake stuff.  Lucas and I made sugar cookies.  Lucas did a pretty good job decorating them.  He's getting better and more coordinated.  I did help him a little bit though.

 I got a cookie press for my birthday so Lucas and I tried out making spritz cookies too.  They were so much fun to make and are the cutest little cookies I've ever seen.  They look a lot smaller in person than they look here.

 We also decorated a gingerbread house.  The kids always love doing this.

And of course I just had to get pictures of the kids in their cute Christmas outfits.  And I can't really narrow down the pictures so you get to see them all.

Isn't she just the prettiest little girl you've seen?

Such cutie little kids!

Today I've been wrapping presents and listening to Christmas music and getting ready.  I've been going all out with pretty bows this year.

Logan has been loving getting in to stuff under the tree now that he can crawl.

And he's been pulling up on stuff lately too.  If he had his way, he would be walking already.

I'm so glad that he fits in these candy cane jammies we got for Paige.  And now Paige fits into the ones we originally got for Lucas.  If only I'd bought one in every size, then Lucas could match them too.  I love kids in jammies!

Especially Christmas jammies in front of Christmas trees!

I'm getting so excited to see our family in Utah.  And I can't wait to see these cute little faces light up on Christmas morning!  It really is the most wonderful time of the year.

5 Months

Logan has grown so much this last month!  Seriously!  Not only did he start crawling and sitting up, (in that order-weirdo baby), but he gained 2 lbs and grew 2 inches.  He's getting so big.  He's still super shaky on his crawling and sitting so hopefully he can work on getting better at that in the next month instead of just moving on to walking which is what I swear he wants to do.  He's always trying to stand up on stuff and sometimes when he's crawling he'll put his feet down on the ground instead of his knees and act like he's trying to stand up.

Logan has not been a great nurser for the last few months.  It's been very frustrating.  I never know if it's my supply, or if it's just that he doesn't want to eat, but it has been a real struggle.  Normally I wait until 6 months to start solid foods, but I decided to start earlier with Logan because I wanted something else to be able to give him if he wouldn't nurse or if I didn't have any milk.  He LOVES food!  He has taken to solid foods better than either Paige or Lucas.  I don't feed him rice cereal every day but when I do he gobbles it right up.  I fed him some mashed potatoes on Thanksgiving and he was pretty excited about it.  He kept grabbing the fork and trying to shove it in his mouth.  He can even eat little pieces of bread.  Here's the video I took of his eating mashed potatoes on Thanksgiving.

 He's really started to develop a cute little personality, and with his new found mobility really likes to get into stuff and terrorize his siblings.  I just love this little guy.

Logan Crawling

Logan is crawling! I can't even believe it! He's only 4 months old. He's been getting up onto all fours and moving one hand or knee and lunging forward for a couple weeks now.  But last night he took multiple "steps" and went from trying to crawl to crawling.  He's obviously still a little shaky, but holy crap, he's only 4 months!  He can even almost go from the crawling position to a sitting position.  And he can't even sit up yet.  What a crazy baby!  I love his little thing he does with his feet in the beginning of the video.

Playing with Lenses

The other day we were playing with a fancy macro lens and taking pictures of our eyes.  I saw some really cool pictures online one day and have been wanting to try to duplicate them ever since.  Here's one of the photos I found online, and the website.

Obviously ours aren't quite as good, but still, I thought the pictures of our eyes were pretty cool.  The pupil looks like it has a weird texture in this first one, and the detail in the iris on the second one is kind of incredible.

Can you tell whose eye is whose? Logan didn't want to hold still for pictures, so match the eye ball to either, Me, Ryan, Lucas or Paige.

 Playing with lenses...Ha! Pun not intended at first, but now it is.

Family Pictures

We finally got out to take pictures this weekend.  I've been thinking about outfits and poses and locations for like a month now, so I was glad to get out there and finally do it.  Paige's hair looked SO cute right after I did it!  And then about 10 minutes later it was the usual mangy mess.  I'm super sad about it, but there's not a lot I can do about it now.  Oh well.  Here's proof it was cute at one point.

 We took the pictures on our own with a tripod and a remote.  We definitely had to take a lot to get good ones of all the kids looking, but I think for the most part they all turned out really well.

 We went to BoaVentura Winery to take the pictures.  They were super friendly and accommodating.  They really just wanted us to taste some wine when we were done, and I felt a little bad to disappoint them.  We'll have to take along some wine drinkers with us next time.  There was this really cool red barn that we took pictures in front of.

We took this picture as kind of an afterthought and it turned out so much cuter than I thought it would.  I love it!

 There were 3 black labs running around while we were trying to take pictures.  They kept getting into the shots and scaring the crap out of Paige so it was a little tricky at first.  They lost interest after a while, but Paige stayed scared the entire time.  Lucas loved the puppy, though, and played with it every chance he got.

 We got some really cute pictures, but I keep thinking up shots that I wish we had gotten, or things I wish I had done to fix Paige's hair.  I feel like we get better every time we do this, though.  I definitely think we'll come back to this place next year.

Happy Halloween

The kids both still fit in their costumes from last year so we're reusing them.  They're still just as cute!  Paige isn't just a ladybug this year, she is a super hero - Ladybug Girl!  They were cracking me up with their super hero poses.

Last year and this year comparison.  I can't believe she was that baby just a year ago and now there's already another baby.  It's a little weird!

 They're ready to go trick-or-treating!

 And here's Logan's costume.  I'm pretty proud of it!

We carved our pumpkin a few days ago.  The kids are always so excited in the beginning, and then when I cut into it they get bored and Lucas gets grossed out.  Oh well, some day I'm sure they'll love making a mess in the pumpkin guts.

And here it is all lit up.  Lucas picked the scary face.  I think it's pretty awesome.

Happy Halloween!!

4 months

4 months feels like a big milestone to me.  I feel like Logan has really transitioned from the newborn phase where they just lay there and don't do anything and cry all the time, to being an older baby that spends a majority of his day playing either with us or on his own and has started to develop a cute little personality  He loves to be on his stomach.  It's hard to keep him on his back sometimes; he's always rolling.  He's been sleeping on his stomach for a while now too.

He loves to gobble up his hands and will sometimes jam them so far in that he chokes on them.  He will gobble pretty much anything he can get into his mouth and loves to munch on his blankets.  He also just grabs anything he can get his hands on, so when I'm shopping with him in the baby Bjorn I sometimes end up with more than I intended because he grabs stuff and pulls it off the shelf.  He loves to pull hair too.  One of my favorites is when babies discover their feet, and Logan just found his.  He needs help getting them into his mouth, but he loves gobbling those too when he can.

He got sick for the first time just this weekend.  He just has a little cold, so not too bad, but the poor little guy is having a hard time eating and sleeping.  He seems totally normal other than that, though, and plays all day long with his siblings.

Logan surprisingly loves his brother and sister, despite the fact that they keep stepping on him and Paige just terrorizes him half the time.  He especially loves Lucas and lights up when he sees him.  Lucas really loves Logan too.  He has been obsessed with him from day one and will just sit and tickle and play with Logan for forever.  He really has a special bond with Logan and it's so cute to see.

I took this video yesterday and Logan is still sick so he's not quite as giggly as he normally is, but it's still cute to see them playing.  Lucas will often say to me, "Mom, he's SO cute!" or "Do you see how cute this baby is?"  I love it!

Sometimes when Logan is grumpy and I'm busy with something, I have Lucas walk around with him for me.  Logan loves getting carried around by his big brother.

I just love this picture!

Pumpkin Patch

We went on a little family trip to the pumpkin patch last week.  I love this pumpkin patch because they have so much fun free stuff for the kids to do.  Although, it was a little disappointing that the paid activities were substantially more expensive than they were last year.  Oh well.  Here's Lucas and Paige running through the patch looking for the best pumpkin.

 Paige trying to pick up the pumpkins was hilarious!

 Found the perfect pumpkin!

 Lucas and Paige always love the wagons.  Here's Paige getting a ride.  Paige refused to smile normal the entire day and instead gave me this weird scrunchy smile.

 Here's Paige giving Lucas a ride.  She was pretty determined.

The kids loved running around in the hay maze.  Lucas was so good about staying with Paige and helping her through.

 The kids favorite part was the corn box.  They played for almost an hour in here.

 Ryan was a good daddy and climbed in to play with them.

 And more of Paige's weird smile.  I hope she gets over that before we take family pictures.  We got one big family pumpkin and then picked out three little pumpkins for each of the kids.  Lucas has the biggest of the mini pumpkins, Paige in the middle, and Logan has the smallest.

I was pretty proud of myself for finding that tiny little pumpkin.  And I'm pretty happy about how cute the three of them look holding their pumpkins.  We had so much fun we might go back again before the month is over.