Merry Christmas!

We had a very good Christmas, and of course, my goal was to take more and better pictures, and of course-as always-I failed. So here are some of the pictures that we did get. I love the holidays because I love spending time with family. But it always seems like we never get to spend enough time with them. We spent Christmas Eve and Christmas morning with my family and then Christmas Day and the next day with Josh's family. Every Christmas Eve since I was young, we've spent with my Aunt Ruth and her family, but I didn't get any pictures of that.

Here is my mom on Christmas morning with the best Christmas present ever!

Chloe and Audrey

Josh and the best Christmas present ever!

Meili on her first Christmas, she's just ecstatic about all her Christmas presents-can't you tell? She was one spoiled girl this year, and she won't even remember. In Josh's family they said that the younger the child, the more spoiled they were this year-so you can just imagine!

Chloe and Audrey modeling their new princess dresses that my mom made for them (with Jesse of course.)

Gigi smiled like this once for a picture and we all laughed and pointed at her, so she thought it was so funny, and made the same face for every picture after that.

Then we spent Christmas day and the day after that with Josh's family.

Here is Josh's mom with the best Christmas present ever!

James and Grayce, who we found out are expecting their first boy in May and we are so excited!

Kyle

Josh's family has a tradition to play Bingo every year around this time. So on the 26th, we held the annual Bingo game. The beauty of the game is that whoever wins gets to pick a white elephant present. Most of the presents are recycled every year, and we add a couple new ones each year. There have been some pretty priceless memories at these Bingo parties.

The kids are usually lucky enough to get presents that they actually like. So here is Bren with a Mickey Mouse puzzle.

James with a clown light switch that has been part of the family far longer than I have.

Jensen with a President Obama chia pet. It actually said on the box "Hail to the chi-chi-chi- chief!"

Jared with the princess dress he has always wanted.

Jensen with an 8th place trophy that Jared got when he was in scouts.

And Chalisse with a rubber chicken. I told Josh, "It's amazing because I won probably five times, and we still went home with just a car load of crap!" Merry Christmas!

6 (1/2) Weeks

Sometimes I think we gave birth to a 2 month old, and as much as I try to convince Meili to stay small forever, she is already blatantly disobeying her mom.

So here are some milestones...

-Meili is sleeping through the night. Her last feeding is at 11:00 and she generally starts making noise at about 6 or 7 until I just decide to wake her up and feed her rather than listening to her grunting. Then I put her back in bed and she sleeps until about 9 or 10. She probably would have slept through the night from the day we brought her home from the hospital, but I'm a paranoid first-time mom and wanted to make sure she was getting enough to eat. So I'm gradually letting her sleep longer and longer.

-She started really smiling a lot about a week and a half ago. And let me tell you, it is awesome! This is the closest I've come to getting a picture of her smiling, even though this isn't my favorite picture of her.

So I added this one too just for fun! This looks more like her.

-She's getting better at holding her head up, which means less cuddling on my shoulder :( She always just wants to be looking around and keeping her head up.

-And her newest trick...rolling over! She actually rolled over once when she was 3 weeks old. (I know you don't believe me, no one else does either.) I think it really was a fluke, and I didn't think she would be able to do it again, and of course, Josh and I were the only witnesses and no one believes what we say anyway. But she rolled over twice more on Sunday, 3 times on Tuesday, and we finally have my friend, Hope, as a witness today. On Tuesday, when she first did it for me, I almost started crying. It was a textbook roll over, and I can't believe she's growing so fast. I got a video of it. It's probably the least exciting video in the world to everyone but me. But we are so proud!

I know, we have a wonder child huh? Don't get me wrong, it hasn't been all peaches and cream. Sleeping through the night comes at a price, meaning that she has a hard time taking naps during the day. She'll get really tired and fall asleep instantly if I am holding her, but as soon as I put her down she wakes up, or she'll sleep for only about 20 minutes-which makes it hard for me to get anything else done. It's really weird, because at night, she can be wide awake and I swaddle her and she falls right to sleep, but nothing works during the day. If I swaddle her during the day she gets frustrated trying to get out, but if I don't she wakes herself up kicking. So if any mothers out there have any ideas for me, I'd love to hear it.