Willa's 5th bday

 For Willa's birthday we had a family party at our house and then took the girls on a pony ride. Willa made and decorated her own cake. She planned it all out ahead of time and made green grass, a field of flowers, a fence, and a pony on top!

A cake lover!

The fam!

opening presents

Joel got her this remote control monster truck. Right after she opened it she said, "Oh wow! It's even got a rack on the front to carry dead hogs!!"

Auntie Laura and Uncle Matt

Willa had fun on her pony ride but kept saying that HJ and Hot Rod (the horses they rode in Montana) were much cooler

December random

A fun find while shopping!

Aunt Lisa sent small whoopie cushions for the girls. Sadie must have thought they were ornaments and ran right to the tree to hang it up!

Sadie is a climber!! We have since moved the chair!!

First time she saw the play kitchen she tried to climb it

The girls are very into playing beauty shop!

Baking with Boat Mama and Gpa

 

Gingerbread houses

 We had Christmas Eve dinner at our house with my parents, Uncle Matt, Laura and Ethan (and Boat Mama and Gpa). After dinner we heard a knock at the front window. The girls ran to the window and guess who was here?! Santa!

Uncle Matt apologizing to Santa for not being good this year.

I wish I could have gotten Willa's giggles on tape--she was so excited when she saw him walk through the door.

I don't remember what Santa told Boat Mama, but I do remember it was the hardest I've laughed in years. You can see Joel cracking up in the background!

Grandpa unfortunately missed seeing Santa due to an extraordinarily long bathroom trip! ;)

Sadie napped through most of Santa's visit and then was terrified to see him when she woke up!

While Joel's parents were here we took the girls ice skating. Gma and Gpa skated too and both stayed on their feet! Joel has made it a tradition now to take the girls ice skating once a month. 

 

Grandpa and Willa

December-tree farm

 For Christmas this year we decided to go cut down our own Christmas tree. My family used to do this when I was young and I always liked doing it, and of course Joel's family just cut a tree down each year in the woods around their house! So off we drove to a tree farm about an hour from Austin!

In search of the the perfect tree.

The girls had fun running up and down the rows of trees.

The girls were terrified that the tree would fall on them when Joel cut it down. They stood far away!

Dragging tree back to tractor

Harley came along too! Unfortunately he peed on tree that a family had just cut down. Whoops!

November

 Well I've fallen way behind on this blog and contemplated letting it die, but I'm attempting to bring it back to life one month at a time! Here's some pics from last November and Sadie's first trip to the zoo. Her favorite book for a few months was Old MacDonald (would ask for it at least 10 times a day) and so we were all excited to take her to the zoo!

She was quite mesmerized

Willa explaining all the animals

Larkin's reading has taken off. As we walked past this sign Larkin said, "Hey wait, I can read that!!" and she was very proud of herself!

animal overload--check out the pointing fingers

family pic courtesy of Larkin

 One day Joel and the girls were out on a walk and they saw a squirrel get run over by a car. Most people would sigh and just keep walking. Not Joel. "Girls! He's not even bleeding! Go grab him!" This then turned into a lesson on how to chop a squirrel's tail off with a hatchet. Moments like these (and many, many others that I am not posting pictures of) make our neighbors question why we live in the 'burbs!

wagon ride at Cat-Mama and Papa's house

someone learned how to shimmy up the door frame on her own

Larkin loves to read to everyone

bathing beauty

First pair of shoes

 Way back in November Joel took Willa on a hunting trip for the afternoon, and I took Sadie and Larkin to the mall to buy Sadie her very first pair of shoes.

When Larkin was Sadie's age I had the worst time shopping for shoes. Larkin refused to let anyone measure her foot and screamed and cried so much that I couldn't even find out what size shoe to buy. I'm talking about the kind of meltdowns that made people stare and wonder what is wrong with this child?!! This continued for MONTHS. I tried different stores, different salespeople, I even tried telling the salesperson to not make eye contact with Larkin and just let me do the measuring--but no luck. Every time her foot came near that little metal measurement thing she would just start howling and curl her toes up so you could not get an accurate measure.

I ended up buying Larkin leather booties (for months and months) because it took her quite a while to allow anyone to measure her. Willa ended up wearing all of Larkin's old shoes, so I hadn't been shopping for baby shoes in about 5 years. Let me tell you, I was in for a pleasant surprise.

I walked into Nordstrom's with Sadie on my hip and we walked into the kids shoe section. Suddenly she started pointing like crazy and was getting very excited. I picked up a pair of silvery shoes that she was pointing at and I said, "Oh do you like these?" She grabbed her pacifer out of her mouth, threw it across the room, and said excitedly, "Yah yah yah!"

Sadie let the woman measure her foot and soon we were on our way with her first pair of shoes. If it's your child's very first pair of shoes then they take a picture of your child in their shoes, put it in a little card, and also give you a "Nordy" stuffed animal.