Merry Christmas!

My baby is so sweet. When we (Nick and I) went to New Jersey for Nick's work, we left Claire with Grammy Krista (Nick's Mom). She had these photos taken and then gave them to us for Christmas to give out as Christmas cards. Guess what happened to them? We have NO IDEA! AGH! So, you have to get this version until we either find those that were lost or we make our own copies of these cute things. Sure love you all. Merry Christmas!


Historical significance of these photos: the reindeer was Nick's when he was a boy and the dress was Mandee's for her first Christmas. Cute, eh?

house part II

Some one asked for additional pics of our house. There isn't much more than you've seen, but here are the last rooms with the exception of Claire's room. I don't have a pic of that yet. And she's sleeping or I'd go grab one...he he

downstairs---library/playroomhref="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgvyCbVbTaqLc73QG40AX-CD5TTKtNSZAapM47G-II_CmvP5QqYsFinUcA79vqjy5_YhACCEOUz8XrD0Gthj8KmOWosw-I_vGVQZScoYvrJNf5VnOsdTAEs6TeMdx9Mqbs427HTD_zS-0o/s1600/100_1405.JPG">
3rd bedroom

family room, great carpet, eh? (trying not to puke!)

All of these were taken by my lovely assistant Savvy, but in the "we just moved in TODAY" look, so this isn't the offical set up.

first bandaid...

Claire was in the garage 'helping' Daddy when she pushed on some very heavy driving ramps. Down she toppled and so did the ramps! She started to scream, and Dad picked her up. He held her close and kissed her "owie". Then checked to make sure everything was still 'working'. I hear all of this happen and come in to find Claire crying/whimpering and Nick saying:

"Your elbow is still working, your leg is still working, your toes are still working," etc. He says all this while bending each appendage to ensure mobility and attention to detail. te he. isn't he great?

All it really ended up happening was that C got really scared and a big scrape on her finger. But her Daddy kissed it better and put a bandaid on it.

Now she'll walk up to us and say: "owie" and put her hand to our mouths to kiss it better. Yesterday she even said "owie" and then kissed it herself. I love my baby!

young musician...

Whenever I am teaching, Claire stands by my legs and says, "Uhp, Uhp, Uhp,". If I actually pick her up (because the babysitter hasn't arrived yet or some other reason), she tries to play the piano, carefully selecting a group of notes and then pounding the daylights out of them. I guess she wants to be like Momma.

homes...

c helping with packing...This was our home for almost four years. It was hard to move out.

so, here's the house...it's pretty deceiving from the front of it...so don't worry at first glance...


front room/ music room




upstairs...

there's a kitchen,

a bathroom,

our bedroom,













More to come...

It's been fun setting up our new home. Hard to believe we made this change. I still start to drive to our other home on a regular basis. I miss the friends and ward members from that area. I've already been approached to join the ward choir in our new ward by like six people. Which is good and I will be doing it, but it's weird not to be the choir director. Nick hasn't made it to our new ward yet. We've been in the ward for three weeks (today October 25, 2009---which is a different date from when the post was started so, it still looks like we've been here shorter than we have.) and the first week was General Conference, the second week Nick was gone for work and I had to face the ward by myself! aargh! and then this week is stake conference. Weird, eh? Hopefully we'll become more involved soon.

new home...

Well, it's true! We bought a home and now we live in it. I can't find my sd card reader to upload pics, but they'll come. Claire loves the stairs and we see her slide down on her tushy regularly. Downstairs is YUCKY, but that's good because then we can work toward newer carpet and an extra bathroom! te he.

parks...

We went to the park. It's the first time I brought a camera. Good thing! I wouldn't want to miss seeing this stage later. She's SO funny! She loved the bark that the playground is covered in so much that even though she knows how to walk, she crawled everywhere! I'd even put her on her feet and eventually she'd just start to crawl again!
This is Jane and Claire playing Spider.



This is Jane. I think this is the cOOlest photo around!


I love this face!


This is Miles (in swing) and William is on the slide.

check out my spoils...

So, I'm no gardener...Never have been, am trying to be. I planted a few things this spring in this teeny tiny garden plot. I called my FIL-Matt and probably described the dimenions wrong because let me tell you this:














might be slightly overgrown for such a small space!
However, it is growing like a WEED! I have a huge profit from it on a regular basis!

vanna...

My sister Marlies has a dog named Savannah. As in, Savannah, GA (is that spelled with an h or without?). She lived there for a while a few years ago and adopted her first baby: Savannah the wiener dog. she's a dang cute little animal.

Anyway, Marlies found this purse (among multiple other clothing stuffs) with this little wiener dog as the theme of the clothes and sent them to us. THEY ARE TOO CUTE! They are all big right now, but we'll have to show you the adorable-ness of them later. Meanwhile... Claire has come to carry this little dog purse that we loving call "vanna" (because Marlies calls her dog "Hannah" for short. We don't have Hannah, but we do have a Vanna.) around with her. Claire sucks on that poor dog's nose all the time. I suppose I'll have to let her be a girly-girl if she wants to ...sigh

















One of Claire's favorite things to do makes her wait until Daddy comes home. When he gets there, she tries to do everything he does (this probably where 'bad dog' came from). One of the things she mimics is playing the Nintendo Wii. She gets so angry when we take the remotes from her, no matter what distraction we offer her in return. She wants to be doing what Daddy is doing and why would anyone dream of taking that away from her is beyond me.
(secretly I adore that she WANTS to be a daddy's girl)





























Claire is the biggest climber! This is a minor version of what she is into lately, but one of them that I could catch on camera without being afraid to let her fall while I grabbed the shot. YIKES! She's in to everything she can reach and even the things she shouldn't be able to reach! ( she loves to climb in the bathtub! AGH! major konk as there is nothing to brace her fall!).

words...

Claire is talkin' up a storm! She says the basics, "ma ma", "da da", "hi", etc. My favorites are, "yeah". She says that all day long and it's so sweet to hear it. Her inflextion is priceless.

My other favorite comes with a story. I never really thought how she started to say it until I read it in a letter my MIL sent to my BIL on a mission: Claire gets into things she shouldn't and whenever she gets into electrical stuff (ie, the entertainment center or electrical outlets), Nick will point at her and say "Bad Dog!" One day she was in the entertainment center and Nick came around the corner to find her there. I was in the kitchen (which is super close by, so I heard it, but didn't see it). Claire pointed up to Dad and said: "Ba Dah!" You know how you try not to laugh at things that you don't want to encourage? Well, that idea went out the window. We laughed for a good 5 minutes. And then apparently Nick told his mother but I hadn't heard about the pointing part (which I think adds 10X to the story). I laughed for an additional 5 minutes for that.

My baby is so dang cute!