A Christmas Photo Dump

Christmas this year was wonderful and oh, so busy. We had a great time and it was so nice to see so much of our families (including Danny, he had a whole month off of school!)

Here are (more than) a few pictures of our family festivities:

Lots of baking time. 

We had three extra uncles in town! Jackson, Conrad, and Jon

 A few shots from Christmas morning. This tent is already on it's last legs.

The beautiful Kitchenaid my parents bought for me! I love it, I use it almost daily. Plus, for my birthday the next week we bought a grain mill attachment for it so I don't have to travel to a mom's house to grind my wheat for bread anymore!

We did an advent calendar with a Christmas activity each day - this was our "gingerbread" house building day.

The kids helped Papa with the Nativity story on Christmas Eve. 

Our attempted photo shoot for Grandma's Christmas jammies.

Family photos with my family. They were good sports and let me make them get dressed up just to go out in the back yard with my tripod and timer.

This was eventful only because my parents' cat usually evacuates the premises immediately when the kids show up - he let Nora be in his face for a good five minutes before he got tired of her.

A few years ago at a Relief Society Enrichment night in Manito Ward, Sister Felsted showed us how to make Christmas pinatas and it's become a little bit of a tradition in our family. We had great weather for it this year. This was also the morning we met Yui, Jackson's girlfriend he brought home with him from California.

We spent Christmas Eve afternoon at Danny's sister Chari's house. We had a great time eating Mexican food (hooray, Danny's favorite Christmas tradition resurrected!), playing the ornament game that Mom Olson came up with a few years ago, and making ornaments. 

After Christmas morning at our house (there are apparently out of order) we headed to Danny's parents' house for brunch. 

Funny Ollie Guy

These may not be very funny since you didn't get to hear his cute little voice, inflection, and timing, but Ollie sure had us cracking up a few times yesterday and I wanted to document it.

At dinner with family yesterday Danny sister Chari was talking about how her daughter Lydia is often just 'Bug' instead of 'Lydi-bug' anymore, and her 6 year old Andrew commented that Lydia is a bug and Nora is a beast....because we call Nora a beast. Because she is. Danny then asked Ollie what he was, and mis-hearing him he said "I'm good." That was cute enough, but Danny asked him again and Ollie got a little smile on his face and said "I a poopy diaper."

Last night when we got home from dinner, my little brother Conrad came over to play games with us and got there right at bed time. Sitting and talking with Ollie he asked him, "Ollie, what's your favorite thing?" and Ollie immediately replied, "I like scooters!" It was so funny, we've never talked to him about what his favorite thing is, he doesn't have a scooter, and he had no hesitation whatsoever. Cracked me up.

Second Trimester!

Yesterday, I woke up feeling great and ready to write a blog post celebrating the wonderful time that is the second trimester of pregnancy. I had slept through several nights in a row without waking up needing to go the bathroom, and I hadn't been nauseous in days. Then, a headache from heck set in that lasted all day long. Then today, I had to pull my car over to the side of the road to vomit. Turns out I'm not out of the woods yet.

(Side note: turns out apples make me sick every time. And I just bought 40 lbs of them. So if anyone wants to buy some apples...I'll make you a deal...)

But still, yay! Second trimester! We're having another baby everyone! Baby is due February 11, 2014, and I'm not at all worried that Danny has a research conference at the end of January in California, or that both sets of our parents are considering taking the same cruise together sometime mid-February while I am home with Ollie, Nora and a newborn and Danny is studying his brains out for boards. Maybe a little worried. But that is a long way off - we are good!

This pregnancy has been different from the last two. As in, I've been really sick. I never got more than fleeting morning sickness with either Ollie or Nora, but this time  I was pretty much on the couch and incredibly nauseated but not throwing up for 6? 8? weeks. I can't remember exactly how long because it felt like forever. But that lightened up several weeks ago and now it feels like time is flying. I am currently 14 1/2 weeks pregnant.

Ollie was really curious about what I was doing taking a prenatal vitamin every morning so I told him a month or so ago that we are having a new baby! After it snows and after Christmas! It's so exciting! So exciting that he told all Danny's friends at a BBQ we went to with some of his classmates awhile ago that we are having a new baby in mommy's tummy after it snows - that was funny. Ollie is really excited about his new sister, and is adamant that he doesn't want a baby brother, just a sister like Nor. And he will teach her to walk and to laugh.

We're very excited about our growing family!

Nora is One!

Our little Squisher turned one last Sunday. We had our local family over for enchiladas and I made her a pretty cake. It was a pretty low-key family fun kind of party.

Nora:
-  is opinionated! Danny says she is a one-year-old-going-on-teenager. She shakes her head and says "no no no."
- loves to give big open-mouth kisses right on the mouth
- waves hello to the telephone and holds things ie remotes, toys, and real phones up to her ear like a phone
- is very distracting in Sacrament meeting. She likes to turn around on the bench and flirt with the whole congregation behind her.
- takes 1-2 falling steps before she goes all the way down
- can go up and down stairs
- likes to play peek a boo and chase with Ollie
- can fold all the way in half when she gets upset. She'll be sitting on the floor crying and then next thing you know she is laying flat on her own legs. Also, when she gets upset, she will sometimes draw in air and hold her breath for so long that she passes out for a second.
- has 5 words down: Mama, Dada, Nana, no no, and uh-oh.
- likes to play in the blinds. We have lost more than half of the slats in the blinds over our glass sliding door.
- is small. She weighs just under 18 lbs and is in the 5th percentile for weight.
- gets so excited when Daddy comes home. She crawls straight for him and puts her arms up to be picked up.
- has one tooth! It came in the day before her birthday.
- likes to climb. One of her favorite spots is sitting inside of the lid drawer.