Christmas 2009

I posted these pictures backwards, so we will start from the most recent and head backward to Christmas.

Yesterday we got a fun bit of snow in P-Town! Love it! "Grammy" (as Lucy has decided to call Grandma) took Lucy out for her first taste of real snow!

Auntie Kate and Lucy built a cute snow man ... a few minutes after this picture, however, Sofie decided she wanted to see how cameras work, then decided they weren't all that interesting and threw it on the floor ... my poor, sweet, wonderful camera is now in the shop being fixed.

Christmas Eve ... We went to Papa Norm and Grandma Marge's house after church. Church, by the way, was challenging to say the least. I used to love Christmas Mass as it filled me with the Christmas Spirit - Not so much fun this year as I chased a restless two-year-old around waiting for the priest to arrive a half hour late! If you are a priest, don't you think Christmas Eve Mass would be a top priority? How are you late to Children's Mass! A entire church full of little kids hopped up on candy and ready to open presents. Ugh. Anyway, enough of my rant ... on with Christmas.

Grammy and Papi on Christmas Eve.

Lucy's attempt at an on-demand smile.

Christmas morning ... the girls got a Melissa and Doug kitchen. Hopefully they will both enjoy it - Lucy seems to like it so far.

Cute Sof.

Unfortunately Lucy likes to close her eyes when I ask her to smile, but I wanted to post a pic of the girls in their new P.J.s.

I hope everyone had a Merry Christmas and that you have a wonderful New Year!

Muilenburg Christmas and now we're on break!

We're on Christmas Break! Hip hip hooray! 58 letters of recommendation written this year, about 500 applications sent in, but now we are done and it's all about family, friends, and celebration. I love it. Lucy and I kicked off break by making cookies.

Baking Christmas cookies with my daughter was really a dream come true - what a blessing to spend time with my sweet Shmoos. It will be twice as much fun when Sofie is able to join in!

Lucy & Sofie's room is coming together. It's supposed to be Lucy and Sofie's room, but since we've decided to just go ahead and make the same mistake twice and let Sofie sleep with us, it's mostly Lucy's room currently. She likes to climb up in the window - I don't have the heart to tell her that it's not a bay window and someday, very soon, she will grow out of being able to sit there.

Sweet Sof is so, so, so very close to crawling. She has all the skills, she just needs to put them together.

I like this pic.

This year's Christmas picture, coming to a mailbox near you soon. I met to get them to the post office today, but, alas, I did not, which probably means delivery after Christmas. No letter this year, just a pic. There was too much going on - I feel like now that break is here it is the first chance I have had to breathe in months.

We had Christmas with the Muilenburg's a couple of weekends ago. It was lots of crazy fun to have all the kids and family together.

Drew and Sof getting to know each other during a simultaneous diaper change.

Sofie and Papa Norm. Norm is doing pretty well after surgery. We can't wait to get home and spend more time with him over the holidays.

All the Muilenburg grandkids together in their Santa hats.

Lucy got a shopping cart that she absolutely loves. She walks around the house telling us what she is buying and what she is making for dinner. It's too cute.

Lucy and Brady eating Christmas dinner and watching a movie. The watching a movie part allowed everyone else to eat and have at least two minutes of conversation.

Brady and Drew got Sofie and Lucy this fun playhouse. Lucy absolutely loves it and I have a hunch Sofie will too very soon.
I'll end with this cute picture of sweet Sof. She had her 9 month appointment today - I don't have her stats in front of me, but I do remember that she is 21 pounds. She is such a wonderfully sweet baby - what a blessing these two little girls are!

Merry Christmas one and all! We are sending lots of holiday loves to all of you near and far. May your Christmas be wonderful and your New Year bright!

Another Major Catch Up

Well, once again I am faced with the monumental task of making up for a long gap in blogging. At lot has happened since my last post - mostly a lot of good things, but with the good there is always some bad as well. As many of you know, Pete's Dad, Norm was diagnosed with a brain tumor during the weekend of Thanksgiving. He had brain surgery last Thursday and is recovering amazingly well ... he was even up watching the Civil War game that night (I am sure the Duck's win didn't help him feel better in any way, shape, or form). He was able to come home yesterday and we are all hoping rest from home will be the best medicine. We will head up there this weekend to celebrate Christmas with the Muilenburgs. We haven't got the test results back yet and we continue to be grateful for all prayers and positive thoughts for his recovery. We love you so much Norm. My sister-in-law, Ali, has started a blog to stay updated with the latest on Norm - www.normmuilenburg.blogspot.com - if you are interested in visiting it.

As previously mentioned, there has been some good news in our lives too. We are finally moved into our new house and loving finally owning our own home. The girls seem to be enjoying it as well. I will try to take some pictures soon and get them up on the blog ... hopefully this time there won't be over a month between posts.

To save Mama some time and energy at night, the girls have started taking baths together. They are the cutest things, I swear. They are even starting to play together and Lucy loves it when she can make Sofie laugh. I love it too, of course. This picture is from last night.

Sometimes, however, Lucy loves Sofie a little too much. She is constantly hugging her and trying to climb on her. This picture is from the other day when she tried to climb in the car seat with her. Sofie thought it was great fun for about five seconds before she started crying.

O.K., this is the embarrassing part ... although it is December 8th (Happy Birthday Mom!!!), I need to go all the way back to Halloween, as I never posted pictures. Oops!
Lucy was a cute bee for Halloween and really started to get the concept of "Trick-or-Treat" this year ... she loved it!
Sof was a pea pod. Too cute (although her outfit was too small and we had to cut a hole in the bottom).

We had a great time going around Em and Becky's neighborhood with their kiddies! It's so great to be close to friends and family again, especially during the holidays.

Merry Christmas everyone. This is definitely the time of year when miracles happen, so keep the prayers coming. Again ... Happy Birthday Mom! You are the best Mama and Grandma in the world and I love you with all my heart.

Major Catch Up (Including the fact that we are HOME OWNERS!)

Alright ... this will be a long post, but by the end we should be pretty much caught up on the ongoings of life in the Pete and Tracy Muilenburg family. First things first ...

WE ARE HOME OWNERS!!!! YEAH!!!!

We picked up the keys to our house last night at 5:00pm!

Dave, our realtor, took this picture of our proud family.
A beer to celebrate! (Obviously the wallpaper needs some work.)

Lucy ran around like a mad woman in the open space.


Pete let me open the door - he said I had been waiting long enough to open the door to my own house (not to mention the fact that I moved to Hong Kong 8 months pregnant and delivered two babies in the public hospital there all in the name of saving up a down payment for THIS house!)

Dave handing Pete the keys.

We plan on doing some work to the house, so we won't move in until at least the end of November, but it is SO exciting to have a home of our own. As much as I resisted moving to Hong Kong, it feels pretty darn good to be a home owner because of our work there.

Now on to the catch up ...

We already carved one pumpkin this year, but Lucy is obsessed with Jack-o-Lanterns ... so we decided to carve another one yesterday morning. Here are my cute shmoos. I can't tell you how much I love these three people - melts my heart every time I look at them.

Another Shmoo picture.

I love this picture of Sof - what a sweetie!

Oh ... even though she turned 7 months old yesterday, I wanted to post her 6 month stats from her doctor's visit:

Height 27 inches (86 percentile)

Weight 18.14 (91 percentile)

Head circ. 17.25 (83 percentile)

On Saturday (October 24th, her 7 month birthday) we noticed she was cutting her first tooth. Hooray!

Lucy is so super sweet to Sofie - yet another thing that melts my heart.

Can you tell I couldn't decide which of these pictures to post?

This is our first pumpkin of the season. We put it outside and it made a nice home for some slugs ... extra Halloween creepy!

Lucy loving her jack-o-lantern.

Our friends, Josh and Sarah, hosted a pumpkin carving party at Sarah's parents' house. It was a beautiful perfect day.

The ambiance ... just what I missed in the sweltering October weather of H.K.

Lucy checking out some pumpkin guts.





Watching Daddy clean out the guts.

Here are the rest of the pics from Lucy's birthday. On her actual birthday we took her to Red Robin. She LOVES the Robin.

She also loves the Sunday that comes on your birthday.

Yum!

Here's a picture of her new tricycle!

Well, that's the catch up! Exciting stuff around our house. Life is crazy, crazy busy around here - sometimes I think I barely have time to breath. But, it's a happy busy for the most part. I miss the kids when I am work and they are at daycare, but what are you going to do? O.K., I now must go ... I have 14 letters to write before the week's end. I love Early Action ... hahaha.