The Most Wonderful Time of the Year

Thanksgiving has come and gone, and now we head into the Christmas season.  I love this time of year, although it is the most difficult time for me at work.  I try to just blare the Christmas music and get the work done.
To catch up a little from my last post ... Sydney had her first wedding shower a couple of weeks ago.  My Aunt Lisa put it on, so of course it was gorgeous and wonderful.

Sydney and her friend Katie.

Sydney's new last name will be Garl, so right now she is in love with the letter "G."

My mom bought these cute Christmas pajamas for the girls.  They put them on the other night to watch Madagascar Christmas, and much to my delight they loved them and even wanted to wear the hat.

We celebrated Thanksgiving at Marge and Norm's this year, along with Andy, Ali, Brady, and Drew.  Marge has a master plan to have all the kids take their picture every Thanksgiving in these Santa hats. Right now it is pretty difficult to get a good pic, but hopefully it will get easier over time.

For an update on how Norm is doing, you can check out his blog.  He has started hospice and had another stroke last week; however, overall he is doing well and has a wonderful spirit.  We celebrated a fabulous Thanksgiving with him and we are so thankful for every minute we get to spend together as a family.

Pretty good pic of Marge, Norm, and their boys.

The fam.

In other big news ... Pete and I found out today that we will be expecting BABY GIRL #3 in late April. We are so excited and feel so blessed by our little family.  What a miracle.

October ends ... on to Thanksgiving

I love October - it's the beginning of such a festive time of year.  It was so much fun having our first October in our own home and celebrate Halloween with little girls who are starting to "get it."  I love watching their faces light up as they discover the world and all the fun adventures to be had.

The other day I was doing something in another room while the girls were in Lucy's room.  It was quiet (which is usually a bad sign) so I went in to check on the damage.  Instead, this is what I found ... Lucy "reading" to Sofie, showing her the pictures and saying, "Yeah, Sof, this is a sheep ..."  It was way too cute and melted my heart.

My parents came for Halloween and handed out candy at our house while we took the girls trick-or-treating.  Lucy was Ariel "The Little Mermaid" and Sofie was a ladybug.  They were so cute. 

This is the only picture I snapped of us out and about.  The rest of the time I was chasing Sofie down who always wanted to go in the opposite direction we were headed and then would cry when I picked her up.  Needless to say, we were exhausted after trick-or-treating ("we" being Pete and I ... the girls were fine and loved the whole experience).

Dress up at our house is not limited to Halloween ... it is now a daily occurrence.  Lucy LOVES to dress up and insists that we call her by whomever she is dressed up as (Belle, Ariel, a doctor, whatever).

The girls tasted some bread with Nutella on it this afternoon.  This was the result:

Parenting is absolutely exhausting ... but it is also so much fun (most of the time ... whomever coined the phrase "terrible twos" did so because they had not entered the terror that is three yet! :)