Showing posts with label Holidays. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Holidays. Show all posts

Thursday, December 25, 2014

Christmas 2014

We opted for a quiet Christmas vacation at home in Redwood City, with a couple of trips across the Bay to Danville to spend time with my family :) Daisy had a lot of fun with the Christmas tree and re-arranging all of the (gratefully shatterproof) ornaments, and she got SOOOO excited each time we saw Christmas lights on houses. Holidays truly are more magical with kids, especially once they start to understand what's going on!

"helping" set up the Christmas tree


The Menlo Park stake does this AMAZING creche exhibit each December, with nativities from all over the world. I took Daisy, and we spent most of the time in the kids' room playing with the baby Jesus dolls in the dress-up nativity area. All five of them. She was obsessed with babies and was not good at sharing them. Haha.


This is also the month that Daisy became obsessed with her "by-oooh
 shirt. She loves BYU and the cougars! Chris is so proud.

It rained a TON in December too. Our front sidewalk had the most glorious puddle.


Daisy and "The Ben", her favorite baby friend. Our friend Steve and Stacey's 3mo son!
I lost my wallet in December, too :( and on one of our trips to search for it, Daisy befriended this random waitress at a restaurant we walked past, all for the purpose of seeing this Olaf statue.

Christmas Eve with friends! The power went out, but that didn't stop us from sourcing candles and flashlights and still having a great dinner :)

How The Grinch Stole Christmas. Shari is a captivating storyteller!


We acted out the Christmas story from Luke 2 with all of the kids....Daisy was a wise man, With a stogie and one shoe missing. Of course.

cutest little nativity kiddos! I didn't get great pictures, as I was elected to play Mary. Probably had something to do with me being "great with child", haha. My friend's 5yo son was Joseph and he was adorable. 

We didn't put presents out until after bed on Christmas Eve. It's my favorite part.

And I also love seeing all of the Christmas Cards from friends and family!

Christmas morning! We were FaceTiming with Grandma and Grandpa Rydalch while we opened presents :)

New dolly from Grandma Great!

The glorious unwrapping aftermath.
We also celebrated our 3rd anniversary right after Christmas! It was a Sunday, so we just went to church, Daisy looked too dang cute, and we enjoyed some nice snuggle time on the couch afterward. We introduced Daisy to The Incredibles! The night before Chris and I went out to Danville so my parents could watch Daisy and we could go see The Hobbit: The Battle of Five Armies. Each installation has come out right around our anniversary, so the past 3 years that's been our anniversary date :) hashtag nerds. hashtag we're in love. hashtag mushy.





The BEST part of the Christmas season, though, was the birth of our niece!!! Sarah and Adam's baby girl was born on December 30th. Lily Marie is the cutest and we LOVE HER. It's so much fun being an Aunt and Uncle!



Wednesday, November 26, 2014

Thanksgiving 2014


We chanced our first big car trip with Daisy and the CRV, and it did not disappoint! It's a 10-12 hour drive from the Bay up to Corvallis, OR where my Grandparents live. Daisy was a champ at entertaining herself! My brother, Jacob, rode with us on the way there and that was super helpful too.

Daisy had so much fun playing with all of Grandma Adams' toys (especially her pop beads!). I kept myself busy baking with my cousin Alina (6 pies!). Chris entertained himself by teasing Grandpa Adams and taking Daisy back to our hotel for daily naps. Every day it took her less and less time to fall asleep on the car ride to the hotel. Alina and Auntie Bekah were fabulous Daisy entertainers.

Pop beads with Great!


Alina was Daisy's favorite :)

Gettin' comfy watching Signing Time in the morning. Hahaha.

Apple pie in progress!

ALL THE PIES! Pumpkin^2, cherry, salted caramel apple, pecan cobbler, Dutch apple, and blackberry!

Taking Bekah to Ulta for a makeover and makeup buying fun!

So many car naps.
Again, I completely missed all of the important photos like, say, ones of my whole family. Haha. It was really great to be with everyone - we don't all get together often and it's always a blast when we do! I love my cousins, aunts, and uncles. My Dad's family is the best. We're having a full family reunion next month and I can't wait!

Friday, October 31, 2014

Halloween 2014

Daisy is a big fan of Pooh Bear, so we dressed up as characters from the Hundred Acre Wood for Halloween! Chris was Christopher Robin, Daisy was Pooh Bear, and I was Kanga (plus Roo).




I made our costumes for the most part - with the exception of Chris' (thank you, Kohl's clearance!) and the ears for Daisy and I. It was so much fun. I am a big fan of Halloween costumes. Daisy's Pooh Bear is essentially a fuzzy bubble skirt with a modified Wal-Mart t-shirt attached. It was comfy and she loved wearing her "Pooh dress". Mine I made from a vintage maternity dress pattern and a vintage stuffed animal pattern for the Roo head (which is slightly creepy when not attached...but it's Halloween right? haha). It bugs me now that I chose the "wrong" brown for the Kanga costume, and I wish I had gone with something lighter, but hey! It's just a costume. I only wore it once. Haha. 



We didn't take Daisy trick-or-treating this year, but we did go to a couple of fun parties with our little friends :)

Monday, May 26, 2014

Whoops.

I haven't written anything since Daisy Doo was 6 months old.
She is now nearly 15 months old, and I have reached the point where strangers don't care about the months so I usually just say "she's one" unless prompted for more information. (it's amazing how the months really do make a difference still, but people-in-general stop caring so much once they hit a year)

So...pictures!




My sister is a good picture-taker.

day one: system beaten

accidental Halloween matching cuties! that's Myles, the neighbor boy I babysit a couple times a week!

sickie in a box

party at my crib, yo!

Kronk, Bucky, and Yzma!

Dad is much more fun with shopping carts than Mom

messes messes messes

nun in a tub

another plane ride!

cheesin'

long day of many plane rides!

cheesin. drinkin out of a cup.

buddies.

Santa! yes, I did the whole mall thing this year.

getting ready for some BYU Football!!!!

2013 Fight Hunger Bowl! not the greatest photo of the Cosmo the Cougar hat, but eh.

queen of the slide. these two cute boys are our neighbors (Taj and Myles)

bath hairs

Myles' lil' red wagon

minutes after someone asked if she was a boy.

she is a little bit obsessed with flowers

and reading to herself

and climbing in and out of the Bumbo

birthday park day! five teeth!! and you can see them all!

the loot.

cake time!

manhandling the goods.

surveying the destruction.
BAM - almost entirely caught up!
In the last 3 months, she managed to get ALL of her teeth with the exception of her canines (top and bottom). Those four suckers are all coming in now. All at once. And it is worse than when she got all of her molars all at once. BUT, they are the last ones! Then we get a break from teething!!! She really hasn't been that awful, but these last four teeth are giving her a run for her money and it makes me sad :(

Other notes that might be good to write down before I forget them entirely:

  1. She started walking about 2 weeks after her birthday. She kind of swaggers like a cowboy, super wide stance and all. It's great.
  2. Since she has started walking, she has also started dancing. It's stinking adorable.
  3. We have been teaching her some sign language. She started to understand some signs around 9mos and do some signs herself around 11mos. Now she knows and uses quite a few!
  4. Her first word was "HI!". First notable catch phrase was "OooooOOooh!" with her mouth in a perfect "o" shape. 
  5. She is now pretty good at repeating the general syllables/sounds for words. She now says regularly: her name, Mama, Dada, baby, bye, keys, eat, doggie, kitty, flower, bird, outside, signing time (her ASL videos), train, and bear. But we're still pretty much the only people that understand her, and she usually only says "mama" when she is sobbing.
  6. She doesn't really act like a firstborn child, in the sense that she is pretty rough&tumble and generally doesn't get upset when I hold or care for other babies.
  7. There is a healthy independent streak in her personality as well. She doesn't cry when we leave her with other people, she's never been afraid of strangers, and she's tackled slides by herself on numerous occasions.
  8. She is currently obsessed with shoes and flowers and phones
  9. She dropped her second nap before her first birthday. Ay caramba. But the one nap she does take is starting to get longer! 2hrs on a good day.
  10. She will sleep from 7p-9a on a good night. She does still wake up once between 4-6a to nurse for 5mins, but that's it. If that's the trade off for no naps, I think I can live with it.


Love you all - I promise to update more diligently!

- Rachel