Daily Life

We had a wonderful Christmas this year! On Christmas Eve we went to the Longo party. There are so many people it’s crazy! It is really neat to see everyone growing up. I’m one of the eldest great grandkids, so seeing all the little ones as teenagers is really fun.

Christmas morning was a blast. However, I think Jillian was overwhelmed. She didn’t quite know what to do. She became fixated on the candy in her stocking which is not a good thing at 8 AM.  Her favorite thing to play with was the wooden magnetic dress up dolls.

In the afternoon we wen’t over and spent some time with Adrian’s parents. Jillian gets so excited to go and see them. Olivia got a talking Elmo, which she loves!

Later in the day we had a very nice and mellow Christmas dinner at my Aunt Angie’s house. Jillian enjoyed decorating a Build-A-Bear box.

Boxing day was not the day I had anticipated it being. Adrian was lucky enough to receive an Xbox 360 from his parents, so naturally he had to find his games out in our playhouse/storage.  It turned out to be a huge project! We ended up having to reorganize a lot of the boxes out there. We also found that the playhouse door was not keeping the water out so most of the boxes on the front side of the house are wet. We’ll have to invest in some plastic bins to keep our items safe from water. We also got rid of a lot of things sending them off to good will.

I love to follow Bakerella’s blog. I’ve wanted to make cake pops for a while now and figure now was a good time. I decided to make snowmen for the holiday season.

Here is what they are supposed to look like:

and here is what mine look like:

They didn’t turn out too bad 🙂  They were super sweet however. A little sick to your stomach sweet haha. I made the inside with funfetti cake and vanilla frosting.

On Saturday we took Jillian and Olivia to Big Bear. Olivia did a great job in the car for such a long trip! Jillian also did really well, we tried our hand at potty training last week. It started with the girls having a horrible diaper rash. We started putting Jillian in underwear and she was really good about going in the potty. We averaged about 1 accident a day, which is really good in the beginning! So our trip was very successful in that way, only 1 accident, and we laied out one of those dog pads on her carseat so everything worked out.

Jillian had a blast in the snow! She started throwing snowballs all on her own. She was so cute because she kept saying “I love snow” and “I’m on top of a mountain.”

Well it’s December and we picked up our tree on Friday.  Jillian and Olivia helped decorate the tree. Jillian loved putting the ornaments on and Olivia loved taking them off 🙂  Our tree is not the most beautiful one we’ve ever decorated but it is one of the most fun to decorate! It is so fun watching Jillian start to understand the Christmas traditions.

We had a wonderful Thanksgiving this year! I tried a new recipe for candied yams and my family loved it!!  It will definitely show up again next Thanksgiving.  We had dinner at my aunt’s house this year. Thanksgiving is always a great time since we all gather around the table for dinner. To me being surrounded by the people you I love is what Thanksgiving is all about. On Friday we had our traditional Friendsgiving. It was so great to see everyone! It’s been hard this year to get together with everyone. I think I bit off more than I can chew with my obligations this year. I would not recommend getting a masters while working and having two young children.

Here are a few pictures from dinner on Thanksgiving.

Halloween morning Jillian and I carved our pumpkin! We carved Cinderella’s Castle into our pumpkin this year. I also made a mickey mouse one but it rotted out before I remembered to take pictures.

Jillian and Olivia dressed up in their costumes and headed out for a night of trick or treating. Our street is lacking in the Little Kid department so not everyone was passing out candy this year. Jillian was a little shy in saying Trick or Treat, often saying it before the door was opened. We kept reminding her, “say thank you, Jillian.” So she started saying, “thank you Jillian” It was really cute!!

We took a Saturday trip down to San Diego to go to Sea World. Here are some cute pictures of the girls playing in the Sesame Street play area.