Ellie's Ballet Recital -- Part Deux

This morning was Ellie's second and final Christmas recital. She did much better today than she did on Wednesday. Her routine today was about a mouse so the class wore mouse ears... it was really cute.

She was really in a bad mood before we started. She wanted one of the cookies that the kids get after their performance.
Here is Owen goofing off before the recital started.
Here's Miss Elise doing her dance.
More doing the dance.... she does actually move her feet but for some reason we didn't get any shots when she was twirling or pointing out her feet.
When the kids are done, they run to mom and dad! Look how happy and proud of herself she is!! She did a wonderful job!

Ellie's Dance Recital

Sorry it has been so long between posts. The kids have been really sick the past week and half or so. We spent most days at the doctors and mom and dad spent a lot of time cleaning up after sick kids. Thankfully, we are on the mend!! Besides a couple of sniffles and two still whiney kids, we are all better.

Today was the first of Ellie's two Christmas recitals. She was too cute dancing with her friends. She was really excited that dad was coming to watch her perform. She does really well in class with her routine but when she has all those people in front of her watching her, she kind of freezes up.

Here she is standing on her number ready for the song to start.
Here is her little class performing...notice how they are all in sync!
Just standing there, but looking cute while doing it!
Here is Ells and her teacher Ms. Sarah. Ellie LOVES Ms. Sarah and is always talking about her during the week.
And a picture of Owen---have to include one. He wasn't too wild about having to sit in one spot.

Baby Update

Yesterday I had another doctor's appointment. It was a good appointment because Daniel was able to be there and see the baby for the first time. A good friend of mine watched the kids for which we were extremely grateful. Even though this is the third time, it really is amazing to see how much your baby changes in just four short weeks!!

The doctor said that even though it looks like our baby has nubs for arms and legs here, it actually has pretty long arms and legs at this point.

This picture reminds me of Ellie because when Ellie sleeps she holds her hands by her face.

Here is our little sweetheart moving around---- well, you can't tell from the picture but he/she was moving.

When we first started, the baby was sleeping but we woke the baby up and it started moving all over the place, it was fun to see. As it was waking up, it was rubbing its ears and was stretching, looking just like Owen does when he wakes up. We were just in amazement how at just 11 1/2 weeks along, this baby already has characteristics and a personality and we can identify it as our child through those things. It is so amazing.

The baby looks very healthy and has a good heartbeat. I did (as I do at almost every appointment) ask about having the baby earlier if it looks really big... but again, I was shot down. She said that even if I have a record setting size baby, they can't induce me before 39 weeks. Too bad, I am really scared that this one is going to be like 13 pounds or something. I do have a little hope since the doctor said that the baby's sac looks small (which is fine and normal), so I have high hopes that the baby will decide it needs more room and come before it gets TOO big. It is still early on though, so we are excited to see how this little one grows.

Decorating for Christmas

We finally found the Christmas decorations in the attic. So, this morning we decorated our Christmas tree. Thanks to my mom for giving us all of her old decorations that she wanted to get rid of so we could look like we were festive and ready for Christmas. One day we will be able to buy our own stuff.... one day.

Here is our beautiful tree! We tried to stay away from too many glass balls since I am sure our tree will take many dives off the coffee table before all is said and done. Ellie really enjoyed going through the decorations and helping mom and dad put the ornaments on the tree. She was really cute and whenever she saw something she liked she would say, "Oh my goodness!!!"
Here are our stockings hung on the wall with care. While I was setting some things up around the house the kids watched Charlie Brown's Christmas. Ellie really likes that movie. It is crazy that she is watching something that I not only grew up on but our parents grew up on! It is a little sad that we don't have a mantel because we have a lot of decorations that need to just sit out and we have no where to put them out of Owen's reach. Oh well, we will save them for another year.

'Tis the Season

Christmas has begun at the Weber house. I have been busy shopping away and also helping the kids get into the Christmas spirit. We have been listening to lots and lots of Christmas carols (we started the day after Halloween) and now Ellie knows parts of many songs. Her favorites are Jingle Bells, Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer, 12 days of Christmas and the Chipmunk song. She is pretty cute singing the songs but sometimes she gets mad when her dad and I sing because she is the one who wants to sing all by herself.

We bought some lights and hung them on our little tree and and we even bought lights for outside. Daniel wasn't real excited about putting lights outside so I made him take Owen with him to pick up some dinner and us girls put up the lights this year.
Here is Owen playing with the lights. This is a smaller strand of lights that we ended up hanging up in Ellie's room. She has been enjoying them and loves to look at them.
And here is Owen tracking through the house with his lights-- you can see our little Charlie Brown tree in the background.
Last night, Elise and I made our very first batch of Christmas treats. We made sugar cookies. I was going to make them from scratch, but let's be honest, that would be more stress than I need right now. Plus, we are going to do lots of baking this year so best to keep it simple.
Owen was super cranky while we were making the cookies. He decided he wasn't interested in taking his afternoon nap because he napped a little bit in the car while I was running errands in the morning. So, he finally napped around four o'clock and we woke him up around 5:30 and he was not pleased about that!

After convincing Ellie that we had to wait to decorate the cookies until after dinner, we decorated! Ellie started doing the frosting and then decided that she was the sprinkle girl and mom could do all the icing. I was fine with that because it made the process go a lot faster.

Ellie showing off her work. (You can barely see Owen in the right hand upper corner of this picture.. he is on his way behind the couch to pull out the lights on the tree... little stinker).

Elise really liked decorating cookies. She has always LOVED helping me (or anyone else brave enough to let her help them) cook and bake. She likes to bake mostly because she can gorge herself on icing and batter.

The end product! Not bad considering this was our first baking batch of Christmas goods. They look pretty good, but to be honest I didn't even taste them. We took them to some friends' houses for them to enjoy. We certainly don't need all those cookies (all those MESSY cookies) around our house.

Here is our little Christmas tree. It looks a little sadder in this picture than it looks in person. We haven't done ornaments yet because Daniel hasn't been able to find the box labeled "Christmas" among all the other MANY boxes in the attic. I am still hopeful that it will be found :).

Advent Calendars

Last Friday, I bought the kids advent calendars to help countdown to Christmas. I bought one last year for Ellie but it wasn't as big of a hit as it has been so far this year. I bought two regular calendars for each of the kids for us to do in the morning before Daniel goes off to school and then we have a house advent that we do right before bed time. It is becoming a fun little tradition for us.

Here are dad and the kids looking for the number 4 window to open.
Ellie found it and now she's opening it up to get her chocolate.
This is Ellie's advent calendar.

And this is Owen's advent calendar. Owen eats his chocolate about every other time. The other times he drops it and Ellie scoops it up and eats it.

Here is our house advent. This one is actually pretty nice. The candies are of good quality and they are all different sizes, so this one is especially fun. So, yes, we are hyping up our children on chocolate first thing in the morning and right before bed... goooooood parenting:)! Oh well, I am justifying it because I was pretty good about not letting her have too much Halloween candy.

Later today, the kids and I are going to make sugar cookies. I bought some Christmas cookie cutters awhile back so we are anxious to use them and to decorate.

We bought a tree last night (pictures will be forthcoming after we decorate) for our Family Home Evening. We went to Hobby Lobby and decided we could not afford the one we REALLY wanted so we bought a 4.5 foot tree and got it for only $5! Such a killer deal. We figure that when we can afford something better we won't be too sad to chuck this one. For now, I think this will be perfect. I think we will try to keep it on the coffee table to stay out of reach of #2 (and #1 for that matter). We will see how that goes. Today it is sitting up on the table naked so the kids don't have ornaments or flashing lights to attract them to it. We'll see if they can stay away from it!

Mommy-Daughter Saturday

As the thought of more children is sinking in, we have decided that we need to start spending special one-on-one time with our kids. So, Daniel and I have started doing daddy-daughter, mommy-daughter, daddy-son, mommy-son time with the kids. Today was Ellie and my first special day together (I spend a lot of time with Ellie, A LOT, but this is the first official special time for just the two of us).

First, we went to the mall and did a little shopping together. Ellie climbed right into this mall cart so we were off to shop!
The main destination was the Disney store. Here is Ellie looking at the display window of the Mickey Mouse characters. While there, we bought her and Owen a fun Disney cup. She got a cup of Belle and Owen got a cup of Mickey (naturally).
Here is Elise Louise about to get her first hair cut ever. I know, probably past due, but nonetheless this is the first time. I took her to this salon called, "Sweet and Sassy". If you have a little girl, I definitely recommend this place! It is sooooo girlie. They do manicures, pedicures, hair cuts, updos, dressing up, make up, runway shows... all for little girls!
A little nervous, but she did great! She enjoyed looking into the mirrors and watching Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer on the TVs. She was also distracted by the runway "princess" show that was going on behind her.
She thought she was pretty great sitting in the hair cutting chair. Everyone there really cakes it on by complimenting Ellie so much. "You are so pretty", "You look so cute!", "You look like a princess"... another reason why little girls love this salon.

Here is the finished product. She had her hair curled, glitter in her hair and you can't really see it but she has a glitter star on her cheek.

After Ellie got her hair done, she had her nails painted. We didn't do the full-on manicure... she is only two, folks. She LOVED it! She thinks she is so pretty with her pink nails. I had to steer her away from her original color pick of blue... luckily she is easy to persuade.

Here Ellie is showing off her new nail color. She is too cute.

After her mini-makeover Ellie got a lollipop and a princess wand.

After the mall and the hair salon, the two of us went out to lunch. It was so fun!! We had pretty good conversation and it was nice to focus on just her for a meal. We went to a restaurant called Texican Cafe. While there, I tried to teach her about using her napkin. She was so cute putting it on her lap and wiping her mouth with it occasionally.

And a picture of mom... Ellie had to have a turn at the camera too.

Overall, we had a really great day. I think that too often we get so caught up with the day to day and dealing with potty accidents, time-outs, getting in trouble, cleaning up and all of that that I just don't get a chance to really spend quality time with the kids. This was really great for us and I am excited for next time!!

BTW, while we were out and about Daniel and Owen had fun together. They chased each other around the house, laughed a lot and played together. They had fun during their time together as well.

Personal Embarassment

One last little post for the weekend. Erin has been laughing at me all week because of this, and I'm a glutton for punishment so I'll post it on the Internets. On Monday, I was riding the bus to school as normal. I get off at my stop and as I'm walking up the stairs right next to the bus stop I realize I'm not carrying my laptop. I take a couple of seconds and try to remember if I left it in my car at the park and ride, but I distinctly remember carrying it onto the bus. At this point I realize that two and half years of research is driving down the road towards downtown Austin. So I chase the bus three stops until I'm finally able to catch up, bang on the bus door and get my laptop back. I was lucky that the bus got caught at a couple of long red lights or I never would have made it. And this story would be a lot less humorous if I hadn't got the laptop back.

I realized a couple of things about myself that day. Properly motivated, I'm not as fat and lazy as I thought I was. However the after-effects of sprinting a half mile the day back from Thanksgiving break showed me that I'm just as fat and lazy as I thought I was. I could barely breathe right afterward - I seriously thought I was going to pass out in the middle of the street. It took me two hours to get my breath back. I'm still recuperating from the cough I got from inhaling all that cold air (it was a chilly morning). And the day after I could barely move I was so stiff.

So now Erin has something else to laugh at me about. Apparently this incident still ranks below the time I walked through a door while drinking out of a milk carton and the milk carton caught the top of the doorway and I dumped milk all down my front. Or the time I tried to ride the grocery cart at Food-4-Less and biffed it right in front of her. She was there in person for those events, while this one she had to hear second hand. I hope she's grateful for the endless hours of entertainment I provide.

Thanks Giving

Our Thanksgiving at the McPherson's new house was a lot of fun. The food was good and plentiful, the family was fun and the football was in high definition. Good times. There was a Thanksgiving pool tournament and yours truly took home the championship. Goes to show that it's better to be lucky than good. Now I've got a huge target on my back coming into the Christmas holidays. Erin and I went model home shopping on Saturday and decided that we have expensive taste.

The Thanksgiving dinner actually looks small on the McPherson's gigantic table, but don't let that fool you - it was a real feast. The table can seat ten, and there were only seven of us.

Ells snarking at the camera

Owen discovered his tongue this weekend. He was sticking it out constantly. Seems like Ells went through a phase like this too.

Of all the televisions in the house, they choose the portable DVD player.

Grammy reading to the chillen.

The McPherson grandkids (minus one in utero). (l to r - Owen, Kyra, Ellie, Addy)

It really was a good time, and we're very grateful for the McPherson's putting their brand new house at risk by allowing two and unders in there. We were hoping to escape without damage, but a sharpie may have found its way onto the pool table bench cup holders, for which we apologize.

We are very thankful this year for beautiful healthy children, a home, family that loves us, and a Heavenly Father that is looking out for us. It's become apparent with this pregnancy that he is looking out for us more than we expected. We consider ourselves very lucky. On a personal note, I'm extremely grateful for the divine intervention that occurred during the god-fearing Cougar's 17-10 win over the wicked, devilish Utah Utes. As Austin Collie said after the game, "Obviously, when you’re doing what’s right on and off the field, I think the Lord steps in a plays a part.”

So true. So very true.

Oh, and I'm grateful for my wife too. She's great.

Owen's Birthday

Erin's been feeling under the weather lately, so she designated me to pick up the slack on the blog. While I might not be as descriptive or remember to include everything, you can count on me for a sarcastic comment or two.

Owen's birthday was a lot like Erin's birthday in that it dragged out for a week and a half. He got a couple of presents on his actual birthday, then some more the next day after we made it to Houston for Thanksgiving, then Grandpa McPherson took him shopping for more presents on Saturday. Needless to say, he made out like a bandit. He has more cars and trucks than he knows what to do with. Erin still feels bad for him because we didn't get him a cake specifically for his birthday (Thanksgiving pie is better in my opinion anyway), but I don't think it's a big deal. If he's mad at us twenty years later for not buying him a cake on his first birthday, then we won't have done a very good job raising him.

The kids both had colds last week, so here are the few pictures that don't show them with snot pouring out their noses.

Dork. But a cute dork.
All those presents and he wants to play with the cardboard box.
You can see the excitement in his eyes.

A friend gave Ellie these shoes (she calls them her "princess shoes") and she wore them pretty much the whole weekend. It was pretty funny to watch her skate around the tile floor in heels.

New pajamas and trucks - what more could a one year old want?