It's beginning to look alot like Christmas...

at least at our house anyway!

We started the holiday season the day after Thanksgiving by decorating gingerbread houses with Glammy and Kate's cousins at Southern Hills. I had wanted to buy a kit at Target to do with Kate, but this was SO much better because they had all the materials out, organized, and ready to go, plus I didn't have to clean up one thing!! Kate and Preston worked on a house together, although Preston did more eating of the candy than decorating!:) Kate, however, loved spreading the frosting on the house and then arranging the candy in her own exact way without help from mommy or Glammy (and she let us know if we tried to help too much!). She had a great time and we definitely want to make this an annual event...thanks Glammy for inviting us!

On Sunday, we decorated our Christmas tree together. This was Kate's first year to have a hand in it and she was a big help. Most of our ornaments are breakable so we had to remind her to be very careful, but she did a great job and loved the end results. She tells me everyday how "beautiful" she thinks her tree is! I do think that after Christmas is over and the sales start, I'll buy the girls their own, smaller tree and fun ornaments and they can have their own special tree to decorate each year. That way we can have our "beautiful" tree and a tree with Dora ornaments and homemade ornaments. On a side note, Ryan ran to Starbucks before the decorating started to get drinks and got Kate a drink as well...her very own, child-size hot chocolate. She thought she was so big-time!! She loved it and has already asked to have another. I think we'll try to keep them to a minimum because a. they're messy (as you will see in a picture) and b. a 2 year old does NOT need that much sugar!

Maggie loved looking at the lights on the tree!

Potty-trained!!

Well, it's official...we are only having to buy one set of diapers again! Kate started the potty-training process last Monday and the beginning was a bit rough. Before lunchtime, she had already had 4 accidents. I didn't think we were cut out for this potty-training business but decided to give it a shot through the rest of the day. Good thing I did...it clicked and we've been going strong ever since (except for one tee-tee accident last Friday)! She's awesome at it and is even to the point where she tells me when she has to go versus me bugging her about going all the time. I'm so super proud of her!!

Just a funny little story that she will one day be oh so embarrassed that I shared with everyone...she needed to go poo-poo on Thanksgiving and when I sat her on the potty to go, she looked at me so seriously and said "It's gonna splash!" I love the things that she says!

Here is a picture of my big girl on the potty. Of course this adds a whole new element to getting dressed in the mornings...which panties will it be today?!

Happy Thanksgiving!

A couple of Thanksgiving pics from tonight...hope you each had a happy day and ate lots of turkey!

Maggie is 3 months old!

Another month has flown by! Maggie had a busy late October/November. She celebrated her first Halloween dressed as a chick, went on her second airplane ride to Dallas, traveled to Louisiana for our cousin's wedding, and is about an hour away from celebrating her first Thanksgiving.

She is sleeping 12 hours at night and still a great eater (her thighs are proof of that!). Maggie is truly the sweetest baby (I said the same about Kate) and each time she smiles or giggles at me, I think I could eat her!!

Here are the monthly pics of the two girls at the same age, dressed in the same outfit. Kate is the top picture and Maggie is the bottom. I think this month's pics really resemble each other...anyone else?

Kate the entertainer!

At school last Wednesday, Kate's class had a very small and very short Thanksgiving program. They sang a few songs about Thanksgiving and a few songs about Jesus. Kate was a very willing participant as you will see in the clip and since the song was about acorns/nuts, it fits her personality perfectly!

Photo shoot

I had a couple of outfits that I wanted/needed to take pictures of the girls in so last night was our big photo shoot. They were both patient models and the pictures turned out nicely.

The white dresses that Maggie is modeling are antique dresses that belonged to either Maggie's great-great Aunt Jan or great-great Grandmother Baldwin. This means that the dresses are either 70+ years old or 100+ years old. Either way, it was sweet to see her in them. I wish my Grandmother and Granddaddy could have seen her wear them. They would have loved it!

Now this second set of pictures is a bit strange. My college friend, Laura, is a very funny, creative person and she started "The Sisterhood of the Traveling Vest." (Obviously a spoof off of "The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants") Anyway, our friend Julie lovingly gave this precious vest to Laura's daughter, Sophia, when she was a baby, but instead of cherishing such an adorable piece of clothing, Laura decided to photograph Sophia, and later baby George in just a diaper and the vest, put the pictures in an album and then pass the album and vest around our group of girlfriends to also take our children's pictures in the vest and add them to the album. So here are the pictures of Kate and Maggie modeling the Wyoming vest which we will pass on next to Marli for Coleson to model.

Happy Halloween (finally!)

Halloween has finally come and gone! I feel like I've dressed and undressed my piggy more times than I can count, but we definitely got our money's worth. Last night for our big Halloween

hurrah, we went over to Caroline's house for a little get-together with friends. The kids had a great time playing and didn't even remember that they wanted to trick-or-treat. Becky made goodie bags for them and that was enough to make them happy. Kate had a great Halloween and had fun at all the festivities leading up to Halloween. We'll have to start thinking of costume ideas for next year!
Meet Maggie the cutest chick!
Kate and friends on Halloween Even Lucy and Chuck got in on the fun...Dora and Diego!