Christmas Eve {Christmas with Pappy and Omi}

    We spent our Christmas Eve in Plano with Pappy and Omi. We haven't spent a Christmas Eve/ Christmas in Texas since we lived in North Carolina, so it was special for Aaron to spend it with his family. We ate a ton, as usual, and had fun opening presents after dinner. I really loved my present! You'll see what it was at the end...

 Olivia is excited for her first Christmas Eve!

December Traditions

    December is a busy month for us. I love traditions, and over the years we have added quite a few to the month of December. Here they are, not including our Christmas Eve Traditions.

 Christmas book countdown:

      For the last few years, we have done a Christmas book countdown with Connor starting on the 1st of December. Every night before bed Connor opens a different Christmas book. He can pick them in any order, except for the last two. On Christmas Eve {which we will be celebrating when we are back at our house on the 26th} he will read The Night Before Christmas, and on Christmas day he will read The Christmas Baby.

Olivia: Four Months Old

Olivia,

     Today you are F O U R months old my little princess.  I love you so much, and I show you by giving you a million kisses everyday! I can't help myself because your chubby cheeks are so kissable. You have developed quite a little personality this month. You love to smile and talk to anybody that will listen! Your brother is starting to finally pay attention to you and interact with you. He swears you are saying words when you are cooing and he makes sure I am listening to you. One day you two are going to be best friends, I'm calling it!

XOXO,

Your Mama

{Photos taken on December 21}

Olivia: Four Month Check-Up

    Little Miss Livie had her four month check-up today just three days shy of turning four months. She is petite just like her mama. Her stats are:

Height: 60.2 cm {23.5 in} {33%}

Weight: 5.85 kg {12 lbs 9 oz - with clothes} {38%}

Head: 39 cm {15 inches} {8%}

     The only concern the doctor had was with her head being on the smaller side. Her soft spot was smaller than what it should be, so we will have to keep an eye on it. If for some reason it's even smaller by her next visit, they will have to do a head ultrasound. I went by myself to her appointment, so I didn't get any pictures during her check-up, but here are some from this morning.

Holiday Treats

    I love making treats for people, so when Connor was given the opportunity to take a treat to his class Christmas party, I was all about it. While searching through Pinterest, I saw some cute recipes for snowman soup, which I had never heard of. I loved the concept, so I made 10 bags for the kids in our family and for our friends kids that will be spending some time with us over the holidays.

Connor's Visit to the ER

    So because I like to document everything {because one day I am going to print these out into books for the kids} I need to write about our Saturday spent in the ER. Connor had been running a fever on and off for the last couple of days. On Thursday evening he complained that his neck was hurting. I mentioned to Aaron that a sore neck is a sign of meningitis, but we thought we would see how he was feeling the next morning. The next morning he was back to his old self, until around 3pm he started running another fever. I medicated him the rest of the day/evening. Around 4am on Saturday morning I noticed he still felt warm, so I gave him some more Ibuprofen. When he woke up he was acting normal. We had errands to run and stopped to eat lunch between one of our stops when Connor started shivering. It was cold in the food court, but not cold enough to cause shivers. Then he started complaining that he was tired and his head hurt. I started looking him over and noticed he had a rash on his chest. That's when the red flag came to my mind: meningitis. I told Aaron we needed to take him to the ER to be seen. 

Switching Olivia To Cloth Diapers

    Today was Olivia's first day in cloth diapers, and it was a success. I had been delaying using them because I dreaded the prep phase, but we were finally running low on our fourth box of diapers and realized it was time. I am so glad I finally started using them on her because she looked so darn cute in them.

Family Pictures

      Family pictures are a must for me every year at this time. We need them for our Christmas cards, and the weather is usually nice. This was the first year we didn't include our dogs, and it was the first year we took them ourselves {thank you tripod and bluetooth on the camera to make my phone the remote}. We took them on November 7, right before Aaron left. We thought they were hard with one kid, but then we added another and getting the perfect shot was hard. I could have kept going, but you can see in the last picture that Connor was over it.  

Lately

    Aaron has been gone for a month and we have missed him so much. Thankfully he comes home later today and we are so excited. We have been keeping pretty busy over here between school and traveling over Thanksgiving break. I haven't posted any blogs lately from our day to day life, so I thought this would be a good one to catch up on. I also don't want to forget any of these moments with my babies because gosh, they grow so fast!

November 8, 2017:

Aaron was packing to leave the next day and Connor was really sad.

G & P Ranch

     The day after Thanksgiving, my mom's side of the family got together at the ranch for a fish fry. The weather was perfect, which is hard to count on for Texas! Connor played with his cousins and practiced shooting with his Pepaw. Livie slept a lot and was passed around and carried by everyone. It was a wonderful day filled with good food, lots of laughter, and quality family time.

Thanksgiving 2017

     We had so much to be thankful for this Thanksgiving. We have two healthy babies, a new house, and we are living back in Texas surrounded by family. I can't tell you the last time I spent Thanksgiving with my family {probably 7 years ago}, so it was so nice to spend a holiday with them. The only thing missing was Aaron. We missed him so much, but he’s going to be home in the next dew days so I am thankful for that!

Olivia: Three Months Old {+ 13 Days}

My Little Livie,

    Happy {late} T H R E E month birthday. You, my love, are such a mamas girl and everyone who has met you has seen it. I absolutely love how much you love me. You love to stare at me and are happy as long as you can see me, and are in my arms. Haha! I am super late writing this because you turned three months on Thanksgiving and we were out of town, and then we came home and our internet has been down for over a week. So here I am at Starbuck's writing your monthly birthday blog because I can’t put it off any longer. I love you so much beautiful girl!

Love,

Your Mama

{Photo taken on 11/26. You were 3 months and 3 days old.}