Beauty Shop

Anyone who knows Lauren has likely been asked by her to paint her "fingertails" or "Toetoes". She loves all things girl, including nail polish, lip gloss, and pretty hair. So we played around the other day, making her hair straight...

Tyler had to get into it, so we gave him a faux hawk.
He's got these cowlicks up front, though, so it didn't work too well.

This time we put curlies all up on top.

Birthday Girl

Lauren's birthday is a few days after Christmas, so we saved the bigger-sized gifts for her birthday instead of packing them in the car for Christmas. She loved her Dora bike, even though she probably won't be able to ride it til spring when the snow melts!

This cake was not my proudest moment! It kept falling apart on me. Thankfully, she didn't seem to care.

For days Lauren had talked about her cake, and us singing Happy Birthday to her, and how excited she was to blow out the candles. When the moment came, she was very serious about it. Like this was a very important thing, and she wanted to do it just right!

This was her little friend party. Just a couple girls and Tyler. It was perfect for that age. They colored, played some games, ate cake and ice cream, opened presents, and left an hour later. Pretty nice!

I can't believe she's three! Next step: Getting over her fear of the toilet! :)

Trip to Eugene

We spent the week before Christmas in Oregon with my family. My parents had just moved back into their house (after 12 years away) the day before we got there. It was a lot of fun to be back home again where I grew up.

One of the favorite attractions were the neighbors' goats. They would literally eat anything, and the kids loved finding things to feed them.





Also high on the list of fun things was driving the tractor with Grandpa. They're still talking about how fun it was to drive the tractor, and how Grandpa got it stuck in the mud, but then pulled it out with the truck. Such adventure!!

Christmas Eve was spent with the family. Scott and Jared (my brothers) got out their guitars and entertained us. Jared has taught his girls a lot of his funny songs, so it was fun seeing the younger generation get into it!

Following our little family's tradition, the kids got to wear their new Christmas Jammies and slippers.

I'm not sayin' a word, not one single word about the Christmas tree, and how it happened to fall down (again!) when I was the only one in the room. And how we had to cut a foot off of it, and how it just wasn't the same pretty tree that we had chosen to begin with. Nope, not sayin' a word!




Christmas Morning: This is how I spent all my Christmas mornings as a kid. Lined up youngest to oldest, waiting while Dad (now Grandpa) went through his whole spiel about how sad it was that Santa didn't come.

Unfortunately, our trip got cut off a day early, since a storm was coming in and we didn't want to drive through it, so we had to leave on Christmas Day to go home. But although it seemed really short this year, we had a great time, and are so glad my Mom and Dad are home to stay!

This is what we came home to. Snow, snow, and more snow. I can't complain, though, I really like the white stuff.