highlights from Dec 2008

Matching PJs and Mexican Hot Chocolate...look at those great moustaches. If you've never had mexican hot chocolate before, you are missing out. Abuelita brand is my favorite. Heat up four cups of milk, put a round tab of Abuelita chocolate into the blender. Pour the hot milk on top let it start to melt and then blend it up. Its a tradition for Brock's family to have it Christmas morning while opening presents...its my tradition to have it year round, and on the night we decorate the tree.

We celebrated Christmas Eve, Eve, Eve with our Plumb family. Here is a group shot of the festivities; 4 of my siblings were there. It's amazing to me how well my mom plays the piano. Some carolers stopped by and sang a couple songs and after they had already begun singing, my mom was able to sit down at the piano and match the key they were in. It was a bunch of little kids and she was able to join right in without making them change to a different key. It was amazing.

We spent the rest of Christmas in Paradise with Brock's fam and had a wonderful time up where it was a little colder. Ashlyn and Claire enjoyed their cousins and Lara enjoyed having lots of people to sleep on.

We celebrated Grandma Bonnie's 90th birthday, and had a fun Rockwood reunion/party.

I love this picture of Ashlyn peeking around her chair on Christmas morning at the presents. The week was spent playing with toys (feeding a playdough ice cream cone to tickle me Ernie), tormenting the dachshunds, and of course more mexican hot chocolate...

Which inspired these photos...

Here are a few other photos to wrap up the highlights for Claire and Ahlyn. Here is Claire having Tim and Becca help her open gifts. Aunt Becca lived with us when Claire was a baby and I swear some sort of imprinting took place, she LOVES her aunt Becca and now her fiance Tim as well. Claire also loves the baby play mat/mobile we have especially when her baby is in it. I find it hard to give Lara consistant "tummy time" or rolling time on the floor...too vulnerable.

Ashlyn is enjoying her Joy school group (one of the boys is missing from the group shot, there are five in the group and all the moms rotate teaching two days a week). We did a fun Christmas party and Ashlyn got to be the angel for the nativity. She was very excited about her gingerbread man as you can see, and she still often makes reference to what happened around Christmas time and what we should do next Christmas.

Voila I filled in the big gaping hole in my posting of Christmas/December 2008 and can now resume with more current events next time.

highlights from Nov 2008

Alright, we got the girls to bed early and Brock is having fun with his birthday calls, so I am going to take advantage and do a little bit of retroactive blogging. Here are a few of my favorite pics from last November...Daddy with his girls hard at work on their princess coloring.

Here's Lara flanked by her two bodygurads cheeks 1 and cheeks 2. (Cute Plumb cousins Melanie was born in June and Henry was born in August)

My favorite baby toy...suctioning something to your face just never gets old.

I love newborn facial expressions. They change so fast, she looks so different now. Lara is very social and has developed a good set of lungs. When she gets bored and needs to get my attention she has learned how to be louder than her sisters. However she is easily pacified and entertained.


We visited the zoo and Ashlyn made friends with a cute little monkey who had his hand up on the glass. the glare makes it hard to see. We went with my sister Becca and her fiance Tim...I'll post some wedding pics on March 21st. Yeah!!!!

We celebrated Thanksgiving at my Grandmother's home and took some impromptu family shots. It's always nice when you can get everyone looking in the same general direction.

Here is most of the Plumb clan. Its great to have my parents back who returned from their mission in England at the beginning of October.

Holy moly, I had to search my brain to remember my username and password, that's how long it has been....We're still here. I have three excuses

#1

#2

#3

Life is crazy fun, so I guess I'll have to become a midnight blogger.

We've had Lara home now for just over a week...look how much she's changed. Now we can see more resemblance between her and her sisters. The big sisters love holding her, especially Claire who still believes this is HER baby. I don't know what Claire is saying here, but Lara looks a little weary...

In some ways Ashlyn likes that mom is more distracted it gives her some time to experiment with body and wall art. Thank goodness for baby wipes and mr clean's magic eraser.



Ashlyn loves being a big sister and is always very gentle with Lara. She is glad I am not pregnant anymore and that I have more energy to play. She is also glad that Grandma and Grandpa Plumb returned from their mission in England...more people to play with. My parents left when I was 9 months pregnant with Claire and returned to me nine months pregnant with Lara. :) It has been wonderful to have mom around. I think I will offer her the bottom bunk in the girls room and see if she'll stay on permanently. Who wouldn't want to share a room with these two.

Lara Abigail Solano was anxious to follow in her sister's footsteps...she wanted to come into the world on a day when her father had a final exam. So she woke mom up four days before her due date at 3:30 am on October 16th, we checked into the hospital at 7 am and she was born at 10 am. 8 lbs 2 oz, 20 inches long, and already smiling. Another cutie from head to toes.

To Do or not to Hairdo?

I face a daily inner struggle. Claire has a great head of hair with lots of styling potential. However, clips and rubber bands will only last a short while. As soon as she has a moment to get bored and contemplate the fact that something is in her hair, she will find a way to pull it out. So we usually leave the house cute and reach our destination with hair out, shoes off, but way more comfortable. Rubber bands last longer, but leave crazy crimps and bends in the hair as shown above. Clips are worthless. With Ashlyn it was easy because I just needed a bow and some elmers glue to make her bald head a little more fancy until she was 18 months. I guess with Claire I will just have to stick with it until she learns to leave her hair alone. Any suggestions or miracle clips out there? Or did I seal my fate by not putting elastic headbands around her head from birth to get her used to having something on her head?

Brock and I decided that we would go ahead and bite the bullet and put up some bunk beds. We wanted to keep a room as an office/study and knew that deep down the girls will love being cramed into one room for a couple of years...it will build character and sisterly love and affection. As we set it up Ashlyn and Claire kept climbing on the bottom bunk anxious to try it out. We asked Ashlyn what it needed and she suggested sheets, but other than that it was comfy. She is so easy to please at this point. While we were driving today I pointed out some hot air balloons and she was pretty excited. She suggested that maybe they were racing and said, "that would be fun to ride on one, but we don't have one...We have a rocking horse though." I'm glad she is content with her rocking horse 'snowpea'.

Back to the bunk beds...Ashlyn loves climbing her ladder and going to bed every night...well, most nights. She is coming to the realization that after she goes to sleep we do all sorts of fun things like clean the kitchen and do homework. She requests to sleep in our room or on the hallway floor, or tries to make us promise to go right to sleep. The excitement of a top bunk to sleep in has curbed those requests for the moment.

We are so glad Great Grandmother gave us this exercise tramp...hours of fun.

Photo shoot, Family, and Friends

I finally tried to get some shots of the girls together, and Claire was not ready to pose. Ashlyn was having a ball striking any pose, but Claire kept laughing and running out of the room. We would position her and she would be still 3 seconds...not a lot of time to get her and Ashlyn to look at the camera and smile. Ashlyn was smiling in this one, but I told Claire to give her a hug to keep her put and this is what we ended up with.

My brother Spencer and his wife Kim blessed their new baby Melanie and all my siblings were able to be together for the week-end. All the little cousins had so much fun spending time together. We missed My parents (still in England until Oct. 2) and Cami (8 months pregnant) and Ezra, and thank Kim for letting us gather in her home and feeding all of us. Lots of playing, food, and fun.

We also had a visit from the Wahlins. It was so fun to have them over and Caden made the greatest horsey noise I have ever heard! Check out those froggy goggles Ashlyn is sporting...a fashion queen already.

It struck me today how much older Claire looked... I think it was the pigtails and her toothy grin. She has a good variety of words in her vocab including: Mom, Daddy, doggy, more, book, ball, bubbles, and Grandma. Its fun to see the girls become playmates. They both will sit and look at books together quite often, and chase each other and scream and laugh.