Christmas Day

Christmas Eve

Twelve days of Christmas the the Merkleys.
The kids loved singing and performing.


All the kids piled in Grandma's tub .

Opening a special Christmas Eve gift from Grandma

Cute new Christmas jammies.

A light Christmas dinner for the kids, since we had a big lunch at the Merkleys.

All the kids picked out their favorite treat to leave Santa along with their name card they made for Santa to leave their presents by.

Let the Festivities Begin...Before Christmas

Christmas at Grandmas. This year we went to California to spend Christmas with all the Grahams. The girls and I stayed for 3 whole weeks and Ben came out for 1. There was a lot of commotion, but it just made the house that much warmer for the holidays.


Crafts


We love having a professional hair stylist in the family!




The next few pictures are at "Pretend City". It really is the cutest place ever. It is basically a little town with things to do for the kids. There's a post office, beach, grocery store, garden, doctors office, art center, pretty much anything a real city would have. We spent the whole day there and could have gone back every other day because it was so entertaining for the kids.

At Mimi's for stockings.

Watching the boat parade at Newport beach

Helping decorate Grandmas Christmas tree.

Singing

Shiners

Poor Girls! Abby took a spill on the tile floor and later that day Gracie was playing ghost (with a blanket over her head) when she tripped and ran into the corner of the coffee table.

Good thing we have hard heads in this family :)

Happy Thanksgiving

This Thanksgiving we spent it at Ben's sister Karina's house. It was a small group: us, the Shorts, and the Labrum's. It sure was different not going to Nana and Pop's house, but I think we did a pretty good job pulling off a good feast. Gracie enjoyed playing with her "friends" (cousins) and we enjoyed spending time with family. We feel so blessed, especially at this time of year, and are so grateful for all we have.

...especially each other

8 Months

This has been a big month for sweet little Abigail. She moved up to a size 3 diaper, waves to everyone, crawls (still not perfect on all 4, but geting there), and is at the beginning of pulling herself up. It's so strange for me to go into her room when she wakes up and see her sitting there playing instead of wiggling laying down. She has a very loud, high pitch voice that she loves to vocalize. My sister Nora called her a Velociraptor dinosaur and nicknamed her "The Raptor". She's a very sweet girl, but the older she's getting I'm seeing her eager, curious, and sassy side coming out.

Chicago

We had our first annual Graham Girls Get Away and headed to Chicago. We were sad Jen and Melinda couldn't make it, but there will be many more to come. Grandma, Nora and June, and Me and Abigail went to Chicago for 5 days and had a blast. David, Kenna, and Addie were so nice to host us and show us around the windy city.

The Botanical Gardens were beautiful even though it wasn't the "best" time of year to go. David showed us all around while Kenna was post call that day.

Friday morning we hit up the "Windy City" and stayed from 10am -11:30pm. It was fun taking the train there and back. I loved walking around and was impressed at how clean and well kept the city is. The "Bean" was so cool how it reflected all the buildings. Of course we had Chicago dogs and well as the best deep dish pizza ever. Leave it to Nora to find these cute coats at such a great price that we all 3 had to get one. The babies were troopers being pushed around in strollers all day, but didn't seem to mind one bit. All 3 of them were perfect!

Saturday we took a tour at the Jelly Belly factor then hit up some more shopping.

Thanks Grahams for letting us crash your place and showing us a fun time.

Who's the Mom?

Yesterday Gracie told me two phrases:

"Mom, look at me when I'm talking to you" and

"Please, don't talk to me like that" (of course she used this one when I asked her to do something she didn't want to do)

Oh my Gracie Girl, what are we going to do with you? ...She sure keeps me on my toes :)