madeline 4 months

madeline turned 4 months on christmas day and we had her 4 month check up on tuesday. she is doing good, but is not gaining quite as much weight as they would have liked. she now weighs 11 lbs 10 ozs. last time she weighed 10 lbs 8 ounces and she "should" have gained 2 pounds in 2 months and she only gained 1 pound 2 ounces. she went from being 35% to 10% in weight and she is still 50% in height. so we started her on cereal and we will keep watching her. it is probably that i am not making enough milk (the same thing happened with brooke) and i may have to supplement with formula. the doctor said that since she is so laid back (the doctor said so several times!) that she could just be accepting the amount of food she is getting and not fussing. that is not ok at this point, so we just have to keep an eye on her :) other than that, she looks great. she was waking up while we were on christmas vacation. so we are working on getting her to re-sleep through the night (the doctor said that she could have been waking up if she was hungry). and since we have started her on cereal, she is sleeping much better :)
so all in all madeline is doing great, she is super cute and a pretty laid back baby! yea!

sick christmas

i really wanted to title this "white christmas". i mean it has been years and years since there was any kind of snow even close to christmas. so this year there was some (in greensboro). that should have been the defining element of christmas. well alas it was not, the sickness ruled all. hana was sick the week before we went home. nothing major. but each day she would wake up with a cough and fever. so we decided to keep her home from school and make sure she was well for the christmas vacation. after a week she was much better. then along about friday (the day before we left) brooke had a fever. then that night as we were packing, i started to not feel great. saturday we headed to greensboro anyway. jack's christmas present was seeing a band play in winston that saturday. so he left a sick me a 3 girls in greensboro with my parents. that night was bad for me... high fever and achy. for the rest of the week i was taking medicine and not feeling great and a day later madeline got sick. but we still did not let that slow us down... here is a run down of what we did over christmas vacation. since my mom worked the first few days, we did a few low key things. we went to the natural science center, played in the snow, and made a fort in the house with boxes that courtney brought from mom's work.
then wednesday we took a tour of a local fire station. the kids loved it! and the firemen were so nice ;) they even let us ride in the truck :) and the kids got to honk the horn!
then on to thursday and the typical christmas eve things. (expect in the morning jack, steven, hana, and steven edward went to the zoo). we went lunch and then to the candle light service.
then came christmas morning! tearing open presents, it is always over so quickly!

be prepared for picture overload!!

playing in the snow!
roasting marsh mellows inside!cookingwaiting for the fort to be builtahhh the fort!!decorating the fortthe fire station visit!riding in the fire truck!the whole family!!the candle light servicematching pjs! so cute :)christmas morning!hana was SO excited when she opened any present!as i say every year... i can NOT believe christmas is over! it just comes and goes SO quicky!

now on to 2010!

christmas cookies

saturday afternoon we participated in our yearly tradition of making christmas cookies. this is the third year we have done them. the first year was just hana. then last year brooke joined us :) i guess next year i will have 3 making them!! it is much fun!! so enjoy the picture over load!! and take a peak back at the last two years of making them... it seems to get less messy as they get older (so i guess next year will be messy again, maybe it will improve from there!)

rolling the doughcutting the shapesbrooke icinghana icingsmiles all around :)merry christmas!!

Enchanted Airlie

Tonight PPD (where jack works) got to go to enchanted airlie for free. i always love some free holiday activities! the girls got to see santa. hana sat on his lap and talked to him, brooke just wanted to wave. of course there were beautiful lights everywhere... but the girls favorite part by far, were the trains. there were some very elaborate model trains set up both inside and outside. i heard one of the "train guys" say that it took them 3000 man hours to set them up. and i can believe it, they were very cool!

hana with santabrooke waving at santa :)some of the lightsmore lightsdaddy and the girls watching the trainsone of the outside trainssome of the impressive inside trains
(if you click on the pic and make it big you can really see all of the details!)

it was a fun night! thanks for the free tradition PPD. i love traditions and i love free!!
(we went last year, but i forgot the memory card in my camera... so there were no pictures... oops!)

ho ho holiday 5K

well i ran race number 2 today. it was horrible running conditions... cold and raining. but we did it anyway. this course was much harder than my first. it had several steep hills (now i know that steep is relative, since we live at the beach!). but i IMPROVED my time by almost exactly 1 minute!! my time was 31:16 (last time was 32:19). my goal was to be under 30, but that was not so realistic since this course was harder (not the mention the rain). so next race i will be under 30!! but i am still proud of myself! (and thanks again jodi for running with me!! especially since she is now pregnant and wasn't feeling great during the race :)
oh and there are no pictures of me running because (did i already mention?) it was cold and raining and i didn't want the kids out there!

welcome christmas

in true christmas fashion, i dressed the girls up in their christmas attire yesterday and took some pictures. they are just so cute!
so enjoy!!



i am running in another race tomorrow... please pray it doesn't rain. 40s and rain is not my idea of ideal race conditions!!

and on to christmas

since thanksgiving has come and gone (did i say already that i can not believe thanksgiving is over!), now it is time for christmas!! to that end, we got our tree last night! we traveled to lowe's to select our tree (not an exciting place to get a tree, but the trees are good and cheap!). it was cold and really felt a bit like christmas. when we got back, of course we decorated it.
i just LOVE christmas!!!

the girls in the cart while we select our treejack with the winning treehana after decorating :)madeline checking out her FIRST christmas tree!wow! look at those lights!

welcome christmas!