Our Christmas Part 4 ~ Christmas with Papoo and Grandma

Saturday morning we hung out at my mom's house until Rick and Shirley got to town. Isabelle got the Tinkerbell movie for Christmas so she wanted to watch the movie. Of course she had to put on her Tinkerbell outfit!



Then we headed over to Courtney and Dan's house to celebrate Christmas with Jason's dad. They had just gotten to town from North Carolina. They left at like 3AM I think! Crazy! They are tougher then us.. we leave the night before and stay halfway in a hotel! HAHA!

Again, Isabelle was delighted to see some princess wrapping paper under Aunt Courtney and Uncle Dan's tree! LOL! When we got there Emily was napping so we ordered some pizza for lunch. While we ate, Isabelle didn't waste any time checking out Emily's stash of toys! Emily woke up not long after lunch. I felt so bad for her.. she was sick and you could tell that just being awake was a struggle enough for her. Poor girl.. I hate seeing sick babies. :o(

Then it was present time! I think Isabelle saw Aunt Courtney and Uncle Dan helping Emily open presents so of course then she needed my help! She was very excited about getting to open all of the boxes once she had the presents unwrapped. She had fun checking out Emily's new presents too!

I have no clue what is up with this smile but its the one we get when we tell her to smile!

Sleepy and sick Emily with her new doll

Grandpa Koons and Emily

Grandpa (Papoo) with his girls

Grandpa and Grandma Koons with Isabelle and Emily

Isabelle snuggling with Aunt Courtney

Decorating Daddy with Christmas bows!

Awww! Hugs for Emily!

Ooh and I just have to add that Jason and I got the BEST toffee in the world from his Dad and Shirley for Christmas... omg seriously it is melt in your mouth delicious. I urge you all to order some..trust me you won't regret it. I am trying to keep myself from ordering more because I don't want to end up weighing a million pounds. I am serious.. it is that good! Here's the link.. now go get some! ;o)

Our Christmas Part 3 ~ Christmas with Pap and Mel-Mel

Friday morning we woke up and got ready to head to Mechanicsburg to celebrate Christmas with Pap and Mel-Mel. Mel was making lasagna (which I was very excited about! Big surprise, huh!?!) to give us a break from all of the traditional holiday foods. Boy was it delicious too! Isabelle was very excited to get to play with Jack (their Jack Russell) and I think he was actually kind of excited to play with Isabelle too. The cat was a different story though.. she was not very happy to see Isabelle. Statistically though, most (ok in our instances ALL) cats are not excited to see Isabelle! I think this was the best that Jack and Isabelle played together. Isabelle has this amazing love and acceptance for all animals (and I mean ALL..the other day we were grocery shopping and she wanted to stop to look at the lobsters in the tank...she told me they were soooo cute!) and she thinks that all animals love her just as unconditionally as she loves them. To further prove my point, her favorite place to go (after Target) is to the vet office, and when we drop Kashmir off for boarding she begs to stay with her and the other animals! haha! What a silly girl!

By this point Isabelle had pretty much figured out this whole Christmas thing. So she knew after we ate that it was time for presents. She had scoped out the tree when we got there and saw some princess wrapping paper so she knew there were some for her!

Isabelle and her own camera!

Telling us who is on her new robe

Showing off her new jammies that she has been drooling over at Target! I am glad I didn't cave and buy them!

Our Christmas Part 2 ~ Christmas Day

Me and my brother are both such dorks.. we both always have troubles sleeping in on Christmas morning...and by trouble sleeping in I mean I was awake at 6:30 and I think I heard Jason get up around 7:00. Yeah we are losers....whatever. Jason (husband Jason LOL!) isn't much better so that is good for me when we have Christmas at home! Hee hee! So we are all awake sitting on the couch looking at each other waiting for Isabelle to wake up! She finally woke up at like 8:30 I think. She was a little tired since she wen to bed so late and was up earlier then usual. She also likes to be the first to arrive at an event and not the last so she wasn't excited to come up to see all of us just sitting there waiting for her.. I think she is afraid she is missing something! It took her a little while to wake up and decide to start opening her presents. She got a ton of fun stuff and was really excited to open everything as soon as she opened it and spend some time playing with it! It was so cute how every present she said "oooh look at this!" I took a lot of video but haven't had a chance to upload it to my computer yet so hopefully I will get it edited and posted soon! Meanwhile, here are a couple of pics from the morning

Snow White made an appearance Christmas morning!!

Taking a donut break!

Isabelle with Aunt Tif

Checking out her new Fancy Nancy book!

Then my Nana and Papap and Jean and George (Jeff's parents) came over for Christmas dinner. Mom made ham (another favorite of mine.. can you tell I am pregnant? I am very excited about the holiday food! HAHA!) and it was so good. I think I ate leftover ham everytime I was home regardless if I was hungry or not! hee hee! Ooh and also love the pineapple casserole too.. my mouth is watering just thinking about it! ;o)



At 4:00 Isabelle was still taking a much needed nap so Jason headed over to his mom's house and then came back and got us when she woke up. Isabelle was very excited to get to play with her cousin, Emily! She is very into how people are related and who is who's mommy and daddy so she talks about Emily a lot and that she is her cousin and Aunt Courtney is Emily's Mommy and Uncle Dan is Emily's Daddy. Anyway, it was really cute to see them play together! Isabelle loved chasing Emily or having Emily chase her. She also learned that Emily has the same love of lining items up in perfect rows and had some fun with Grandma Sipe's candies! Isabelle was getting into the swing of present opening and was excited when it was time to open them! She opened all of her presents and then proceeded to open ours for us!

Playing with some of her new snap & style babies

Looking at the photobook she got for Grandpa and Grandma Sipe with Grandma Sipe

Then Isabelle said she wanted me to take a picture of her and I together.. she loves when you take a picture with her and you have to hold the camera out. She said what we needed to do for each picture..

I didn't get the memo until after that I was supposed to make a funny face. Woops!

Our Christmas

Like a month late.. I know, I know... sorry! I have been recovering, catching up and trying to get back into routine since we got back. Still not 100% there, but when am I ever so what do I expect?!? But enough about my inadequacies! LOL! Wow, it is hard to remember back so far... yeah I'll just blame that one on baby brain...gotta use it while I can!

So we had the ice storm the Friday before Christmas..we left the 23rd (Tuesday for all of you out there that only ever know the day of the week and not the actual date..) to start our trip to PA. Oh yeah so that was the day my phone decided that it was pretty much done working. We weren't supposed to leave until after Jason got off of work.. we were hoping he would get out a little early so we could try and beat the storm. Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that we and pretty much all of Ohio was under the same winter storm warning that we were. So Isabelle and I ran our errands and met Karen for lunch...in the meantime poor Jason is calling my non-working cell trying to see how early he can leave. Fortunately we both get home at the same time...which is around 2:00. Well the storm decided that it wasn't going to hold off for us and the snow is coming down pretty hard. We finish up all of our packing and pack up the Jeep and head out..3:00PM. So we are cruising along 30 when all of a sudden us and everyone around us hits black ice.. awesome. To make a long and boring (only boring because you weren't white knuckled with us in the Jeep!) story short we ended up halfway in North Lima around 9:00.. so what is usually a 3 1/2 hour trip was 6 grueling hours! What a way to start off!

We were very lucky that the storm passed through over night and behind it was a warm front so we just had rain and fog the rest of the trip. That was quite a relief! We got to Dover on Christmas Eve with a little bit of time to relax before all of our festivities began! I forgot my camera at my mom's house so I took pictures using her camera. I don't have any of those pics yet so I can't post anything from Christmas Eve. First we went to my Nana and Papap's house and got to see a lot of family that we don't usually get to see on our trips home.. that was really nice! I was also really excited to get to see my cousin Allie who I don't think I have seen since our wedding in 2003 and her mom, my Aunt Ruth who was always one of my favorite people and I haven't seen her since I was in high school.. so a good 10-12 years! It was really great getting to see them and chat for a little before they had to head out. It was definitely one of my favorite moments from our trip. Isabelle had a great time performing for whatever audience she could conjur up..which was not difficult! Christmas Eve at Nana's house was always one of my favorite parts about Christmas so I was really glad that this year it was at her house and we were able to go.

After that we headed to Carol and John's (Jeff's sister and brother-in-law) for Christmas with his family. Here Isabelle got her first taste of opening Christmas presents..and boy was she a fan! She wanted every toy opened as soon as she opened it! There were a lot of kids here and she had a blast playing with them. It was really nice to get to spend some time with all of Jeff's family and reminisce with Carol and John about how great Maui was... they happened to be on the same plane as us going to Maui when we went last January... ahh, how I wish we were gearing up for that trip again right now!!!

Then we headed to Jason's Grandma March's house for Christmas Eve with his family where more presents were waiting for Miss Isabelle! She was sad that Emily was already in bed and she didn't have a chance to play with her, but they were able to get lots of playtime in then on Christmas and Saturday. Isabelle was very excited to open her my little pony toy from Great-Grandma and Great-Grandpa March and play with it with Grandma Sipe. While Isabelle was playing (and I was scarfing down peanut brittle..my FAVORITE!) we heard some sirens and we looked out the window and there was Santa on the firetruck! I had totally forgotten that Santa rides around on the firetruck through the town on Christmas Eve so I was just as shocked as Isabelle was! He was stopped right in front of their house so we all ran outside for Isabelle to see him. He came over and said hi to Isabelle.. she isn't a fan of Santa so her excitement disappeared the closer he got. She said, "ok, I ready to go back inside and play now!" Haha! First I told her to remind Santa what she wanted for Christmas so she told him "I want Snow White" and then she was ready to get her behind out of there!

It was getting late so we headed back to my moms house to open our new pj's and get Santa's plate of cookies ready for him. Isabelle very meticulously picked which cookies to leave for Santa. She must have picked some good ones because Santa managed to eat every single one of them!

Here is Isabelle in her Christmas pj's that she got on Christmas Eve. It was about 11:00PM and she said she wanted to sit with Lily for her picture and I wasn't about to argue! LOL! So this is as good as it gets!

Ice Ice Baby

This morning we woke up to a world of ice! It was supposed to start around 10, but at 10:45 when we went to bed the ice storm hadn't started yet. I woke up a couple times during the night because it was so loud. I was praying it was warm enough out that it was only rain, but no such luck. This morning we were under a level 2 emergency. All of the schools were closed and some businesses too. Jason made it to work safe and sound. He said the roads were really treacherous though.

We have a lot of tree branches down in our yard. The ice looks pretty, but it is so sad how many tree branches are down. I was outside a little bit ago and all you could hear were sirens and ice crashing down through the trees. I didn't venture off of our deck, but it looks like our crabapple and apple trees both got knocked over. There is a tree in the way but I think it looks like our pear tree made it. I can only wonder what the meadow looks like...I valued my life enough not to venture out there with all of the trees everywhere!

Its supposed to warm up enough today to hopefully melt the ice. When we woke up we couldn't see out of any of our front windows as they were coated in ice. Now the ice is melting and we can see somewhat out of some of them.

Anyway, here are some pics of our scenery today!

Potties, Pregnancy and Playtime

Potty training is still going really well! Isabelle has only been in panties (except naptime and bedtime we put a diaper on her) since, oh gosh.. whatever day that was last week..ehhh..maybe Thurs or Fri(??)and has only had 1 accident! The accident was a little anticipated as it was the first time we were with all of her friends. She stopped going though and told me she had to go potty and went the rest in the toilet. I was so proud of her! Then today she was playing with Adan and went in the potty twice without any accidents! She has really done awesome!

As for pooping in the potty..well, she isn't really a fan... she is, but she doesn't like to just sit there and wait to be all done...she's got things to do! Haha! I figured pooping in the potty would be harder to get, but she'll figure it out!

Baby #2 is doing good as well. I felt him/her move a couple of weeks ago and now I feel it all the time. We are really excited for our ultrasound appointment. We have been working hard on our names lists! I am 99.9% sure we have it narrowed down to one name for our boy name. As for girl names we still have a little list, but keep talking about the top 3. I am excited to find out the sex so then we only have to focus on one side! We are waiting until we know the sex and are for sure that is the name we are going with before we tell anyone our names. Hearing people's opinions of the names we were deciding on was one of the most annoying parts of our pregnancy with Isabelle so we are trying to avoid that at all costs. LOL! I have learned that once you are set in stone with a name and say, "the name of our child WILL BE blah blah blah" that people tend to keep their opinions to themselves...it's all about saying it with authority, at least I think. So we'll do a comparison study and see how my theory pans out.

In other news, here is a little video of Isabelle playing dolls with Daddy from this past weekend.. I think it is actually more like Daddy playing with dolls and Isabelle watching, but it is entertaining nonetheless. :o)