Christmas 2012 in Chicago

We had a great Christmas in Chicago with my enormous extended family. It was busy busy busy, but we packed in lots of qt with parents, siblings, cousins, aunts, uncles, grandparents, high school friends, downtown shopping, deeelicious food, and even a snowfall on Christmas morning!

Yay for time off and wonderful family to spend it with!

Wishing you all the happiest of holidays!!

Scarlett's first stage performance

It was a very surreal experience to be at my daughter's first Christmas program tonight. Is this real life? #WowImOld. But, also kind of cool. Christmas pageants = for real parental obligations!

I was pretty sure it was going to go badly considering the problems she's been having at school lately. When I picked her up this afternoon, the teacher said she refused to go on stage during rehearsal. Great.

We showed up with expectations low. Definitely knew she wasn't going to sing, that was a given. All I could do was hold my breath that she would get on stage with the others and not throw a serious screaming fit.

Well, prayers were answered. She did get on stage! Only after being carried there by her teacher, however.

And then...she proceeded to pick her nose for the whole performance.

Seriously. Finger up her nose the.entire.time.

Here's a special clip where she takes a little taste. #soproud

Classic toddler scared of Santa

Scarlett's terrified, Tripp's unfazed.

Alphabet soup

Oh hey! I missed you! How are you? Good to see you again!!

Yeah, I'm sorry for the extended pause. Long story short, past few months have stayed pretty crazy with continued construction requiring more stints staying with family and friends, David traveling frequently for work, seemingly nonstop colds and coughs for everyone, and general chaos of life with two little munchkins...

But, the great news is that life is settling pretty nicely now. Work is finished on house, we are finally unpacked and it's definitely feeling like home. We are balancing two work schedules, daycare and nanny situation is improving, and we are establishing good routines with friends and activities. Yay!

AND, I miss y'all! And miss recording events big and little in our lives!

Here is Scarlett cooking this afternoon in her new kitchen, and Tripp being the cutest boy on earth, per usual.

Love these kids and so grateful for my little family and our little house and making it a home. And I love looking back at our memories on this blog, so here's to taking the time to post about it all!

Thanks for checking in. Talk again soon!