Cute as a Button!

Hey Everybody! We're still here! I have been really horrible about taking pictures lately; probably because I overloaded during December...We've been keeping busy this month with lots of friends, playdates and fun outings inbetween bouts of colds, coughs and general winter sickness.
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We went to the 'Walking with Dinosaurs' show which was really incredible. If you haven't heard of it take a look at the website or UTube. It was awesome! Andrew was a great sport and liked the whole show right up until the end when the very loud, very big, very scary TRex came out. Andrew said, "Mommy, let's go to my house" then he repeated himself over and over, more loudly and stressed, each time the TRex roared. He made it through though and really enjoyed it - especially being with cousins and eating popcorn.

For my birthday (and his too, coming up in February) Dave surprised me with the Wii, and then his parents gave me (us) the Wii Fit. I'm definitely anti-video game but, these are different and really fun!

Isn't Christmas Wonderful?!

We hope you had a very Merry Christmas! Happy New Year!We had a very special visit at the Price family party from SANTA (Thanks Reed Rowland)! Andrew knows that Santa gives out candy so he's always excited to see him and sit on his lap! Ashley wasn't as impressed and couldn't stay awake The Nativity at the extended family party. Andrew played Guapo the Shephard. A smaller Nativity on Christmas Eve. Andrew wasn't about to put the football down!

The Angel The Shephard

The cousins on my side of the family in their cute Christmas PJs

Christmas Day was a hit. Andrew loved the hoop Santa brought him along along with everything else. Andrew is really excited about the ABCs so he got several ABC toys and games. He learned all of his upper case letters this past Fall and loves to sing the ABCs. He's really easy to please; he's rarely met a toy he didn't like. Ashley was easy going and entertained. We had a great day going from place to place and being with our families. We had sooo much snow at our house the day after Christmas! Andrew and I had a great time running around outside and having 'adventures' as he said. My cuties on New Years Day. Andrew is super competitive with most all other kids. I said something about Ashley grabbing her feet and so he did it too. It cracks me up!

In other news: Ashley had her 6 month birthday just before Christmas - hooray! She has now mastered sitting up alone! She has been working on it and today I feel like she can really do it alone and for longer periods of time. I am so happy and so proud. Ashley had her 6 month checkup and seems to be following Andrew's skinny example; Weight:13.9 lbs 10th percentile and Length: 25.5 in 36th %. Now I'm working hard to beef her up but, if she's like Andrew, her body will do what it wants regardless of what I feed her.

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And on another note - Sweet little Ashley has Croup! Thankfully she is on the mend and seems to be just about over it now. Below is NOT a picture of Ashley. SO...on Monday night Ashley was breathing loudly and heavy. She was coughing and having a hard time staying asleep. The funny thing is that she was still so smiley! I called the on-call pediatrician and he suggested that we watch her closely and bring her to the hospital if she seemed to have a hard time breathing. She got worse and so at 2:45 am I got too nervous and drove her to the ER. Poor Ashley. They wanted to rule out pneumonia so they XRayed her lungs. Have you seen how horrible this is? The picture below shows it pretty well. She was strapped into this plastic contraption with her hands forced above her head. It was very traumatic for both of us. Thankfully her lungs looked great. They gave her a medicated breathing treatment and a steroid she took for 2 nights for her lungs (I think). At the same time Andrew came down with a very high fever but, after about a day and a half he was back to normal. Though it wasn't a pleasant experience, I am always so grateful for access to medical care and for the blessing of living in this day and age with medical technology. Thankfully both kids are doing well now. Happy New Years!!!