**HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!**

Entranced and trying to stay warm while watching the fireworks earlier tonight. They were having fireworks at 8 to start off the night and then again at midnight. With munchkin we thought it best to do the 8 o'clock ones and get her back in where it was warm. She loved the fireworks, and then it was home to have some ice cream and watch the ball drop in Time Square. Not a bad way to spend New Year's Eve in our opinion. A little colder than we were hoping for tonight, wouldn't have been bad but the wind was quite cold for here!

We had a heck of a 2008! A move, 2 trips to Ohio, a trip to CT to meet Devyn with a stop in SC to visit old friends for a grand total of (are you ready for this?? I'm not certain I was) approximately 8838.27 miles and 143.4 hours logged in the car this year! 2009 should be slightly less than that we hope. ;) But we wouldn't have traded one trip. It's not a wonder Julia never wants to go home after getting in the van, she expects hotels! LOL!

We thank you for sharing with us this busy year of 2008, and wish you all only the best and every blessing in 2009!!

***Fun and Not So Fun**

She even likes to help do housework in her new shoes.

Funny thing is she refuses to be anywhere near the sweeper when it's running, UNLESS she's the one running it. lol

And the not so fun part, she caught Daddy's cold:(

So since Daddy felt so bad, he set her up with a snack, a cup, tissues, blanket, etc and let her watch "Belle".

Even sick she's still got lots of smiles.


Well, as you can see, Julia is sick. Poor baby's nose is all stuffy. This is so rare for her that I think it caught us all off guard. She's not quite sure how to act with not feeling good. She still wants to bounce and sing, and the singing part is especially hard with a stuffy nose. Here's hoping that she kicks it quick!

One funny from the other day. Getting ready to go out Julia wanted to take her bucket with her. Yes, I know an odd request, but she had been carrying it around all day filling it up with little things, so she asked Daddy, "Can I take my bucket?" Daddy replies "Why? Are you a Bucket-head?" Julia.. "NO, I'm a PRINCESS!" in a completely offended voice that she should even have to explain that to Daddy! LOL! She is really too much sometimes!

***Pics for Aunt Kim and Uncle Joel***














Julia was very excited yesterday when the mailman brought more presents! Here she is checking them all out, intently. :) Thanks Aunt Kim and Uncle Joel you always know just what to get.

And then a couple more shots tonight in the wagon. You can see she's already decided the other seat needs to be occupied and the horse still needs to be in front to pull it. LOL. Looking for my other cable to get the video onto the PC tonight if I can, but not sure, wasn't expecting to have to look for a cable. But we do have some really cute video of her yesterday morning playing with her dollhouse. She has quite the imagination and I'm sure will enjoy it for some time to come. Thank you all for making her holiday special, I know we couldn't be with any of you this year but you were all in our thoughts and prayers and hearts.

***MERRY CHRISTMAS****





Decorating Gingerbread cookies for Santa


PRESENTS!


Excitement!






Santa brought DRESSES!









PRINCESS DRESSES!







Lots of them!





































Cinderella's still my favorite though! Look he even brought glass slippers!;)










Grammie and Grampa I think my wagon makes a great carriage!












Serious business putting make-up on, but Aunt Alissa she loves the vanity! I think it may have gotten the best immediate reaction!




What a busy couple of days huh? I spent all day yesterday wrapping and almost made it without getting busted. Yep, that's an "almost" there. I went to the other end of the house to wash my hands after decorating cookies last night with Julia, specifically so she wouldn't want to go in my room. Well apparently she thought I was in my room after all and waltzed right in, all I heard was a gasp, and "Daddy, Mama's room's got lots of presents!" AAHHH! But everything was wrapped and Santa hadn't come yet so she just knows I wrapped presents from us and from Papa and Nai-Nai, Grammie and Grampa and so on. LOL. But boy was it hard to get her to bed after finding those! We had deliberately not had presents out all week because I have no doubt they would have been opened, at least one every morning, if we had. Oh well.

We did have lots of fun decorating cookies and Julia and Daddy had a pretty good day hanging out together while I was busy. Somehow she did make it into our room this morning (her usual 4 am time I think) and didn't stop to check out presents then.. though she slept very lightly til 8:30, waking up every hour or so and whispering to Daddy "can we get up now?" LOL. She tore through the presents pretty quickly and has been happily playing ever since. Oh and Cinderella is definitely still a favorite, though I think it came down to the shoes, glass slippers you know are pretty neat, she is still wearing the Cinderella dress.

Well, we've got to go work on putting a doll house together. I'll try to load the videos later but there are a few more pictures at Dropshots.

Merry Christmas all!

** Messes***

I know it was inevitable, especially with as interested in my makeup as Julia is, but goodness what a MESS! The sneaky little munchkin got past us with my "warmth" from bare minerals into the living room. Yep, Daddy went to check on her and it was all over the carpet, naturally couldn't do that on the tile, had to be the light colored carpet. Of course she had to use the darkest container of makeup I own! He's gone out to get a Rug Doctor as my steam cleaner is missing pieces (of course). Sigh.. not how I was planning on spending my day.. that's for sure.



** Update* The stain did come out, and since we had the machine rented anyway, Ray went ahead and did pretty much the whole house. Such a good dad and husband! And he did it all in about 3 hours. At least it's all done now. Not the way we planned on spending that evening but done is done. :)

***A Christmas Surprise***






















































We took Julia into a neighboring town tonight for a surprise. We told her that we were going to see Santa *which we did, but no pics, I'll explain that later* but didn't tell her that we were going to go for a ride in Cinderella's carriage! You all know, or can simply look below for evidence of her fascination with horses, but this is really the first time she's seen one up close and personal. The look on her face when the carriage pulled up was PRICELESS! Literally, her eyes popped and her jaw dropped, and then the smile came out that just didn't quit. Well worth it. And we had such a nice ride in the down town area, with carolers out and about, one house was decorated as the Gingerbread house from the fairy tale "Hansel and Gretel" complete with the witch that we helped them turn into a mouse. Our driver was concerned at first that this part might frighten our munchkin, we assured her that it wouldn't. And we were so right. The older couple with us were just cracking up as Julia announced "we turned the witch into a MOUSE!" LOL. Then there was the Polar Express house, this was the only other time we got Julia to look away from the horse, she spent most of the ride trying to inch her way up onto the driver's seat and I'm sure if she'd gotten there, she would have continued trying to inch her way right onto the horse!

By the way, that's not snow or rain in the pictures, that's fog! And a lot of it, but I think it helped with the atmosphere. :) The only way we got away from "Molly" (the horse) was by going to see Santa. And that was going well, waiting in line she told me she was going to ask Santa for a dress for Christmas (wait til she sees what he is planning on bringing!) and no, I didn't coach her for that at all! That was simply what she wanted to ask him for. Sadly we got right to Santa and she thought the elf was going to take her from me and she flipped. We walked away, calmed down and tried again, but nothing doing. She did sit next to Santa with Daddy in the sleigh but not long enough for any pictures and wouldn't look at the camera "guy" at all. Sigh. She finally told us in the van on the way home that it was because the kids and people were all looking at her. So guess that made her nervous. :( But she did get worried on the way home and wanted to go back because Santa wouldn't know she wanted a dress. To which we reassured her that it was okay, Santa understood she was scared and he would still know what she wanted for Christmas. I think there was an audible sigh of relief at that point.

So a busy night. Full of ups and downs. But it was a very good time and I think the horse still wins out over everything else in her book! We are thinking that we'll go check out the Zoo another night here soon, we noticed it was really well lit up on the way home and think she'll enjoy that too. :)

**Memories**

As someone else kindly pointed out, when looking at our gingerbread house, we're not making messes, we're making memories. You may have noticed that even though we are far from our families they loom large in our memories and in fact in our daily conversations and lives. We have very much wanted to make sure that Julia got to share in some of those memories. One of the reasons we have been on the road so much. And as Ohio is just tad bit closer than Maine it has become the place we run to when we need a good dose of family.

We've (meaning mostly I) have been doing some serious Internet shopping lately to get things wrapped up for Christmas. I was just looking at something for G.G. when Julia popped in to check on me. I asked her opinion, to which I got a bit more a reply than I was expecting. She said "yeah, that's good for G.G. she will like it" pause.."G.G. gave Ashley, Allie and Tyler and me cards, and I opened it and I went back and told G.G. Thank you." Which is by the way exactly what happened, I just wasn't expecting her to remember all of it quite so clearly, I should know better.

Memories indeed, I'm off to share in some more with this sweet child now. She wants to go play with the chalk.

***Lost in the Polar Express?**





















Does this look comfortable to you?? LOL. This was Julia, yes she's in there among all that hair somewhere, completely entranced in the Polar Express. I knew it was on tonight but didn't tell her, I just flipped the channel to it while she was playing in her room. As soon as she heard the train start to come onto the screen she came out of her room and that was all she wrote. After the pics were taken, she did end up curling up in my lap to watch the rest of the movie. Sweet and a good way to end the evening.

**Gingerbread house**

















Cake decorators we are most definitely NOT, but even so munchkin and I had a pretty good time decorating the gingerbread house today. Til she found out what we were using was actually CANDY! Have no idea what she thought it was up until that point but when she realized you could eat a gumdrop! PRICELESS and worth the aggravation of trying to frost the silly thing and make it look somewhat presentable. LOL. The trick then came in getting her to stop eating all the decorations!

Not a bad way to spend the afternoon all in all, but my goodness did we make a mess! As this is our first attempt at a gingerbread house, I'll expect the comments to be non-critical and sweet! ;)

**Our Annual Christmas Card photo shoot**






















Or so it has become. To Ashley and Allie, these dresses may seem vaguely familiar, to Julia it was a great time with a constant "Can we try another dress now?" LOL And yes those are 3 different dresses you see, well 4 different looks if you count the coat on and off too. When we were looking for the dresses last week, yep they were hidden in a box somewhere, Julia kept saying "well we can't have pictures without the Christmas dresses!" Oh my! Maybe she really is headed for the runway. ha ha.

Oh and the picture where she's winking? That was completely deliberate on her part! Have no idea where she got it from, maybe Tyler? But she was absolutely on purpose winking at her Daddy who had the camera. Too funny. So that one of course just had to be on the blog! In some of the others she was trying to curtsy and/or trying to dance like they were on the television. We were watching My Fair Lady with Audrey Hepburn. I love this child! I think we can safely say she was having fun. :)

The rest of our little photo shoot is loaded at Dropshots.

**Busy, Busy**

That title is no joke. We have really been busy around here, getting ready for Christmas, getting ready for Devyn, and trying to get the rest of our stuff unpacked and the house just a bit more "finished" feeling. That and still finding time to help our neighbor out by having her kids over for a few hours and doing some kid swapping time. But it's all good. We're still here, still hanging in there. ;)

Those boxes I showed you last week at the foot of my bed? YAY! They are gone bye-bye! That was my job Saturday and I'm happy to say "SUCCESS!" I did that while Ray busted out some work in the kitchen and got a cabinet hung in my closet for me. Then yesterday I kept Julia busy in the rest of the house and he painted our bedroom!!! He's not crazy over the color but I LOVE IT! When we get a few more things done and hung up on the walls I think he will come around too. I'll take some pictures then. Then we had the neighbors girls for a few hours last night, definitely a long day, but a very productive one.

Some cute conversations with Julia before I forget them. She is getting very excited for Christmas and Santa this year. It is so much fun and so funny to see it through her eyes. She is loving "The Polar Express" this year too, last year the train still kind of scared her. This year I think it's been her favorite Christmas special. She made a comment to Daddy one night while he was tucking her in bed: "I'm going to hide behind the Christmas tree and jump out and scare Santa." Daddy quickly informed her that Santa wouldn't come if she did that, that she had to be asleep in her bed.."Oh, okay". LOL! Not sure at all where she got that idea, but it was our first clue that she was really into Christmas this year!

We, of course, think Julia is just the cutest thing, but I think we are busted now. We had a late dinner at IHOP after some serious Christmas shopping the other night. While we were waiting for our dinner another couple happened to be leaving, we were seated close to the door, we overheard the lady chuckle and say to the man "she is so cute!". Ray and I just kind of smiled at each other, until Julia came out with just a few seconds later "That lady thinks I'm cute!" to which we both lost it. This is the first time that Julia has actually caught a stranger giving her a compliment, though it happens pretty regularly. Now to keep it all from going to her head! LOL:)

A quick update on Devyn, we MAY be getting very close to her coming home. We have been told that we should be within 30 days, so PLEASE, PLEASE keep us in your prayers and we will keep you posted. More than us, please pray for Devyn as she waits on our approval. Soon, baby, soon.

Well, now that I have my bookcases where I want them, I'm off to unpack books today! Finally! I have missed my books!

***Happy Thanksgiving***


yes there are still a couple of boxes at the foot of our bed. she decided to make a bed for herself in them.


Coloring with the girls.


Julia and Tyler coloring


Her concession to my request of "get your hair out of your face". LOL

Playing "webkinz" on Papa's laptop.

Tyler taking the lead.


Enjoying an after dinner chocolate from Papa.


Having some ice cream.


Watching and learning as Tyler plays on his DS.






Okay, so I know I'm a bit late in posting that for a title. But as you can see we were in Ohio for Thanksgiving. We had a great trip and are as always ever so thankful for our families and that we were able to spend time together.

You can also see that Tyler and Julia were rarely if ever separated in Ohio. They are just so cute together and he really is great older cousin. He even tried to convince us Friday night that the next day was not Saturday so that we wouldn't leave yet. All of Julia's cousins are very sweet to her and we really do miss seeing them the rest of the year.

I hope that you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving. We are back home now and gearing up for Christmas. I am really glad that we put the tree up before we left, it was nice to come home to it already decorated. Julia was very funny the night we put it up, when we turned the lights on she said "it's so magical Mama" in this excited little whisper! She is very excited for Christmas this year, now if I can just get her to leave the ornaments on the tree. She's very careful with them, but she loves to take them off to take a closer look, or to find two of a kind. LOL.

I'll be posting more pictures of her with her cousins at dropshots just as soon as I get a chance.