Merry Christmas!!

I hope everyone had a delightful Christmas Day! We certainly did at my house. It's the first Christmas that Phil and I have had in our own home, and we are incredibly blessed to have family close by to invite into our home to share the spirit of Christmas with us.

We got up pretty close to our usual time on Christmas morning. Lacey looks like she wasn't quite ready for the early morning festivities.


She got lots of cool things in her stocking, like bubbles an socks. She was pretty good at getting the stuff out, too.


Daddy really doesn't look ready for early morning festivities. He got heads for his toothbrush in his stocking. And some other stuff.
Uncle Brad came over to play on Christmas Morning. He looks so glamorous wearing Lacey's star glasses, doesn't he?


We got my whole family together on video chat to open presents together--my parents and other younger brother in South Carolina, my sister and her husband in Alaska, and us and Brad in Utah. It was really nice that we could be together that way for Christmas morning since we're all so far apart.

Brad and the Christmas tree. I wonder if he knows that there's wild animal eating his face... ;)


Oh, there you are, Perry. Lacey loves her Perry doll. In case you don't know, Perry is a platypus featured in Disney Channel's Phineas and Ferb. He's actually a secret agent working to stop the evil shenanigans of Dr. Doofenshmirtz.

Lacey obviously thought that Perry needed some glamming up.


In the afternoon, we had Phil's sister and her family over for dinner and playtime and presents. It was so delightful to have them in our home. Lacey is definitely getting better at sharing her toys. She got a really cool magnetic fishing puzzle thing that all the kids (and adults, I think) thought was pretty neat.
We gave the kids pillow blankets as gifts. They're just regular old blankets that have a pocket sewn on them so that they can be folded up and turned into a pillow. But I guess that they make a good cloak, too, as you can see.


Here we have Lacey playing with her little talking turtle. It tells stories, sings songs, and says its ABCs! And in her hair is one of the bows she got from her Aunt Erin's family.

Lacey loves all of the gifts that she received and we are grateful that our circumstances allow us to give so many gifts as well, to our family and to others. And most of all we are grateful for our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, for His life, example, and atoning sacrifice. Merry Christmas, and God bless you!

Thanksgiving

Well, now that Christmas is almost here, I suppose it's time for me to get Thanksgiving over with!

We had an excellent Thanksgiving filled with fun and family. We had dinner at my Uncle Scott's house AND at my sister-in-law's house. Yes, two Thanksgiving dinners. Both were delicious. And thanks again to Scott's family for allowing us to show up rather unexpectedly. You see, we showed up at our original destination and no one was home. So we hopped on over to my Uncle's house just in time for dinner. We got to see Lacey's great-grandparents and Uncle Brad, too. Then we headed back over to the Bobo dinner and got seconds. It was actually a Bobo-Graham dinner (although most of the kids were Oliphants and Edwards). Lacey had so much fun running around with her cousins and friends. We didn't hawk over her this time to make sure she didn't do anything dangerous. So she was probably doing plenty of dangerous things, but she didn't get hurt and we didn't know about them. At one point, she was playing in her cousin's bedroom, and went and peeked in on her, and she saw me and immediately came and shut the door. We stayed out WAY passed her bedtime, but it was worth it to have that time with our family. She was so tired out that she took a four hour nap the day after. That's a pretty intense nap for our little one.

Lacey's cousin Johnnie was having fun with Grandpa's camera. There were lots of pictures of people's midsections... Here's he's taken a picture of Lacey and is showing it to her.

Here I was trying to get a picture of him taking a picture of me, but he just smiled for the camera instead. What a cutie!

Daddy and Lacey reading a story.


Aunt Em gave Lacey a candy cane. Needless to say, Aunt Em was also responsible for cleaning the sticky off the baby.

And then they read a story together. Lacey loves stories! And Aunt Em loves Lacey, so it works out nicely.

Speaking of our little one, she's really not so little anymore. She's pretty big, actually. At her 18 month check-up, she was in the 80th percentile for weight and 85th percentile for height. She talks up a storm, and occasionally there's a coherent word in there. She still sleeps 12 hours at night and takes a 2 to 3 hour nap during the day. She almost knows all the letters of the alphabet (her favorite right now is W), and she loves to help Mommy empty the dishwasher and sweep the floor. She LOVES nursery. She has never even looked back at me when I've taken her in, which is a good thing. I love my little sweetie and I'm so glad she gets to be a part of my life!