Family Pictures

When we were back in Georgia over Thanksgiving week, we had family pictures taken by our sweet friend Liz. Here are a few of my favorites.

Sledding & Sunbeams

The first day of the year we went sledding. This was our first time ever. Don't let the blue skies fool you, it was negative degree weather that day.
This picture doesn't do this hill justice but it was the only one I had. I was seriously concerned that we would be taking a trip to the hospital. There are hay bales at the bottom of the hill to keep people from falling into the Fox River, it was tall and steep and I thought that the kids would be a little tentative. I was wrong! Both kids went down without waiting on us. I really wish I had taken video of them. They had so much fun!!

Daddy and his little girl

Ben bundled up and looking like the kid brother from 'Christmas Story'

Giving a big push

Grandma & Olivia

Family picture

Walking back up the hill together

That Sunday Olivia moved from the nursery to Sunbeams in primary. She was excited to be with the big kids. Ben told us on the way home that several times during sharing time, she came over to him to give him a hug.

Sweet Big Sister

Every night I go upstairs to check on the kids before I go to bed. Last night was no exception. It was late and the kids had been asleep for about 4 hours. I went into Ben's room first and moved him from sleeping sideways and being mummified/suffocated in his covers and gave him a kiss. I walked into , Olivia's room and gave her a kiss. Without waking up, or opening her eyes she said:
Olivia - "Mommy, how is the baby doing?"
Me - "He is just fine."
Olivia - "I hope you and the baby have a nice sleep."
And with that, turned over and was out. I thought it was so sweet that she was thinking of her new baby brother. She is already a good big sister.

Last Week of 2009

The last week of 2009 was great. My mom drove up to visit us and surprise the kids. It was so great to have her here. She really enjoyed the snow, sub freezing temperatures, and even asked to shovel our driveway. The only explanation for her craziness is, that she was heading back to sunny Georgia and wanted to get the full experience of living in the arctic Midwest.

I realized sometime that week that I didn't know how many weeks pregnant I was. Scary! From the moment I started feeling better (around week 14-15), I feel like life has been on fast forward. Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas just flew by. Since then I have gone back and counted how many weeks I was to discover, I was in my 3rd trimester! This is a good and bad thing. Good because I will get to see our sweet baby soon and bad because I have a lot of things I want to get done before that sweet one arrives. Anyone have any boy name suggestions?

I have been feeling pretty good other than feeling more tired than usual. I'm also feeling bigger than I did with the other kids.

Probably one of the reasons I feel bigger, is that Rick and I went to Table 52 on a date night, while we had grandma here. Art Smith is the owner (Oprah's old personal chef) and he was also on Top Chef Masters this season. The restaurant is small, really pretty, in downtown Chicago and serves southern food. Well, there aren't a lot of opportunities for southern food in Chicago, so I was excited. It did not disappoint. This is what I had for dinner.

Appetizer - shrimp and cheese grits

Pecan encrusted catfish, with collard greens, cheese grits & a hush puppy

with a side of maple syrup sweet potatoes.

Rick had fried chicken, mashed potatoes and we shared the sweet potatoes.

Can't get more southern than that!

While we were eating Rick said "I'm surprised Oprah wasn't bigger than she was, if she ate like this everyday."

It was delicious!! I am still thinking about it, can you tell?

The other fun thing we did the last week of the year was we went to another Globe Trotter game. I'm starting to think that we're Globetrotter groupies because we have been 3 times in less than a year. Rick's company is a sponsor so we get free tickets. We love going (especially Ben) but this time was different. This time we had backstage passes. This time I was more excited than Ben. The reason was that I got to meet Flight Time and Big Easy!!!

Here is the back story:

I love to travel and thankfully so does Rick. Since we have been married we have been able to go to some really fun places. In the past few years though most vacations have revolved around babies births, kids schedules and family vacations. Let's be honest, with 2.5 children, I'm a few years from being able to travel the world, so I live vicariously though the contestants on Amazing Race. Last season on the Amazing Race, two Globetrotter players, Flight Time and Big Easy, were racing around the world only to get fourth place. I still don't like those brothers that sold them out.

They were both so nice and funny, which is exactly how they were on the show. Anyway, it was fun to meet them and the game was great. I kind of wanted Phil to come out, cue Amazing Race music, and say "Rick and Susan....long dramatic pause........you are team number 1!
Here is our group picture together. I know I'm short, but good grief. I even had heels on!!

Thanks to mom, Chris, Aidan and Mia for coming with us.

White Christmas

This year, we had a really wonderful Christmas. It was different in a lot of ways. First, there was snow, lots and lots of snow. It was gorgeous. Rick in the kids played out in it for a long time. The kids ate a lot of snow too.

One of the kids favorite things to do is slide down the slide and knock all the snow off.

On Christmas Eve, we had dinner with friends and came back to our house for hot chocolate, talked about the Nativity story and then had a surprise Rudolph sighting out our back window that sent children wide-eyed running up to their rooms. Olivia said "Whew that was a close one!"
Christmas morning is just so fun with little kids. Ben and Olivia were so sweet about getting and giving their gifts. Lots of 'thank you's', hugs and "you are going to love what I got you's".

Another thing that was different was that we didn't have any family around. This was the first Christmas in our married life that we had spent with just us. Although I missed everyone in Georgia and Washington it was kind of nice to just be the four of us. We did get to talk/skype to almost all of our family that day.

Since we had always had family around, I had never cooked an entire Christmas dinner (shameful, I know). So I went overboard and cooked a huge Christmas dinner that could have fed at least 20 people. After dinner we went and saw "Princess and the Frog".

As a side note, Buddy our elf, went back to live with Santa until next year. I miss him already. It really helped the behavior level when he was watching all the time.