I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas. I know we did. We spent lots of time with family, and had lots of delicious food...

I can hardly believe this is our second Christmas with our sweetie-pie.

We went to a candlelight service at our church on Christmas Eve, then it was off to Doug's parent's home for dinner and, of course, presents.

One of her gifts was this D*ra the Explorer microphone. Everytime we go down the toy aisle at Wal-Mart she picks it up and tries to put it in the cart, so she was pretty excited about this gift.

All three grand-girls got new jammies. Sydnie strikes a pose in her new jammies and pink cow-girl boots below.

She's 4 going on 14..

Kerry is still crazy for her uncle "Twavis" and shadowed him all evening.

Even baby Kinsley got new jammies. She's 3 weeks old now.

After we left the in-laws we drove around looking at Christmas lights until Kerry fell asleep..at a ridiculously late hour. But she still managed to wake up at 8 am Christmas morning.

Merry Christmas sleepy-head!

Her big gift was this cute little pink H*rley Davidson motorized ride-on. She also got from us a Red-Rover game, as well as Chutes and L*dders and C*ndyland. She got a georgeous Madame Alex*ander asian doll, and a Thom*s the train set, a green tu-tu dress up set from Jess (missed you) a Buzz Lightyear, a play cleaning set, among other things. My girl has a very wide range of interest and her gifts reflected it. =).

After a leisurely morning, we headed out to my parent's house where we consumed ridiculous amounts of food, and of course there were more gifts.

We got just enough snow to make for a white Christmas, and a pretty drive out.

We had a bit of a Christmas breakthrough! Last year Kerry was terrified to get up close to Santa Claus and since she was so little, you couldn't really reason with her on the matter, but now that she's two (soon approaching three) and after watching a few Christmas specials with him in them, she finally decided she was ready to visit the Jolly old Elf...I mean really excited. The whole car ride to the mall she kept saying "I'm gonna see Santa! And sit on his lap!" "Mommy, I'm -a get pwesent's for you, Mommy!!" When we got to the mall we were lucky enough to only have about 3 people in line in front of us, and this was just earlier this week. Within minutes of getting our place in line, I looked behind us to see the line growing very quickly, we apparently timed it perfectly. Anyway, while waiting in line she was saying "Hi Santa! " and nearly ran up to him while another child was still with him. She was so excited and I kept reminding her that we had to wait our turn and to be patient. Well as soon as it was her turn she ran right up to the Man in red and hopped right up in his lap. She never, ever, goes to strangers like that, but she did. I think she kinda surprised herself, because after all her excitement....this is the best picture we could get..





This picture cracks me up! I think she was in total shock at what she had just done. But as soon as the picture taking was done and Santa started talking to her and asking what she wanted for Christmas she was totally fine if just a little shy. Doesn't he make a great Santa?!

(I'm in need of a new scanner, so I had to take a picture of the photo itself, but you get the idea..sorry)

So the stockings are hung...

Kerry has her own little tree in her room..

And her own nativity scene..

So I think we're ready for Christmas.

I feel so happy!

Kerry loves Kai-Lan, and one of her favorite episodes is the one where Kai-Lan goes to China. She has the DVD and can't tell you how many times she's watched it. She has the dialogue pretty much memorized and, as you can see, she loves the music. =)



" We're going to China, we're going to China, I feel so happy I just wanna sing.."

(no we aren't going back for #2...yet)

This girl-o-mine just warms my heart.

Now that she's learned to speak in full sentences, she's getting to be quite the little chatter-box.

As in she can talk...non-stop...for extended periods of time. I'm not complaining, I love being able to really communicate with her. And witnessing this language acquisition has been absolutely fascinating to me. From the 15 month old trying to wrap her little brain around this new language she was hearing, speaking her first few English words before we'd left China. The toddler spending the next few months soaking up the language, picking up a new word or two every few days, all the while losing understanding of her first language. Then it seemed like the day she turned two, she started stringing these words together into her first two-three word sentences.

N0w, 9 months later, she's speaking in complete sentences, and is even starting to pick up some "slang". And she's misprouncing some words less and less. It's almost bittersweet as it just brings home the reality of how quickly she's growing up. She'll be three in just less than three months, which means she officially graduates from toddler to preschooler, though it seems she's been in some sort of "in between' stage for several months now. Some things we've heard lately:

"Hi guys!"

" I'm so funny!"

"I can't take a nap, Mommy"

" I'm gonna go show Daddy my sad" (she does this if something puts her in a less than happy mood)

And now if she's not too sure how to react she says to herself: "Are you happy or sad?.........HAPPY!!"

Well, about nine times out of ten she decides she's happy

But the BEST thing I've heard is "I love you".

Kerry and I are both a bit under the weather with some sort of cold/allergy type thing. We don't really "feel bad" but let's just say we sound bad and we've been going through tissues like crazy.

Christmas goodies...

On Tuesday we spent the afternoon with my Mom making Christmas goodies. We wanted to do something that would be easy for Kerry to help with so we dipped pretzels. We did the same thing last year .

Is this not the largest bag of pretzels you've ever seen?!

Kerry couldn't even wait for the fun to begin before she started eating them =)

We dipped some in white chocolate and almond bark..





and some in melted Ghir*rdelli chocolate....yummm. Kerry's job was to keep tossing the pretzels into the big bowls of melted goodness while Mamaw and I stirred to coat them and then laid them out on wax paper to set up.



Kerry took time out for an ice cream break and ended up with a cute goatee.





Mamaw can't get enough of her one and only grandbaby.

I'd been promising Kerry all week that we would make cookies and it's been all she could talk about, in fact the first thing I heard when I walked through the door after work yesterday was

"Mommy, we gonna make cookies, and put sprinkles, and icing, and bake....!!!!" So
that's just what we did. She has so much fun helping to stir, and cutting out the shapes with cookie cutters and putting on the icing and sprinkles. She made snowmen, gingerbread man, and christmas tree shaped cookies. I didn't get pictures of the finished product, but they were really cute.

Enjoying a little bedtime snack of cookies and milk.

Kerry has a brand-spankin new baby cousin! Kinsley weighs in at 8 pounds 4 ounces and is just 19 inches long. When she's all swaddled up she reminds me of a football =).

Isn't she adorable?! Check out those cheeks..and all of that hair!

Proud big sis..Sydnie.

Ha ha, that's a chocolate cake, brought by a thoughtful friend, that mama Debbie is digging into. Can you blame her?!

Kerry adores her uncle Travis, he usually ends up playing human jungle gym for her. I think he kinda likes her, too =).