Megan's First Christmas

Christmas is definitely up there as one of the most wonderful times of the year so don't you wish you could spend it with a sweet baby every year? It seems we're making it a tradition in our family to do just that :)

Megan's first Christmas was a great one. Since she's almost one, it was a really fun age because she could crawl around and get excited about all the decorations. She loved checking out ornaments and pushing the button on our singing snow man. She enjoyed pulling wrapping paper and eating the cardboard boxes. She wanted to pull herself up on Christmas trees. We decided the pulling up thing would be a problem so we moved our tree to the basement this year which actually turned out quite nice. We may continue that tradition. Here our some great pictures of sweet Megs enjoying some holiday cheer!

Christmas card shots.

Decorating the Christmas tree.

Practicing for a sled ride.

A "balleriba" dress for Megan's first ChristmasWaiting for her first Wigilia ("Va-geel-ya" Polish Christmas Eve dinner)

More fun UNDER the table.

Finding the shopping cart from Santa.

So tiny that this is the same outfit Anna wore on her first Christmas at 5 months!

Anna's Christmas Fun

I absolutely love making memories around "events" and this Christmas, we worked really hard to squeeze a lot of those in. It was much easier to make that happen for Anna if we took only her and left Megan behind. Megan's just at a difficult age because she wants to get into everything and isn't too content sitting in a stroller. We didn't feel so bad leaving her out knowing that she didn't have a clue anyway. (I'm really looking forward to next year when it will be perfect to celebrate everything with both the girls.)

Baking cookies at Grandma's - This was during a Bengals home game. I took the girls over and laid Megan down early for nap and the three of us "big" girls baked Christmas cookies. Anna couldn't stand the excitement knowing that she could eat them when she woke up from her nap.

Southern Lights in Lexington - This has become a Blaze family tradition ever since our days began on campus at UK. We start out with dinner at Cracker Barrel down the road from the Horse Park and then head over to drive through the lights and go to the petting farm. Anna checking out the lights by kneeling on her car seat and holding onto Baw Baw's seat.

"Getting the Feel" of the ponies.

Sometimes I think Uncle Andrew gets more excited about the petting zoo than the kids.

This picture turned out hysterical. I have no idea what this weird creepy animal is, but I was a mean mom and made Anna take her picture with it because I thought it was hilarious that a) it looked like a cross between a llama and a lion and b) that Anna was so scared of it (rightfully so). The best part of this picture is that our camera is terrible when capturing eyes so this thing's eyeball looks like it's straight out of a Lord of the Rings movie or something.

Jonathan, Shelby, Andrew and I help decorate the Christmas tree.

Festival of Lights at the Cincinnati Zoo - A perfect night, not too terribly cold. We enjoyed as much as we could that would also appeal to a two year old. This included pizza, a train ride and a gingerbread man cookie.

Fun family night culminating with a fantastic Anna quote that has become our favorite: We grabbed a hot chocolate and coffee as we were leaving. On the way home, Matt cranked up the Christmas music and was singing quite loudly for fun. As he was belting out "O Holy Night" in his best choir voice, we hear a tiny voice call out from the back seat in between gingerbread man bites "Hey Daddy! Drink. Your. Coffee!" Soooo funny. We were rolling in laughter.

Jesus is the Reason for the Season

Obviously the month of December and into the New Year was pretty busy for us - as it is for everyone. (Hence the lack of posts.) We had so much fun this year preparing for Christmas with Anna being the sweet age of 2 and of course celebrating Megan's first Christmas.

Anna found an affection for Nativities this year. We set ours up and she was very interested in checking out the shepard and the camel and looking at Mary getting ready to hold her precious baby. She then became very excited every time we drove somewhere and she had the opportunity to look for "Marewee, Jofish and Baby Jesus." It was always a treasured moment for me to hear her screaming from the back seat, "Mommy, another Baby Jesus!!!" It was a gentle reminder that we all should be so excited to see, and even search, for another Baby Jesus among the crazy secular materialism that our culture has created in Christmas.

Having a two year old this year forced us to focus first on Jesus' Birthday. We explained that Santa was friends with Baby Jesus and that Jesus wanted him to help deliver presents to everyone to celebrate his birthday. Surpisingly, we think Anna "got it". She knew we were celebrating a birthday complete with birthday cake and presents.

We made some fun stops at a few Nativities around town including the Cincinnati tradition at Krohn's Conservatory and a new experience for us at the Comboni Mission Center in Beechmont. They have a beautiful miniature Bethlehem set up with animation and an audio story teller. Anna really loved it and probably loved running up and down the hallways a little more.

Everybody Sick

I never realized how much I take my children's health for granted until this week. Sure I've dealt with sick kids - only Anna up until last Thursday. But when I have to take care of two sick children at once, and I'm sick too, then it hits me how blessed we are to have a healthy family.

So Anna started cold symptoms on Monday night. Remember she was just getting over an earache? She didn't have a fever with it, nothing terribly bad, but she was pretty groggy and unhappy. I've been so thankful that Megan's managed to stay 100% healthy for the last 10 1/2 months. Then Thursday came...Now, you should know that I too spent the entire week with a cold/sinus infection (which is actually pretty normal for me, though still miserable.) Matt was also feeling bad. Megan woke up Thursday with horrible congestion. Long story short, after two sleepless nights, vomitting from 4am till morning, and much disinfecting, we headed to the doctor and discovered it had become an earache. Megan and I both hopped on the antibiotics and we're both feeling pretty good now.

Every time I tackle a week like this, in hindsight I realize that I've conquered another mommy milestone. So we'll chalk it up as character building, right? I know this is just one of many sick and sleepless nights. I truly am so thankful for being blessed with healthy children though.

Here are some pictures I took before this crazy past week. This is basically one of our creative ways we spend our colder days.

Anna was putting stickers on herself in her room today while she, Megan and I were playing.

Mommy to Anna as she was removing stickers from her arms: "Anna, why are you putting stickers on the bottom of your feet?"

Anna: "Meggie can't get them on my feet."

Smart girl.

Anna Back in the Game in Overtime

So Anna's illness was the result of a bad earache. Her fever was down by Friday afternoon. After reassurance from the doctor that she wasn't contagious, we headed over to the Blaze house for leftovers and a Thanksgiving dinner. The best part was watching the girls play together and the cranberry sauce came in a close second.

Megan sees a Christmas tree for the first time.

Hanging with Uncle Matthew

Megan had her head on Myla for almost this whole photo shoot.

Anna definitely felt better by Friday night. She and Myla had a blast playing Ring Around the Rosies in their diapers.

Two Days Before Thanksgiving...

Everyone was happy, everyone was healthy

Megan looks like she's posing for her senior pictures with Indi.

Anna helped me make a Christmas wreath.

Still a Happy Thanksgiving

Then Wednesday came and Anna started acting sick, running a fever, and then vomitting. Needless to say, we missed Thanksgiving outside of the house. At first, I was really bummed, especially with Matthew, Kasey and Myla in town this year AND missing all of the good food. But it turned out to be a relaxing, enjoyable day and it was a sweet reminder of what the holidays are all about. We still spent a wonderful day with our family of four and even ended up throwing together a delicious Thanksgiving dinner - with chicken instead of turkey - all served on our Opal Innocence china and silver that we never use.

Megan excited to see what all the fuss is about for her first Thanksgiving dinner.

Anna relaxing after dinner...in the hamper.

I loved my first Thanksgiving! (and my shirt said "My Little Turkey")