Once there was a Snow Man...

Jeff was out shoveling the snow and Clara wanted to see what he was doing, so I took her to the door and in her bare feet she started out on the porch to go help her daddy! Jeff told me to get her in her snow gear which she hadn't used this whole year and they went out and built a snowman. That was on Sunday, and she's still talking about it two days later.

Ashlyn's favorite toy

I didn't get a picture of the front, but you know this toy, the one with the pop-up animals. Ashlyn loves when I open them all up and then she will close them all.

Ashlyn is learning and growing so much! She's so much fun.

Ashlyn at 6 Months

Weight: 17.1 lbs - 75%
Height: 27 inches - 95%
BMI: 16.42 - 30%
Head Circ.: 17 Inches - 70%

Six months is one of my favorite ages! Ashlyn's personality has just blossomed so much more in the last couple of weeks. She loves nothing more than just to sit up and watch Clara play while she sucks on a toy. She doesn't like to lay down very often, except to go to sleep. She has rolled over several times, but she just doesn't seem to have the desire, which I'm fine with, it's easier on me! :) While I was at the doctor I mentioned that Ashlyn has been saying dada, gaga, and baba a lot. He said "Wow, you've got yourself a little linguist, huh?" He said that that usually doesn't happen until about 9 months. I'm sure it happens much more than what he made it sound. Doctors know that moms like to hear how smart and advanced their baby is!

Sleep was pretty bad for a while, but about three weeks ago I put Ashlyn downstairs in her Pack N' Play and let her cry for a little while before she went to sleep. Now she will usually sleep about 10 or 11 hours, but will sometimes wake up once in the middle of the night. I try to let her cry for a little bit before I go check on her, but I get nervous having her so far away. Before we started doing this, she was waking up every 2 to 3 hours and Clara was having a hard time falling to sleep because they were sharing a room.

Ashlyn is really such a good baby. She's pretty easy going and happy!

"Yuck, Mom. What is this?"

"Hmmm, I wonder if my next meal will be those yucky sweet potatoes, or yummy pears."

Catching Up

Phew! I have three catch up post down and I don't know how many more to go. Jeff and I keep saying "We need to update the blog. We need to update the blog." Life is so much more hectic having two kids and life has just been so busy lately. I have so many memories I want to record, so I feel like it's worth playing catch up even if it has been months. I talked to my mom tonight and we just don't get to see each other as often as we'd like and she told me that she just keeps checking the blog to see if there's any new pictures, but there never is! So that was even more motivation to get the ball moving. Here ya go mom. I'll post more tomorrow!

Clara turns Two!

This year for Clara's birthday I decided to do a princess theme party because my friend April has been dressing up like Mary Poppins and she mentioned to me that she was going to start doing Belle for partys! Clara has so many cute little friends in our ward that are close to her age, so we invited all of them plus her twin cousins. It was so much fun and April did such a fabulous job!

Temple Square Lights

I've only been temple square one other time to see the lights before this trip. This year we decided we really wanted to get Clara in the mood for Christmas and we had lots of things planned, but this was probably the only thing we got around to. We didn't even get a Christmas tree up! We all enjoyed this trip to temple square, it was beautiful.

Christmas 2010

This Christmas was really a lot of fun this year with Clara being almost two. She really understood what to do with the presents... a little too much, because she opened everyone else's too. We have a pretty good Christmas tradition. We will go up to Jeff's parents on Christmas Eve and have the Gittins extended family Christmas party. Then we'll spend the night and open presents with just Jeff and me and the girls. After that Jeff's siblings that are close or have spent the night will come over and open presents. And finally we go to my sister Amy's house in Preston, which is only about a half hour away from Jeff's parents' house, and open presents and eat lunch.

We tried to keep it pretty simple with the girls' presents because we open so many presents with Jeff's and my family that there's just no reason to go over board with tons of presents. Clara got a few toys and clothes and Ashlyn mostly got clothes, one toy and a bumbo which we gave her a couple of weeks before.

Jeff came up with the idea to just spend as little as possible with gifts for each other and I agreed because my Christmas presents are just watching Clara and Ashlyn and everyone else I gave presents to open their presents. So I got the idea to give Jeff a vintage map of Spain (where he served his mission) and I thought it was the greatest gift ever! He liked it a lot, but then I opened my present, and found out the real reason Jeff wanted to go cheap this year for presents for each other. He totally surprised me with a Nikon D40 camera! I'm not surprised very easily because I completely over think everything. So when I opened it I totally lost it and started crying (which I don't usually do unless I'm feeling the spirit). It was a really fun surprised and I've loved playing with it. I'm not very good with it yet, but I've been getting lots of practice.

A couple of weeks before Christmas, we had a ward party. When Santa came, Clara watched about 3 kids go up and sit on Santa's lap. Then she decided it was her turn. She'd never seen Santa in real life before and she was totally not shy.

Like any other 4 months old, all Ashlyn wanted to do was EAT the presents. She didn't care about what was inside.

Clara was lucky enough to encounter Santa twice!

I made Clara and my twin nieces these tutus. This picture is about as good as you're going to get with three 2 year olds!