Christmas adventures and Ethan takes steps!

It's been a little while since I wrote...guess things got a bit busy there with Christmas and all. The holidays were good. Nice to spend time with the families and it was fun to have the kids open their gifts. After Santa came on Christmas Eve, I could hardly sleep I was so excited. Felt like when I was a kid and was so excited to open all those presents, except this time I was so excited for my kids to open their presents.

On Christmas Eve we went to the family service at church, which is code for the "whiny children/crying babies" service. Since we have whiny children and crying babies, we're banned from the other service (just kidding, but it would be terrible to have them at that one). The kids were a little sick last week, so our normally happy little Ethan was a nightmare! Nothing made him happy. So we just kept feeding him snacks because then the cries weren't so loud. Blythe, on the other hand was pretty good. Though during the first song (I think it was Away in a Manger), she started dancing and "shaking her booty" in church. Then all of the children went to the altar to hear the Christmas story. Blythe and her friend Ginsey weren't really paying attention. Between Ethan's crying spells, I could glance at Blythe and see her showing Ginsey her new dress and pretty bow. Next time I looked up there, they were both lying down with their legs in the air (and both wearing dresses), basically showing everyone at church their underpants. I had to laugh. And if I wasn't dealing with Ethan, I'd have picked up my camera and got it on film.

After church, Blythe got to open 1 present. She opened the princess rollerskates we got her. She was much better than at the skating rink, but still not very good. Needs practice. The next morning, Santa came and brought Blythe the blue baby, the legos, and the yellow castle. The yellow castle was the Candyland Castle game (good thinking, Santa!). Ethan got megablocks, a soccer ball, and a pop-up toy. Then they opened like 8 million other presents before we had to say good bye to Peep, Grams, and Hampton before they hit the road. We too packed up and hit the road to drive to Gommy and Poppa's house.

Here's a few pics from Christmas at our house:

At Gommy and Poppa's we had Christmas #2 the day after Christmas. Blythe got an easel and a scooter and Ethan got the "push along alphabet train". We all gave my parents a Wii for Xmas, so we played A LOT of Wii when we were there. And now I'm sore.

Here's a few pics from Christmas at Gommy and Poppa's (Gommy got a new camera so she took lots of pictures and I didn't...thus the reason there are only a few here):




Exciting news for Ethan yesterday. Just before we left Gommy and Poppa's, Ethan took his first steps! He was cruising (holding onto furniture) and I put out my hands for him to come to me. He didn't even think about it (which is probably why he did so well), and just walked 2-3 steps over to me. And then he even kept standing for a few seconds (so not the walk-and-fall-type first steps). In a month, that boy is going to be quite the handful. As soon as we got home last night, he kept making a beeline for the stairs to climb up them. So we dug out a baby gate and put it up and he was VERY unhappy with us.





So anyway, now that we're home, the challenge is finding places to put ALL this new stuff. Won't be easy. Oh, and the other challenge will be trying to work this week with the kids off of daycare all week. Won't be easy.