Joy

Saturday, December 17, 2011

Christmas Pictures

I was bummed that it was raining on the day that we took our Christmas card pictures so they had to be inside. I am not a fan of indoor photos; the lighting is always terrible. We set up a little background in my parents' arizona room (best lighting...we thought) and snapped away.
Hurray! We are looking in the same direction!

Unfortunately, the cloud cover and time of day changed between photos so all three of them have totally different lighting - in case you were wondering.

I absolutely love Joy's
What a trooper. She was in that box for quite a while. Her biggest problem was that she wanted to stand the whole time. Trying to force a baby to bend at the waist is comical and rarely successful.

Claire's camera smile is improving but my mom and I had to stand behind Josh and act like weirdos to make her smile genuinely.
A sister picture never did happen, for obvious reasons.


And some that did not make the cut.
Merry Christmas!

Wednesday, December 14, 2011

Little Ballerina

We enrolled Claire in another parks and rec class and it just came to an end. Claire seemed to enjoy this tap, ballet, tumbling combo class but after watching her performance on the last day I see that she actually liked the ballet portion of it best. I think that her sudden interest in princesses helps; she thinks she is a princess when she puts on her ballet skirt and she often wears it over her jeans at home.
This class was SO much better than the last one. I was unimpressed with the teacher because of her bizarre personality, but I see now that she really taught the girls a lot in such a short amount of time.

Here is one of the many little dances the performed.



Believe it or not, she actually was one of the better ones in the class.
We definitely were proud of her after her performance.

Saturday, December 10, 2011

My Little Helper

Claire always asks to help me when I am making something in the kitchen. I try my hardest to always say yes. I don't want to discourage her from helping but sometimes it is really hard. It's more like saying "Yes, come make a huge mess and double the time it should take to make this." I have been letting her help for about a year now and it is starting to pay off. Now she knows how to help a little better - and I know what to trust her with. In other words, please do not be alarmed that she is stirring pots on the stove. She knows to be careful and I always stay right there with her.
She was proud of herself that she could stir both pots at the same time.

She has also learned to taste as she goes.
I have passed on some chores to Claire. For a while now she's been helping me by putting away the silverware from the dishwasher. I have always hated doing that for some reason. I save it for her to do now and she likes it.
Joy watching her sister help.
Joy is so funny, She always looks on, longingly, as Claire and I do things together or when Claire and Josh are playing, she can't take her eyes off them. I think she wants to be a big girl too already.

Friday, December 9, 2011

Christmas Handprint Art

The day after Thanksgiving, we started Christmasing; putting up lights, decorations, baking and crafting. I haven't blogged because all my projects have been half done for the past few weeks but I am finally starting to get them all wrapped up. Plus, I have had zero time.

The first "craft" we did was hand print art - ideas stolen from Pinterest.

Claire made a Christmas tree.

She enjoyed it but needed some help in the self-control area when we were stamping her hand. Sliding you paint covered hand all over a white canvas becomes much more irresistible when your mom tells your not to. (Note - I found both canvases at thrift stores for $1 each!)
For Joy, I did a snowman footprint painting; Claire helped paint her sister's little footy.

I am glad we took the time to do these projects. Now we will have these precious pieces to bring out each Christmas and remember when our babies were still little.

Wednesday, November 23, 2011

Annual Autumn Pictures

Sometimes, even the best planned photos shoots...





are torn asunder.

Have a happy Thanksgiving!

Saturday, November 12, 2011

Friday at the Farm

This weekend we made a trek out to Vertuccio Farm for the last day of their Fall Festival. I wanted to go before Halloween but we were all too sick so it had to wait.

It was amazingly uncrowded and the weather was perfect!

They had a great, big, air-bouncer thing that Claire instantly HAD to jump on. Most of our time there was spent bouncing.
Josh and I bounced too. It was pretty fun I must say. Even Joy enjoyed it.
We spent some time looking at the animals
and feeding the goats.
Claire milked the fake cow for about 2 seconds.

and did some other activities the farm had to offer.
Joy and I hung out and watched Claire and Dadda most of the time.
I forget how small she is until I see a photo like this. What a peanut girl!

I was hoping to get a good picture of the two girls together, but after about 40 shots none of them turned out. I have to post this one though just because I love Joy's expression so much.
"Get me out of here!"

Sometimes I feel a little sorry for Joy because it is going to be tiring to be Claire's sister.

That's okay, we love you Claire.

All in all we had a really good time and plan to go next year!

Thursday, November 10, 2011

Halloween...Finally

What a bummer Halloween was for us this year! Our decorations never made it out of the garage and our pumpkin was never turned into a jack-o-lantern....But more about that in a moment.

Claire could not decide on what she wanted to be this year. She changed her mind every other day. If she saw butterfly wings in the store, she wanted to be a butterfly, if she saw a ladybug costume, she wanted to be a ladybug, she even said she wanted to be a caterpillar or a cricket for some reason, but those two were out of the question. She definitely had a bug theme going though. One day at Goodwill, we found a big girl's bee costume that was made out of cute fabric so I got it to resize for her and told her she was a bee. She needed some convincing but after my mom found the wings for her at the dollar store of all places, she was sold.
A leotard, leggings and antenna finished the outfit. (also found at thrift stores)
Easy beesy. I was glad that her costume was low maintenance (and cost) this year.
Joy was originally going to be a peanut but after much trial and error, I decided there was no way anyone would be able to tell that she was a peanut. She looked more like a sack of potatoes.
After I abandoned the peanut plan my mom suggested a flower since it would kind of goes with Claire's and it would be easy - at that point I was running out of time. So a flower she was.
Complete with lady bugs crawling up and down her stem.
Joy is very hard to take pictures of. When we try to take pictures outside, it is too bright for her and she squints and looks angry. I think more than the sun was making her angry here though.She was a sweet flower most of the time.
The Friday before Halloween, we went to my grandma's for their trick or treat morning. Claire woke up coughing and sniffling. We could tell she was getting sick.

We decided to go for a short time and stay away from Gigi so she wouldn't get sick. The Renaissance residents sat at tables with their candy and she just went up to them and said "Trick or Treat!" and then "Thank you!" when they put a candy in her bag. I was happy because everyone there was giving out good candy.
After that, Claire went downhill drastically and was sick for days, she was barely well enough to go trick-or-treating in our neighborhood and to go to the harvest carnival at church. We kept her away from other kids though and the carnival was outside so we figured it would be okay for her to go. She would have been devastated if she had to miss it. It wasn't til a week later that she was finally not feeling sick but still has the cough and nose issues. Of course she couldn't be sick without giving it to me and Joy, so we have all been sounding gross and feeling blah that past few weeks. Hopefully next year will be a better one for us!