Merry Christmas - a little late!!

Merry Christmas!! Better late than never, right? We had a wonderful holiday season. Here are some of my favorite pictures from Christmas Eve. It's really hard to get a good picture of Meredith these days if she knows that you are taking her picture. She tries to "smile" for the camera. However, that usually ends up looking like she's in some kind of pain, so I was pretty excited to get this somewhat natural looking picture of her!
Here's some great pictures of sisterly affection. The girls actually do play really well together and ask about each other when one of them is "away" (usually sleeping late). They definitely have their times of aggravating each other, but on the whole, they keep each other happy and occupied....although sometimes that's a bad thing for me (think Vasoline, hair, clothes, upholstry, and carpet).

Here's a picture of Meredith on Christmas morning with some of her gifts. Grandma & Grandpa Snider gave her a Raggedy-Ann doll that she carried around all day and Tim & I gave her a sleeping bag for her camping adventure while Grandma, Papa, Aunt Kellie and Aunt Andrea were here. We had a wonderful time with them. The girls especially loved having all the extra attention! Meredith still talks about how Aunt Kellie taught her what kind of sound a fish makes!

The girls are settling back into a normal routine now that all of our Christmas celebrations are over. This morning, Meredith saw a magazine with a picture of a Christmas tree on it and said, "What's this? Christmas is over."

Some of my favorite things that the girls have been doing recently are reading and singing together. Really, that means that Meredith reads and sings to Amelia. It is just adorable!! Meredith has an amazing memory and has quite a few books memorized, so she'll get them out and "read" them to Amelia. She'll also sing songs for Amelia (although this is a little less frequent). I have managed to get performances of both on video, but I haven't figured out how to get the videos from the camera to the computer to edit them. Maybe that should be my New Year's Resolution!!We are looking forward to an exciting 2009 and hope that you have a blessed New Year as well!!

Baby, It's Cold Outside

Well, the winter weather has arrived in force here in Michigan. The girls have gone out a couple of times to play in the snow. Meredith is my cold weather lover. She gets excited to see snow (and to eat it!). This morning, it was snowing when we woke up. I groaned inwardly. In contrast, Meredith said, "it's a bew-a-ful day!" Amelia is not such a fan of the cold weather. Maybe it's an acquired taste... Anyway, she typically cries when we go outside these days. On a bright note, she does enjoy getting her boots and hat on.

The other day, I took the girls outside and they walked around and played with the balls for a couple of minutes. Then, they decided that they wanted to do bubbles. So, we got the bubble stuff out and started blowing bubbles, which is typically a recipe for fun. However, they both started to complain about being cold, so we came inside and blew bubbles in the basement. The bubbles did not fail - we played with bubbles for a good 20 minutes! It's wonderful to find an activity that can provide that much fun with minimal mess and/or tears!!

Amelia's favorite part of the colder weather is wearing hats. Or, more accurately, taking hats on and off. She particularly enjoys pulling the hats over her face and walking around. (Maybe that's a genetic problem....) With all her hair, she gets some adorable hat head.

On Thursday night, Tim and I put the Christmas tree up (not decorated, but up). The girls were so excited Friday morning when they woke up. Meredith's first response was to gasp and say "I have a Christmas tree!! Who got this Christmas tree for me?" We turned on the lights and the girls were fascinated by those for a few minutes. Then, Meredith asked THE question, "So, where are my birthday presents?"

Here is a picture of Amelia turning the lights on and off by the foot switch. It did not take her long at all to get the hang of that. Now, it's like our tree has strobe lights! An interesting and unrelated side note is that the shirt that Amelia is wearing is a shirt that Aunt Andrea got for Meredith last spring. She's growing up too fast!!!

Lots of miles, not too many pictures

This past couple of weeks we have been doing our part to increase greenhouse gas emissions to insure the continuation of global warming. (It's not working, it's snowed for the past three days!!)

We travelled to Tennessee two weekends ago and had a fun and busy time there. The car was packed with everything that we could possibly need other than our camera. So, if anyone has pictures, we would love to get them! We drove down on Thursday night after Tim got done with work and saw Tim's parents Friday morning in Gatlinburg. They had rented a cabin for a family reunion, so the girls had some room to run around. Their favorite feature of the house was the handicap access ramp that they ran up and down tirelessly. It was also a great launch ramp for the small pumpkin and gourds that were left on the front porch of the house by the previous renters. It was a short visit, but wonderful to see them!!

We then drove down to Clevland where we attended some of Lee University's homecoming events on Friday and Saturday night. Wow - are we getting old or what? It was so fun to see old friends and catch up on their lives.

Saturday afternoon, we drove up to Maryville to be with my grandparents to celebrate their 65th wedding anniversary. What an amazing achievement! I feel so blessed to have such a great example of people who love each other and love their family.

So, after recovering from that trip, I decided to hitch a ride with my Dad to Baltimore for my brother Paul's reinlistment ceremony (Tim stayed home to go to work). Rachel drove up from Tennessee as well, so all the Wanamaker cousins were there. Here are (finally) some pictures:

This is Paul after his reinlistment oath. He signed on the dotted line for another six years. He has already served ten. After the ceremony, we had cake and champagne. Cutting the cake required great concentation - both by Paul and the kids!!

Here's a picture of three of the four kids....to get all four in the picture required a small miracle that never happened. After eating cake and congratulating Paul, we went to dinner at Applebees with Paul's girlfriend, Jen, and her parents. The back booth may never be the same!

There's no cute kids in this picture - just incredibly good looking adults (ha ha). There's not too many opportunities for us to be together, so it's nice to have it documented. (Elizabeth was on a "field trip" to New York City, so she wasn't able to be with us.)

We should be home for another week and a half and then off to Chicago for Thanksgiving.

Fall Fun

Well, I decided that maybe the best way to keep everyone up to date on our family was to start a blog. So, this week, I'll start with some pictures of the fun that we've been having with the beautiful fall weather here in Michigan. I've gotten the girls out as much as possible because I know that the time is coming very soon where I will not even want to go out to the car.

Here is a picture of the girls in their Halloween costumes. Although I'm not a big fan of Halloween, we decided to dress the girls up and go downtown for candy on Friday afternoon. The girls were both way more interested in eating the candy that they had in hand rather than going to get more. Meredith was dressed up in a unicorn costume and Amelia was a monkey. Here, you can see Meredith's newest attempt to smile for the camera - it's really more of her just squinting her eyes.

We took advantage of a beautiful day Saturday to go play at the park. We got in some quality swinging time, played with the leaves, and Meredith and I walked down a path while Tim and Amelia threw rocks in the water. This is a picture of Meredith on our "hike". She was quite enthusiastic about hiking (read: running) down the path.

Here is a picture of Amelia enjoying the park. We were throwing leaves on her head and she had a great time watching them shower her. Ahh, the simple pleasures.....

We have had some weather that is not exactly conducive to outdoor fall fun - actually downright cold, so here is a picture of Amelia enjoying one of her favorite indoor activities (although not one of my favorites!!) - laundry basket rides!!