Christmas!

This year we:
gave ourselves the gift of home security (yep, we fired a bb gun at soda cans in our basement - redneck fun - what of it):

 Made sugar cookes:

 And eagerly waited for them to be ready:

 Cut the cookies:

 And decorated the cookies:

 Or didn't decorate the cookies - this kid was our quality control, she mostly just ate the cookies:

 Got our teeth knocked out in a family brawl Lost our first tooth:

 Wrote sweet, but menacing looking notes to the Tooth Fairy:

(His illustrations of himself with his teeth remind me of the clown from Stephen King's IT. Am I alone here?)

Then, magically, it was Christmas morning so we crowned one among us 'The Queen of Everything' (or perhaps she crowned herself that? we may never know...):

We were so excited when presents suddenly appeared under the tree where there had been nothing before (*side note: we decided not to put gifts under the tree because Sammie was an unwrapping risk, but seeing how amazed our kids were on Christmas morning, we may make this a new tradition):

 Then we got to business:

 Playing:

 Being awesome:

 Being scared(?) of our gifts:

 Unwrapping presents:

 Swiping the gifts of others:

 And back to more playing:

 And then we ate (and drank) - like, a lot:

It was a great Christmas. Thanks to everyone (especially Justin's dad - who came out and spent a week with us) who helped make it so special for our family!

15 Months

This, the sweetest of all babies, is now 15 months:

At 15 months Sammie:
- Is officially WALKING! Hooray! She's still a little wobbly and she crawls a bit, but she walks more than she crawls and is getting more and more steady every day. She still wears her braces, but her physical therapist thinks that Sammie will be able to stop PT in January and probably be able to ditch the braces shortly after that! Go Sam!
- She's talking more and more. Official words: 'mama', 'dada', 'teekow' (tickle), 'teee' (cheese), 'ma' (milk), 'nana' (banana), 'hi', and 'uh oh'. She also says 'thank you' but that one is more inflection than words and Justin heard her say 'kitty cat' but I have yet to hear it (though I try often to coax it out of her).
- She dances! When she hears a tune that moves her she bounces and laughs. It's awesome.
- She still eats everything. Nothing picky about this eater.
- Favorite activities: being chased and tickled by her daddy (she'll often start laughing and 'running' away from him to try to tempt him to chase her **news flash** it works almost every time), eating, reading/eating/mangling books, chasing Disco (it's not Disco's favorite activity), playing in Disco's food/water (not my favorite activity), playing with/being around her big siblings, peek-a-boo, being thrown around, and having someone jump out and scare her (true story, girl LOOOOOOVES to be startled).
- Nicknames: Sam, Sammie, Samma Sue, Soup, Soupie, Sammie Soup, Sammich, Samma Lou, Samshell
- She still sleeps like a rock star. Goes to bed around 7pm and wakes up around 7:30am. She's down to just one nap a day and it's not always the most consistent (it's hard to be consistent with nap time when the other kids have such random schedules) but she gets her naps in there!
- She loves to be naked and hates having her diaper changed. We're at the stage where diaper changing is like roping a calf. I'm always sweaty and tired at the end.
- She loves to wear scarves and necklaces. She will often find socks lying around our house (mostly courtsey of Noah, who can't keep socks on after school for anything) and use them as scarves. Cute...and a little gross.
- Finally, Justin took Sammie to her 15 month well check. She did awesome and was perfectly well behaved (aside from the shot portion - but who likes that anyway). We learned that she's 27 lbs which makes her (drum roll) the SAME SIZE as Josie! So my 15 month old and my (almost) 4 year old are the same size. One chunky monkey and one skinny minnie. That makes me laugh.

We love our sweet squishy Sammie. No one can meet her and not be instantly smitten. She has such a fun personality. I love watching who she is becoming. Right now she's at one of my favorite stages. I know the temper tantrum stage is coming (I can sense it in the air - much the way one can sense a tornado) but right now I am just 100% enjoying this little lady and all she adds to my life and our family!

December (so far)...

Here's what we're up to so far this month:

We went to a really fun Christmas tree farm and and pet animals:

 Sam wasn't too impressed.

 Cut a Christmas tree (which I couldn't photograph because my camera battery died):

 And saw Santa (which, again, I couldn't photograph because of said dead batteries):

 Then we came home and decorated the tree:

 We tried to find someone brave enough to put a star on top of our tree. First kid chickened out:

 Second kid chickened out:

 Haha! A winner! Success (in the kids' defense, we have a freakin' tall tree this year):

 We've posed in front of our tree:

 I've had my face eaten:

 And eaten some face:

 And practiced my 'duck face' (hot, no?):

 Josie took advantage of the sunlight to twirl and sing to her 'best friend':

 And accessorize her own hair:

 We went to a very sweet kindergarten concert:

 Yup, it's a Pootie (I'll post video of the concert later - I tried once and youtube was giving me grief):

 We've been loving how much our daddy is around right now:

We've been playing dress up (this was the day that Josie told me she was dressed up like baby Jesus - apparently we need to have the 'humble and wrapped in swaddling clothes' lesson again):

 We went to Justin's work holiday party where two girls got to see Santa and Mrs. Clause:

 No fear. No tears.

 We got to model our sweet loot:

 Of all my family members, he's probably the one who needs that the most:

 We get to show off our 'rock star' pose (which, btw, is one of my new favorite pictures):

 Then pass out in a Santa/candy/full induced coma:

 We got to play with the remote control helicopter daddy scored from the white elephant exchange:

 And we all love it:

(Sammie's been making this face a lot lately. I tried for a better pic of it, but it's one of my favorite faces. Priceless!)

 But then we become wary of it's closeness to our body:

 And then we hate it:

 And then we reach a level of indifference and wonder why our mom won't stop taking our picture:

That's our December so far!