Southern Living: Preppy Style: Playing Catch Up...Month 2

I was talking with a friend tonight about how much I really wanted to get back to blogging, not for everyone else that has and does follow me over the past few years, but for myself, my family and most importantly, my girls. Girls....as in plural. That's nice. :-)

This blog has, for the most part, always been about my growing family and for the last year, it's been lacking. I don't have scrapbooks. I don't have picture books. Nor do I have the time to really sit down and actually make picture or scrapbooks these days. But I do have time to blog and hopefully one day, I'll print out these blogs and have not just a scrapbook or picture, but actual stories that accompany our lives, so the girls have a way to remember their childhoods. Poor Baby H, she's barely been mentioned since she was born!

Anyways, I'm notoriously organized with my pictures. They are always uploaded and dated into months and then stored on the "brick" (a/k/a the external hardrive....which my computer techy friend is trying to convince me to upload all twelve years of pictures to dropbox, but that's another story). The point being, I'm organized and at least playing catch up will not be that difficult. So, I think I left off with month 1 of Baby H, so here, I'll start with Month 2. By the way, Baby H is now 4 months old, as of Saturday!

Anyways....back to blogging (which Husband will be thrilled!)

Couple changes though. Lallie is now going to be spelled Lolly. No one has/had a CLUE that Lallie is actually pronounced "lolly" like lollipop. It was spelled this way due to a friend and I just assumed you would pronounce it "lolly" and not some other way with a short or long A sound. I supposed incorrectly. And Baby H. Well, let's call her H.G. which is short for her real name.

So here goes the month of December which is basically, picture overload.

We started out December celebrating not only Husband's 38th birthday, but also H.G.'s baptism day on December 1st! It was a great day however, we were greatly missing my mom and dad. They had planned to spend Thanksgiving and the baptism with us along with my brother-in-law and his wife however, my grandfather (dad's side) died and my parents had to go to northern Illinois to handle everything surrounding that. At this point, they had still yet to meet H.G. due to a series of unfortunate circumstances and with H.G. being so young and other relatives already in route to Florida, we were not able to attend my grandfather's funeral. Other than that, it was a great day/weekend! We celebrated with great friends, honorary "aunts and uncles" and of course, her Godparents, Husband's brother and wife, Patrick and Jessica.

I'm saddened to say that on December 7th, our sweet companion, U.K. passed on. He had been failing in health quite quickly over the two weeks before and he was old by the standards of a golden retriever at 14 years old. We miss him greatly but no one as much as Husband. They were true confidants and soul mates. He will be forever in our hearts as he was our very first baby and we were his forever home.

On December 8th, H.G. turned 2 months old!

Lolly made her debut as a ballet dancer in her very first Nutcracker! She was a lamb (I'm not sure they had lambs in the real Nutcracker. I'm pretty sure they had more students sign up than parts and thus, we have lambs). Let me tell you, the Nutcracker rehearsal and performance schedule is tough, especially with a newborn! Nevertheless, we are super proud of Lolly and of course, she had a blast! And that's all that matters.

We took a quick trip up to Disney's Magic Kingdom and Epcot, just for the day. H.G.'s first trip and Lolly's tenth, twelfth, I've lost count! Christmas at Disney truly is magical (until you get soaked with rain....and you buy $42 PJs so Lolly won't be cold on the ride home and then they shrink with the first washing to the size of a two month old....again, another story for another day).

Santa Claus visited our neighborhood. This was very exciting for Lolly! Yes, that is an Anna dress from Frozen. Lolly never wears regular clothes at home. She is always in one princess dress or another.

I'm so proud of myself. I took my own Christmas pictures. I read a book on how to use our fancy Nikon D-90, figured out what an F-stop meant (sort of) and even used a tripod! These are the results. The top picture was the front of the card and the bottom picture was on the back as the birth announcement. There's nothing wrong with killing two birds with one stone! :-)

The only issue? Husband said "you could have at least mulched!" Heehee. Add it to my list of things to do!

And then we went north. We headed to Kentucky.....in the car.....a Lexus sedan (at least it's the big one).....for 24 hours.....stopping at a hotel....with a nursing two month old.....and an antsy 6 year old.

Oh yes we did.

And it actually went REALLY well! At the time, H.G. was a car screamer. Every time we put her in the car seat, she screamed at the top of her lungs until she was hoarse. And then she'd snub for an hour. It broke our hearts! H.G. is a very good baby and never cried unless she was in her car seat (thankfully this has now stopped).

So, we got in the car, said a very long and hopeful prayer and she was an absolute peach the entire way up and back.

Will we ever do that again? Uh, that would be a resounding NO! But we are sure glad we were able to go and introduce H.G. to the family and of course, Lolly had a fantastic time on the farm.

Ummmmm, I'm a Florida baby....what the heck is all this bulky stuff?

Lolly lost her very first tooth two days before Christmas. What a lucky girl as apparently the first tooth is worth the most. Who knew?

Oh yes....by the way, Ashleigh had her baby! Sweet little (big) P. I'm pretty sure I told you but he was 6 weeks early and was in the NICU for two weeks. Goodness, if I ever wanted to be anywhere, it was then. For Ashleigh. I will never be able to imagine what she went through but if the string of texts tell you anything, it was extremely tough. But he's doing great and you'd never know he was a preemie with his 20 pound weight gain by 6 months! I was SO excited to meet him and hug my "sister" this year. So blessed to have Ashleigh, her Husband and now P. in our lives.

I LOVE this picture.