And a new year begins...

Today is the last day before our little Lilee turns ONE.  Wow.  It has been quite a year and I truly can't believe how quickly she's growing up!  

She is babbling like crazy with lots of sounds/words that could closely pass for "dada," "caca" (for kitty), "mama," "nana," "baba" (for Pop-Pop!) but not always as consistently so we're still somewhat waiting for the true first word. Steve and I are debating whether or not to call "uh-oh" her official first word as she says it correctly, but really, is it actually a word??? She's repeated "appoo" for apple like big sis but doesn't always repeat it when she sees one so we shall see!  It is adorable having little conversations with her regardless.

And... (drumroll, please) she has taken her first steps!!!  It has been near impossible to get photos/video of this but trust us!  She took a couple back on 1/10, then about 5 on the 15th, and just this morning, Steve said he counted 10!!! So it's only a matter of time before she takes off!  Stay tuned... :)

But, I digress.  A large post celebrating our sweet Lilee Pie will be up before too long so for now, I'll showcase some of our highlights from January so far, beginning with New Year's Eve!  

We all had a sleep over at Nana & Pop-Pop's so that Steve and I could have a date night out, so we celebrated a mini-countdown earlier in the evening with the girls before they went to bed.  We tried to put a little New Year's tiara on Lilee but she was not having it.  (See below when we tried again the next day!)

 

It was nice to go out together and celebrate our 15 year anniversary (!!!) of our first kiss then share the countdown with my folks.  Little Lilee ended up having a rough night (so we had a rough night!) but was chipper the next morning.

Until we put that darn tiara on her again!:)

All in all, it was great way to celebrate an eventful and beautiful year and look forward to what should be another big year ahead.

Holding a toy carrot in her hand- very appropriate with the outfit!

Enjoying a delicious and fun double date night out in DC with my folks

Maelee's first week back to school was a bit of a mess with snow related delays but she loved playing in it in the courtyard!

A fun little outing to a local mall with an indoor play space!

Then last weekend we had the super fun pleasure of joining Nana & Pop-Pop on a trip down to the Massanutten Resort in the Shenandoah Valley.  Maelee was hoping for some sledding fun but there wasn't enough snow on the ground so we instead took advantage of the pool and she even tried ice skating for the first time!  Steve and I got to go night skiing one evening which was AWESOME and we all had a really great time. 

Super easy car ride down as this little sweetie peacefully snoozed away!

Hilarious whirlwind grocery trip that night where the girls both had a blast in the shopping cart car!

Took two of us to get Lilee's boots on but she was one adorable snow bunny!

Since snow fun wasn't happening, time for pool fun!

Lilee was a riot in the water- she has a blast!!!

And we loved every minute of our ski date :)

More pool fun the next day, before...

ice skating!!!

We were SO proud of our often cautious little girl who was such a champ on those skates!

I had a few nervous wreck moments watching her but she kept telling me to stop holding her.

Ha!

And before long, she was ready to give it a go all by herself!!!

Even Lilee enjoyed taking in some of the fun on the sidelines.

Super fun evening to end a wonderful trip!

Slideshow of more fun from Massanutten:

And before I put up a post showcasing our soon to be 12 month old, here are some pics from Lilee's 11 month "photo shoot."  Which she was NOT enjoying!  But she was so precious in the Christmas dress plus I had to keep documenting her growth with the butterfly wings, so I gave it a shot.  This baby girl is a riot.  She has the best smile and such a sweet, funny disposition, but when she's mad, she's MAD! :)  (But still stinkin' adorable when mad, too...)

Slideshow of more pics from Lilee at 11 months:

January has been a pretty good month so far and the best is yet to come celebrating our sweet baby girl AND getting to see my brother next week!!! We are all so excited for Uncle Dan's visit.  To top it off, Maelee has been in a really great phase the last couple of week where we feel we have seen some real growth in maturity and self-control so here's hoping and praying for a wonderful 2015 all around!!!

So finally, some more Jan pics:

Four Christmases

In three days! 

The last week of December went by in a flurry of travel & wrapping paper!  And even though there was a lot of loading & unloading and coming & going, we had lots of sweet time with family.  NYC at Christmas time is a special place to be sure, and we do still miss it and our dear friends like crazy, but it was awfully nice to not have to lug ourselves onto a no-frills bus for a long, uncomfortable final ride to top it off...

The gift exchanges began on the 23rd (Uncle Dan's bday ironically!) with Nana & Pop-Pop, continued in DE for our annual Christmas Eve celebration at Too-Dad & Too-Mom's, then back at home in VA for our little family of four's Christmas morning followed by brunch with Nana & Pop-Pop, finishing up later on Christmas Day in NC with Mee-Maw & Grandpa and Aunt Kim.  Whew!

While we added just one more little girl to our family this year, our already excessive picture taking seems to have more than doubled this Christmas, so brace yourselves for a doozy!  I've tried to do some major pairing down of shots on the blog post, but there are many more in each slide show.  Enjoy many joyful expressions!

12/23 at Nana & Pop-Pop's

Busted!

Caught peeking into the stockings...

Trying to peek! :)

Loving the daddy time!

The dress-up fun continues!

A bow's a good enough toy for this jolly gal!

Another jolly gal!

A little worn out from all the fun, but a super sweet evening!

More pics from the 23rd:

We left the morning of Christmas Eve for DE and loved every minute of our time there.  We missed those that weren't there but had a great evening with those that were- both girls got sweet time with their Too-daddy and loved seeing everyone else, too.  Maelee especially enjoyed visiting Mark & Bess's pets!  She is our little animal lover.  Lilee was a champ and handled the day without napping so that she didn't miss out on any excitement.  We are so grateful for our DE Christmas Eve tradition!

12/24 at Too-dad & Too-Mom's

Tritty-trot fun with one GREAT dad...

And another :)

So happy together

Excited to dig in!

Just excited :)

Enjoying a new book with her great daddy :)

Say, cheese!

Missing Uncle Dan, but at least Gracie was able to make an appearance!

His favorite little girls

Sleepily entranced by her Too-daddy's lullaby- sweet ending to our time!

We started the Christmas Eve festivities earlier than usual this year so were home by late evening.  Our place was in shambles from the previous day's gift exchanging and preparing for the next day's travel to NC, but it helped us get ready for the big day and allowed more visions of sugar plums to dance in our heads.   

Here's a slew of more from the 24th:

Christmas morning actually felt a bit strange as it was the first Christmas morning ever spent in our own home with just our small family unit.   After the excitement of the 23rd and 24th, it felt a bit anti-climatic but the girls didn't complain over MORE presents to open!!! We were grateful to get to spend some time talking a bit more about the WHY behind the celebration but hope future Christmas seasons will be less stressed, busy, and rushed so we can reflect even more on its meaning.

12/25 at home

For now, this one is definitely not buying into the "It is better to give than receive" truth!
:)


While this one was just as happy to sit on the toys as she was to play with them!

Admiring her beautiful bracelet from daddy with a butterfly charm

Admiring this year's charm to be added to her bracelet-

an anglerfish.  What else???!!!

Not quite as meaningful, but our little butterfly still loved her gift from mommy, too

And lastly, the Anna doll-

Maelee's response to Santa and anyone else who asked what she wanted for Christmas.  

Yep, she was excited.

My folks were able to come over for brunch and to help out while we got everything packed up for our trip to North Carolina, so even though it was a pretty hurried morning, we enjoyed our time together and look forward to making more Christmas morning memories.

Slideshow from the morning of the 25th:

We were able to hit the road early afternoon and fortunately did not have much traffic on our trek to NC.  Lilee does not enjoy long car rides when she's awake (thankfully, she did sleep part of the time!), but we made it in about 4 hours and Maelee was able to take advantage of one of Nana & Pop-Pop's gifts of a car DVD player for at least the first part of the trip.  We arrived by early evening and were able to enjoy more fun gift giving and a delicious dinner.

12/25 at Mee-Maw & Grandpa's

Yay- here we go again!!!

 

Maelee loved her dino & shark hooded towels, batgirl costume, and new fort-making kit!

Lilee especially loved the alphabet dog and trying some whipped cream :)

I especially loved sharing Christmas with this sweet girl this year!

Ready to call it a night but...

grateful to share a special evening with daddy's family!

Whew- what a busy three days!  It was nice to have some down time for a few more days in North Carolina where the girls especially enjoyed some of the different creations the life-sized tinker toy like fort kit became!!!

Starting with a basic tunnel

Then an anglerfish, courtesy of Aunt Kim's and Mee-Maw's design skills!

 

Followed by daddy & Aunt Kim's T-Rex :)

Happy to have a lazy day with Aunt Kim, Mee-Maw & Grandpa

Ginger bread house decorating fun with daddy!

Ta-da!

Sweet cuddles with Kim inside

And Mee-Maw outside!

Maelee loved trying out her Batgirl super powers at the nearby playground

And loved showing off her Aunt's super power derby skills.

Overhead saying to a little boy after asking Kim to skate for them:

"That's my Aunt Kim.  I'm always quite impressed when she does that!"

More sweet Auntie time making Ninja bread cookies!!!

Decorating help from Mee-Maw

The impressive final products!

Both girls loved seeing their Aunt Kim and Mee-Maw & Grandpa and we're so grateful to be closer to everyone now.

More pictures from our visit to NC:

Once again, it has been a whirlwind of a holiday season and we can't believe we're into a new year that will see our youngest turning ONE (in just a couple weeks!!!) and our oldest turning FIVE (what???) and hopefully lots more big things in store for our family.  We feel so blessed to have shared this Christmas with so much special family and can't wait to see more (especially Uncle Dan in just a few weeks!!!) in 2015.  Happy New Year!