Merry Christmas

Well we had a great Christmas. Claire, Ella, and Caleb had so much fun playing together and are good friends now. It was so fun to see baby Joshua who looks just like Benjamin. He is so cute and fun to hold because he is so snuggly! Our first day we took the kids to the rec center where they had a huge aquatics facility and lots of fun things for the kids. I think Claire had a great time because she was just exhausted afterward. Sunday night we went up to Logan for the Knighton family Christmas party. It was really fun, we had a great time making quilts for a youth center and the boys had a great time creating a sled out of candy for racing. I'm happy to report that the Ray Knighton family won! Christmas eve we took a family portrait and opened pj's and I was really happy to see that Claire was really interested in opening presents. I got a great picture of her when she saw what Santa had brought her. We had a great time. My best present was feeling the baby kick twice on Christmas. It's so fun when you start to feel them move and wiggle and kick. We had a great vacation and we came home to about a foot of snow! Merry Christmas!

Snedaker family Christmas Party

Since we will be in Utah for Christmas we had our Snedaker party last night. We had lots of yummy food and played a funny Christmas game, we also played the chime set which I have downloaded a video of. They were trying to play "Noel", it took a few tries but it turned out really good! We had lots of fun!
As you can see from the photos, Claire got an adorable Dora purse from her Grandma and Grandpa and Uncle Parker which she absolutely loves.
Chris is reading a letter from Marshall saying he got him two tickets to a Jazz game. Chris is pretty excited. Merry Christmas!

Time for a change

As pregnancy hormones have taken over I swore to myself that I wouldn't cut my hair like I did when I was pregnant with Claire, instead I decided to make a drastic change... as you can tell from the picture! I really like it and it turned out just the way I wanted it to, so if you don't like it-don't say anything. I really enjoy watching Gilmore Girls and I got my inspiration from Rory. I realized it had been a long time since I had anything besides blonde so here we are. I'm not sure I really know if Chris likes it because he just keeps staring at me and telling me to try it different ways so he can get used to it. I dunno.
As for this pregnancy I am feeling so big around the belly much much sooner than I did with Claire. I don't think I was really into maternity clothes until I was about 20 weeks with Claire and this time I've been so ready since about 12 weeks. I really need to take a belly shot, maybe in a couple of weeks. I have also had a really hard time having energy and catching my breath. Just walking up the stairs in the morning will get me so tired. I had a doctors appt. this past thursday and begged the doctor to schedule my 20 week ultrasound for my next visit (even though I'll only be about 18 weeks) well she sternly said "no" and wouldn't budge. I left the doctors office in tears. I was soo upset! So I guess we'll have to wait another two months before we know the sex of the baby. I should have posted this earlier because I have had a lot of people telling me they suspected a boy from my earlier post, but this is not true, we just don't know yet.
Anyways, we took Claire to see Santa on Saturday and she was too shy to get on his lap but she got a good look. I'm pleased that she is starting to understand who Santa is because today at church she pointed to a man in our ward with white hair and a big white beard and said
"Santa!"(hope he didn't hear her lol). Another fun thing Claire has learned how to do recently is say her own prayers. She is very good at repeating and knowing when to kneel and fold her arms. I think this repeating has helped her vocabulary and her prayers alone have helped our family. It is amazing what the prayer of a child can do! Sometimes she gets the urge to say a prayer at random times during the day and this too has helped me remember what I should be thinking about throughout the day. She is a good example without even knowing it.

Somersaults

Well I had to add this new little video of Claire doing a somersault. She has been working on them for quite a few months now and she is getting really good! It's too funny though because it seems like she only does them at random and only once. She will walk into a room, do a somersault and then go about the rest of her business. It's like it's an easier way for her to get around or something. I really enjoy watching her do them and how she has gotten so straight. She is definitely full of energy and determination.

Making Gingerbread houses

We decided it would be fun if Claire helped us create a Gingerbread house. She had a lot of fun eating the candy and even helped decorate it and put some of the icing on. I thought it would be a fun memory to be able to go to the gingerbread house every once in a while and get a piece of candy.

Christmas pictures

We took a few pictures of Claire in her Christmas dress. It's funny to see her personality in the pictures. I was trying to get Claire to smile with no luck, then Chris came and taught her how by putting her fingers up on her cheeks. It turned out really cute.