348 - 364

It's the home stretch! Almost there!

348 of 365: Pretty Lady
I took portraits of both girls this day, and this is the best portrait Olivia I have gotten to date. She's so pretty.


349 of 365: nudity
Yep, the girls no longer where clothes. You're more likely to see them naked than to see them clothed. Please don't judge us.


350 of 365: self portrait
Taken at work, in one of the Christmas balls I hung all over the place


351 of 365: Santa baby
Look! Both girls sitting happily on Santa! I never thought I'd see the day!


352 of 365: beat
taken after a long long afternoon of last minute Christmas shopping


353 of 365: magic
These are Olivia's ornaments (I buy her one from this set every year) and I was playing around with bokeh (the circles in the background)


354 of 365: let me sleep
Vash laid down in this baby bed I use as a prop for newborns. Olivia's the one that covered him with a blanket - so he wouldn't get cold during his nap.


355 of 365: pensive
perhaps worred about Santa?


356 of 365: sugar
the day I baked sugar cookies until I was buried in sugar


357 of 365: chocolate
the day I baked chocolate chip cookies until the package of chips ran out


358 of 365: Not a creature was stirring...
Christmas Eve, right after Santa had dropped by. I must have been on the computer and just missed him ;)


Lets break in the 365 to talk about Christmas. Firstly, I hope everyone enjoyed theirs. We certainly enjoyed ours. This year Olivia truly understood Christmas... she understood that she was going to get to unwrap a whole lot of presents. We'll work on a better message for her later ;) So for Olivia, every time she was done with a gift, she would point to a new wrapped present and say "Owivia open nother pwesent mommy??" She was always very polite about it. Claire wouldn't open her presents, but she would sit next to you while you opened it, screaming "WHAT IS IT!??????? WHAT! IS! IT!!!!!!!!!!!!" I just died laughing.

Christmas day we started at our own home, then we drove to Upper Sandusky. In upper, Tim and I quickly realized that we had forgotten sippy cups. Olivia can use a real cup, but Claire can't (though she can use a straw) To substitute, we gave Olivia her juice in a disposable coffee cup. Hilarious!


This image of Karen pretty much sums up all of the adults feelings of Christmas by the end...


From there, we came back to Columbus, and went to Tims parents house. We attempted a picture of all the grandkids together, but it didn't go so well...

359 of 365: presents


360 of 365: Generations
Three generations of men in Tims family. Oh and Claire. Because she manages to weasel herself into many pictures


361 of 365: snow now??
We had no snow over Christmas. It actually felt very Halloween/Thanksgiving-like in the weather department. Of course it snowed 2 days after Christmas. Thanks a lot Mother Nature!


Since it snowed, the next day we went over to my parents house to visit Haley and Aunt Sue, and play in the show. Got to love a bundled kid.






I asked Haley to throw snow, since it was such fluffy snow, and looked so cool when it was thrown.

362 of 365: SNOW!!!




And Haley tried so hard to teach the girls how to make snow angels. Claire was really the only cooperative one in that attempt, and even that probably had more to do with the fact that she could barely move in her snowsuit.




363 of 365: dropped
Claire has now stopped napping. In her crib. She has, however, taken up Olivia's method of just dropping to sleep where-ever she is. Only Olivia won't leave Claire alone. So here's Olivia sitting as close to Claire as possible, while watching tv and picking a wedge. Love that kid.


364 of 365: snuggie
I love all my presents that I got for Christmas, but it's the snuggie that gets the most attention. I love that thing. Probably because it's zebra print.

Lets go to Chuckie Cheese!

For Claire's birthday party, we had a Chuckie Cheese party. It was definitely worth it! The girls LOVED it! I started out trying to take 'good' pictures, but quickly realized that I was going to fret over pictures, rather then enjoy the party. So I threw the camera on auto, and just enjoyed the day. So outside of the 365 day picture, these are just any old snapshots anyone could take ;)

347 of 365: roller coaster!


wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!


Karen's probably going to kill me, but Olivia just loved this basketball game, and I think her favorite part was that Grandma was playing with her.






I was out of piping icing, so I cheated on Claires cake, and just make a giant 2 out of sprinkles


Chuckie Cheese himself comes and crowns the birthday kids, and they get a medal too (Claire took hers off)






Haley and Karen wanted their pictures with Chuckie too. Karen, I think this should be your new facebook picture!

more Olivia and Claire

342 of 365: fit


The 9th was Claires second birthday. She got a 'Melmo' block sorter. She loves it.
343 of 365: Birthday Girl


344 of 365: bruise


345 of 365: looks like 80s makeup


346 of 365: tree

The girls have a bad couple of days

Tim's birthday was the 6th of December. He wanted the afternoon to himself (he wanted to play bloody video games that I don't allow when the girls are up) so I took the girls to my parents house to play with Haley.

Claire was acting very sleepy. Which wasn't like her.

Olivia and Haley were acting rambuncious. Which is very much like them. At one point, while Olivia and Haley were chasing each other around the downstairs, Olivia ran into a wall. Well, not really a wall... one of those ledges that stick out and visually divide a room, but other then that serve no purpose. Well other then to stop Olivia dead in her tracks.

So Olivia's crying and carrying on, and I'm getting her and Haley set up on the couch, and Karens getting a boo boo bunny out (which Olivia asks for frequently now when she falls at Grandmas) and Haley yells that Olivia's bleeding. She wasn't - she was bruising. She banged up the bone above her eye pretty badly, but we were hoping it would just pink up, and then go down.

During this, Claire is just laying around. She was glassy-eyed during dinner (which I made her eat) and just overall... limp. It wasn't until I picked her up to put her on my lap after the whole Olivia wall incident that I realized she was BURNING UP! Turned out she had a fever of 103.5 degrees. Way to make me feel like a bad mom!

So we packed everyone up, and ruined Tims birthday.

340 of 365: poor girl


We woke up Monday morning, and was greeted by Olivia's shiner. It was impressive. Better then the black eye Claire had gotten a few months ago.







341 of 365: Shoulda seen the other guy