December still, but not yet Christmas

The annual family newsletter is coming out soon. For those of you who have come to check out the day-by-day account of the flooding this summer that was mentioned in it, go straight to the Flood Journal post. You are welcome to check out anything else on here as well! Enjoy!

By the way, if you don't think you are on my parent's Christmas list and you would like to receive a letter and picture, send an email to me (Erin) with your address and we'll add you to the list!  emk6@hotmail.com

Now on to the current events.

We start them young in this family

Chelsea and Rick went bowling for a Daddy-daughter date. Chelsea had a good time, but those balls are sure heavy!

This lovely pink dragon helped Chelsea bowl.



Abby got her baby blessing yesterday, which was the 11th of December. The dress she is wearing is the same dress that both Chelsea and Brie wore for their blessings. Grandma Heit made it! Grandma Kelly made the blessing blanket that is laying on the couch there. Such talents!

Here are the Heits that were here to witness/participate.

And here are the Kellys, all present and accounted for. We count Jennifer as a Kelly even though technically she's a Bowles.

Uncle Greg is back from his mission! He served in Brazil. We all went to the airport to greet him as he returned, only to find that the plane had arrived early. Shucks. Oh well. The girls were very shy at the airport, but at the Heit house it didn't take them long to warm up to him. Brie even fell asleep on his lap!

I took this as I'm trying to blog this post. I had Abby with me hanging out on Brie's bed, and it didn't take long for big sisters to find us and begin playing with Abby. She quickly was hugged, kissed, cuddled, and covered in every blanket nearby. Oh, big sisters. They love their baby, there's no doubt about that!

Family Photo Time!

I will just let the pictures speak for themselves.

I LOVE MY FAMILY!

*I know there are no individual shots of Chelsea. That was an oversight during the bedlam that was our photo shooting session. We'll take some individual ones later so she's not left out forever!

The Christmas Season is Upon Us

Here are our new friends Missoni and Alize (pronounced Ally-zay, or Zay-Zay for short) They moved to a place just a couple blocks from us. We like them a lot and see them a couple times a week usually. It was past Zay-Zay's nap time this day, can you tell? It was past Brie's nap time too, can you tell? Probably not so much. Brie is napping less and less frequently nowadays. Sigh. There are days that *I* need her naptime more than her. Oh well. She's growing up!

Chelsea and Brie had a good ol' time "helping" put up the tree and other decorations. Here they are having potato sack races in plastic bags.

Daddy helped Abby participate in decorating the downstairs tree. We have a big tree upstairs and our smaller tree set up downstairs. It has lots of our memory ornaments. You can see the Care Bear ones in this pic. There are all sorts of ornaments that bring back childhood memories. Grandma has also started collecting ornaments for the grandkids-one for each child for each year. They are stored away separately with a note of who it goes to and why it is significant or special. Then when they are grown, they will have a set of their very own special ornaments. I love that idea.

It was a full day of decorating! We haven't taken pictures of the finished decor, but we should. It looks really good!

Nobody was left out of the decorating. Some of the ornaments are even still on the tree, after having been up for awhile now. Ha! Actually there are only one or two that repeatedly keep disappearing or "falling off."

And we finally got a smiley face from Abby! Nevermind the off centered-ness of it, or the tissue laying next to her. I was watching her instead of framing her in the camera.

Here she is talking. Cooing is so cute at her age! Her eyebrows tell more of what she is thinking than her voice does. What do you think she's thinking here?

Abby is my first child to suck on her hands/thumb. Only rarely does she find her thumb, but once in awhile she'll suck her knuckles for fun. The other two never really did that. I don't let her suck her thumb. I don't want to have to help her break that habit later on. I'd rather go with breaking a pacifier habit. She's pretty good about only needing a pacifier to help her go to sleep though. 

Christmas photos coming up!