If there is anyone still out there clicking on my tiny space in Blogville, I'd like to wish you a

Merry Christmas!!

For those of you still waiting to bring your little ones home, don't give up hope that your day will come. After all, this is the season of hope so there is no better time to renew your faith that things will work out and those referrals will continue to roll out and maybe even speed up. I'm counting on this for you all. By the way, Kim B, I loved the way you included Isabella on your card...it brought tears to my eyes.

Sitting here this Christmas Eve, I am SO grateful for my little family of three and for the pure joy that Lauren has brought into our lives. There is nothing else that makes me happier than being her momma...it's the best thing in the world! I'm so grateful that we get to experience parenthood with this amazing little girl and it's already hard to remember what it was like before she was here.

I'm looking forward to the merriest Christmas ever and I hope you all have that too!

Updates

This month is flying by at extra high speed, don't you all think? I'm off work for the rest of the week since I had vacation hours to burn (I know, poor me) and I'm hoping to catch up on some things I've been wanting to get done.

First off, I wanted to take a few minutes to share pics of a few fun things over the past couple of weeks since I last posted.

We visited Shamrock Farms, a local dairy farm that has an annual holiday event for the kids called "Joy to the Herd". It includes a tram tour of the farm, face painting, Christmas crafts, snacks, carolers and a visit from Santa. Lauren loved the "moooo cows" and it was pretty interesting to see how a dairy farm operates.






It was fun decorating the tree this year with my little helper. Here she is picking the perfect ornament to hang...


and figuring out where to put it.


The placement has to be just right...


I have to pat myself on the back for not re-hanging the ornaments she hung. I left them exactly where she put them. Anyone who knows me knows that was tuff! ;)

My favorite part of the Christmas decorations is this...the sight of Lauren's stocking hung between ours. I can't tell you how many times I've stared at this and thanked my lucky stars!



This past Sunday I reserved for baking. I started early by making a batch of the Ree's cinnamon rolls. Don't let all the steps to this receipe scare you away. It's definitely a production, but not hard at all. Actually, it was my first successful experience with yeast. My previous attempts at yeast recipes have always failed miserably. Here's the final product baked in holidays pans with lids for gift giving...


Yummy goodness...



These rolls were delicious right out of the oven and the tins we brought our neighbors were still warm, but I also brought a few tins in for people at work and I'm not sure how the rolls held up overnight. I'm thinking they are really something that needs to be eaten right away while warm or frozen then baked later.

After the cinnamon rolls, we made pecan pizzelles (an Italian waffle cookie that's made with a pizzelle iron). My Mom has made these for cookie exchanges in the past and a friend of mine wanted to learn how. They are labor intensive, but so worth it...light and not overly sweet. They are great with coffee and tea.

Then it was time to make butter cookies. It's a recipe from my Grandmother on my Dad's side and we been making them for years. I wanted to keep this tradition up with Lauren, so it was nice when she woke up from her nap just in time to decorate her own tray...





I love these cookies with the cinnamon candies on them. Something about the melt in your mouth butter taste with the cinnamon...yum!


Also on Sunday, Lauren had a play-date with her friend Lily and Joe took them over to the play ground in the wagon. Don't look they cute swinging together...





Oh, one more thing...we took Lauren to get pics with Santa on Saturday morning. She's seen Santa a few times already and has sat in his lap and talked to him. It seemed on Saturday she was a lot more apprehensive because of all the noise and camera lights flashing. At the mall it was all about getting the kids onto Santa's lap, getting the pics and getting them out. They didn't let the kids have even a minute of chat time with the big guy.



I do like that we can buy the pics on a USB and download them to the computer for scrapbooking and printing.

Well, that's just about it for updates. I'm hoping to get Lauren's gifts wrapped tonight after she goes to sleep so I can move onto other projects for the rest of this week. Have a good one!

Polar Express

Last weekend, we headed up to northern AZ for the Polar Express train ride on the Grand Canyon Railway. It started snowing while we waited for the train, which really added to the holiday mood. I don't even remember the last time I saw snow, so it was really fun and a great trip. Lauren loved seeing Santa and it was so much fun to experience everything through her eyes.

Here's a little video from the trip...

Kitchen assembly...done!

I had decided months ago that Lauren's big gift for her first Christmas would be a kitchen. We had some ideas in mind...we knew we wanted wood, we wanted it to spark her creativity without a lot of bells and whistles, and we wanted it to be super fun and played with a lot. On top of that, we wanted it to look good so it could have a place in our family room/kitchen area without sticking out like a sore thumb.

After toy store shopping and LOTS of internet shopping, I ordered the Little Tikes Deluxe Wooden Kitchen and Laundry Center. Joe put it together yesterday and I LOVE it! It's totally solid and the colors fit perfectly in our house. It looks SO much better than most of the plastic kitchens we looked at.

Joe said the assembly went very smoothly, although it did take about 3.5 hours to put together. There were no missing parts and no damaged pieces. We unpacked it together and I put all the parts in alphabetical order so he could easily find the pieces as he needed them. My mom and I took Lauren out to a few stores and by the time we got back he was done.



The laundry center is adorable with the little washer, iron and laundry basket...


On most wooden kitchens the oven door hinges open on the side, but on this one it's hinged on the bottom to open like a real oven. The image on the oven door is cute. From one angle, the muffins just went in...


and from another angle, they are popped up and ready...


There's even a little cell phone and chalk board message center...


Okay, did I say that I LOVE this kitchen? Oh yeah, I did! I'm SO excited to see her face on Christmas morning when she sees this sitting next to the tree. Have I told you how many years I've dreamed of this...our first Christmas with our daughter? Let's just say LOTS of years and I'm going to enjoy every moment!

We love Kai-lan...

I just had to show off this adorable Kai-lan outfit we found on the Target clearance rack. It's a sweatshirt type top and pants all fully decked out with Kai and her friends...



Paired with her ultra cool Skechers, I think we're good to go for the day...


Have a great weekend! The weather is perfect here...in the mid to high 70's.

This and That...

I took this pic this morning and when I pulled it up on the computer I thought...oh my God, look how big my baby is getting! Doesn't she look older in this pic? When she wears jeans, she thinks it's really cool to put her hands in the front pockets. She'll walk around the house like this after she gets dressed.


Today she actually wore the bracelet that Michelle made for her and didn't take it off all morning, even through a trip to the store.

I made my first recipe from the Pioneer Women's cookbook this past week...Chicken Spaghetti. The only thing I did differently was I cooked the chicken in the crockpot overnight instead of boiling it on the stove. A friend of mine said she cooks chicken this way all the time and that it gets very tender. She was right, it was falling off the bone as I was taking it out. The messiest part of the recipe is shredding the chicken. It was super easy, but it's not my favorite thing to do...


Here's the completed recipe ready for the oven...


and here it is with the cheese nicely browned and ready to pop into my insulted bag to head out for our Wednesday evening girl's night/play date.


It was a hit with everyone and Lauren loved it. Can't go wrong with chicken, cheese and pasta for the kiddos. This recipe will be a regular in our house for now on. Also, the leftovers taste just as good, if not a little better, than the first day.

Update and Pioneer Women

Yes, it's been a good couple of weeks since I've checked in here. I'll tell ya, sometimes life just gets in the way of blogging. That darn full-time job while trying to keep a semi-clean house, an occasional home cooked meal on the table, and clean clothes on our backs is what's getting in my way! All this stuff is also getting in the way of spending quality time with my girl, so I'm not ashamed to say that some of my standards have been lowered. The house isn't nearly as clean as it used to be, I find myself wearing those jeans a couple more times before throwing them in the laundry, and meals are a lot less complicated.

Actually, I've been using a lot of recipes from the Pioneer Women over the past year. I love how simple her recipes are and how she takes photos of each little step so you can't possibly miss a beat. Most of all I love how she writes her descriptions of the food as she's cooking and outlining her steps. She's so funny.

If you're also a fan of hers, you know that she's on a book tour right now for her first cookbook. Lucky for me that she was here in the Phoenix area last night and I was there! It was a mob scene and there must have been easily 400 or so people there, but I managed to elbow my way in for a few pictures during the question and answer session.

The crazy scene...


and here's Ree herself looking absolutely adorable (her sister-in-law Missy to the left)...


I caught her taking a pic of us...


Because of the massive crowd and needing to be home before midnight, I didn't get to meet her. Although, I did leave my cook book at the store for her to sign at the end of the night.

From listening to the question and answer session, I can tell you all that she is as sweet as can be and exactly what I had imagined from reading her blog. Also, if you haven't ordered her book yet, you should. It's a really pretty book full of photos and great looking recipes. Actually, I think I may cook through the book ala Julie and Julia. Anyone else up for the challenge? Maybe I can post ahead which recipe is up and do one of those link lists for everyone to post their outcomes...might be kind of fun.

On another note, Halloween was SO much fun this year and Lauren loved it! We went to a kids party during the day and trick-or-treating with her cousins in the evening. I'll post more later once I have a chance to do a couple of scrapbook layouts, but here she is in the super adorable costume made by Grandma...