A week before their 1st Birthday and Christmas

Our Christmas Picture

Ella "framing" herself

Ella didn't want her shirt on so here she is walking around with a bare belly and her hat that she loves to wear

Here is Ella taking off her shirt.

Nathan with bubbles on his head

Ella and Nathan laughing at each other with bubbles on their heads


Hard to believe that the babies will be one year old next year. They are walking all over the house and I tell myself I can no longer call them babies. We have been blessed for the most part with healthy babies, although this past week and a half, Ella was either fighting some new teeth coming in or had a viral bug. She ran a low grade fever, didn't want to eat, laid her head on your shoulder most of the time, had nasty diapers, and had several episodes of throwing up. Not fun. I think she has finally turned the corner and hopefully we will have our fun loving, carefree Ella back. We have been also going through a bad case of "mamma's babies." And although it is great to be loved, it can be tiring when your children have melt downs when you leave the room just to go to the bathroom. Nathan is probably worse than Ella, but they both can be clingy at times. They do fine when I am gone (of course) and then the moment I walk in the door, it is like they have been abused and neglected all day and just sit there and cry. We had their first year pictures taken the other day and so excited to see how they turned out. We ended up doing a quick Christmas picture outside this past Saturday. We took it ourselves and it turned out pretty good. We are planning a birthday party this coming Sunday. I have to work on their birthday and on Christmas, so Tim will spend that day by his family and then we are heading to Minneapolis for Christmas on New Year's with my family. We pray everyone has a blessed holiday and New Year.