Christmas 2011

Christmas was wonderful! Doug and I both ended up having a couple of days off, and we spent that time well. We did nothing! We slept whenever Mia slept, we made lots of yummy food, we got caught up on some TV shows and did a big cleaning of the house. Christmas Day was spent lounging around all day long. I got up to make breakfast before Doug and Mia and ended up having an hour to myself. It was nice to be sitting in a nice clean house, poking around on the computer. Then I went upstairs to check on Mia, who was just waking up. I took this picture of Doug and Mia still sleeping Christmas Morning. My girl just loves to sleep on her tummy with her butt sticking up in the air! (My friend Kemish says it’s called the “stink bug”)


Doug and I came down stairs and had breakfast. I made buttermilk pancakes from scratch (so much better than the “just add water” stuff!) and bacon. Then we sat down with Mia to open presents! Mia cared way more about the paper and bows than the gifts themselves, but she sure did have a fun time! What a blessed little girl Mia is! She was showered with gifts, and she still has another Christmas with Grandma and Grandpa Hill next week! I hope that as time goes on Mia will know how loved and blessed she is, and be grateful for gifts she receives throughout the years. There are too many kids these days that just expect things; I hope I can teach her gratitude.


Doug and I are also extremely blessed this year! We got all sorts of goodies from each other, family and friends. We are so thankful!


After we opened presents Mia was pretty tired and needed a nap. So we all went and took a nap together for a couple of hours. After we got up, we called/skyped with family. It was really fun to skype with my Grandma. Mia is her 6th great grandchild and only great granddaughter! I am so glad that we have Skype! It makes keeping in contact with people so much easier! I think everyone enjoyed getting to see Mia on Christmas!


I made an Apple Butter Ham for dinner, which was so yummy! I love cooking Ham for Christmas and Easter, and try to use different recipes each time. The apple butter recipe was wonderful! I also attempted to make a chocolate pie that Doug likes from his family recipe. It tasted good, but the pie part failed. Oh well. I should just stick with what I know.


After supper we watched the last Harry Potter, which Mia got Doug for Christmas! What a great movie! I do wish that we had watched the first part just before watching the second, because it’s been a year and a half since we’ve seen it, but we still really liked it.


After that we went to sleep! It was so nice to be able to stay home ALL DAY. We are so used to Christmas being a day of running around between houses, that this was a nice change of pace. I think we will be making Christmas a day at home from now on.


I love Christmas, but almost as much as I do, I love after Christmas and taking down all the decorations and getting my house clean! Monday morning is when I took everything down, vacuumed and organized! I still have some cleaning to do but it is nice to have my house back!



Now its New Years and we plan on making some Stromboli and staying home. We have Horrible Bosses on Netflix that we need to watch. I think we will also look into some decorations for our home. We are still working on making it feel more like a home and less like an apartment. We have done some painting, which helps, but we need to add something’s, like curtains and shelves or art on the wall.

Next week we are going to be flying to Florida to visit my parents! I am so excited! We will be seeing my brother, who I haven’t seen in about 2 years, and my grandparents who I haven’t seen in over 4 years! It will be very nice to them to meet Mia, and especially for Mia to meet my brother. He is the only immediate family member she hasn’t met yet. Since we flew to Vermont a few weeks ago, I know Mia will do well on the flight, but I am still nervous. Flying is hard on me, I can only imagine what it’s like for a little one. Hopefully she will do well and we will be able to enjoy our time there. I am a little bummed that we can’t stay longer, but hopefully we will be able to make more trips! I hope it will be sunny and warm!

We got our Christmas Tree! I look forward to getting our tree so much every year. Last year we ended up paying a whopping $50! I refused to do that again, so Doug and I needed to look around at prices. Luckily we do live in Washington, and there are about 10 different Tree farms within five miles of our house.



We loaded up Mia and went off to find a tree! We drove by a bunch of farms and decided on Red Barn Tree Farm about 10 minutes from home. We were just going to look at prices and go to the next farm, but when we saw this place it was so cute we had to stop. The prices were great to cut down your own and not only that but they had a small train that went around the farm. So we went and found our tree! I have a problem of trying to find the tallest tree possible. Usually I could get away with it because we had Cathedral cealings in the house I grew up in, but in our current home our cealings are about eight feet tall. I kept finding beautiful trees, and Doug kept saying no because it was too big. We finally settled on a tree, brought it out to the edge of the farm, and the train came and picked us up!



We got the tree on the car and went home. We put the tree up and it was too tall! I had to trim the top of the tree just to make it fit. But it looks beautiful! Due to a family emergency, we have not been able to decorate it comepletely, but we will hopefully have the tree, and the rest of the house, decorated by this weekend.

Mia just loves the lights and was starring at me when I was putting them up! I am just so excited to have Christmas with her this year and every year from now on. I know she is still small, but having children for Christmas just seems like it will be so much fun!

Time goes too fast

Mia and Stitchy-5 months!

I suck at updating.

I don't know how it happens, but somehow time just slips away, and pretty soon its a week later than I thought it was and I didn't get anything done that I meant to. My blog updates seem to be at the bottom of my list, when it should probably be higher up. Oh well, I can try again this week, right?

We are doing well here in Washington. It is fall now and the weather has been beautiful. People always tell you that it rains all the time in Seattle, but honestly I don't think there is much difference between the rain here, and the rain in Vermont. The weather has been a little chilly, but sunny, which is great. The colors here have been beautiful as well. I need to fix my camera and get some better pictures. I really want to get a new camera, and have my sights on some, but they are so expensive! My phone works ok, but it doesn't get the pictures how I want them sometimes.

Mia is doing great. She had her 4 month check up a couple weeks ago and is doing just fine. She is currently 14 lbs 10oz (65th percentile) and 26 inches long (95th percentile!). She is my tall and skinny girl! We aren't really sure where the tallness comes from, seeing as though neither of us has anyone really tall in our families. I think my mom's dad was over 6 feet tall, so its probably from him.

She has been such a good baby, I really can't complain about anything. She sleeps (mostly) through the night, only getting up a couple times to eat. She can get fussy sometimes, but there is usually a quick fix and she is better again. She loves to laugh, roll over, and has recently discovered her toes, which end up in her mouth most of the time. She tries so hard to crawl, but can't quite figure it out yet. It will be soon though. She has also gotten very grabby. She LOVES to grab my glasses off my face and will reach out if you put a toy in front of her. We just lover he so much!

Doug and I are doing well. Still trying to figure out our work situation. Our schedules are working right now with him being home with her during the day while I work, and Doug working nights, however it is getting a little tiring. We will come up with a solution, we always do!

We had a great Halloween! Mia was Princess Lei. It was the first time I have ever had trick-or-treaters, so it was a very fun night. Mia slept through most of it, but we took turns answering the door and I watched a bunch of old horror movies, "The Incredible shrinking man" was my favorite of the night.


I bought so much candy! We didn't have nearly as many trick-or-treaters as I thought we would have, so I ended up sending two bags of candy with Doug to work.

We are trying to do some work around the house right now. I have a list of projects that I want to get done, but right now we are working on our bedroom. I was tired of the white walls and feeling like I was still in an apartment, so we got some paint. We are doing it two colors, like we did with Mia's room. We are also doing a chair rail like we did with her room. The builder of our house left a bunch of baseboards in our garage, so we cleaned them off, touched up some paint and are using them for the chair rail. Might as well not waste, right? I love the way it is turning out.

I have also been trying to coupon lately. I really want to be more self reliant, and build a food storage for us. Just in case something happens, we know that we will have plenty to eat, and have all the cleaning supplies needed, etc. I am learning slowly, but have already gotten some great deals. Last night I got a bunch of razors. Retail was $42.96, I paid $13.48. We are set on razors! I have also found some great deals on cleaning supplies and am building a great stockpile for our home.

We are very excited for the holidays this year! It will be the first year in our own home, which our new little family. I am excited to cook for Thanksgiving and watch the Macy's parade and movies at home! I have just started shopping for Christmas, but this year I am trying to not spend a lot of money, and get more creative with gifts. I feel bad that I wont be spending so much this year, but Its not about the presents anyways though is it? I am trying to make a lot of things for Mia, such as blankets and toys, so we will see how it turns out!


We will not be spending the holidays with family this year, which is sad, but we are still so excited! In January we are taking Mia on her first trip and going to Florida to see my parents. I am SO EXCITED to go. It will be nice to go someplace warm and see my mom and dad, and hopefully my brother will make it down. We will be celebrating our own little Christmas there in January which will be fun. I am also excited to bring Mia to the beach for the first time! We probably won't go into the water, but it will be nice to get some pictures of her there. It will be nice to see where my parents are living and spend some family time together. It is hard being so far away from them, especially now that I have Mia. But I know that between going there, and them coming here, we will be able to make it work and see each other often. I am so glad that plane tickets are SO affordable between Seattle and where they are in Florida. We paid less than $300 per ticket to get there!

That is all that is going on with us. We are so blessed to have everything we have. We live in a beautiful state and have so many fun things around us to do. I look forward to being able to go out and explore more as Mia gets older!

Hopefully it won't be so long between updates again!

-Meg