Love this picture

I am just looking though our pictures from our trip to CO and I found this gem. It makes me happy.

L's First Year Video

Here is L's first year condensed into 12 minutes. It kinda feels like it has gone that quick too ...

Little L's 1st Birthday

I just realized that I never blogged about L's first birthday! Yikes! I was so busy working on his video that it completely slipped my mind.

On his birthday we woke all the kids up before Matt went to work so that we could give him his present. (It was really hard to shop for a gift for him that we didn't already have in the house.)

He really liked it, and showed his gratitude to Dad.

During the day we did one of his favorite activities ... take a bath.

For dinner I planned his favorite meal, shell noodles and green peas with Alfredo sauce and dinosaur chicken nuggets. He scarfed them down and then got to enjoy his own cupcake.

 

Did have to tell him what to do with that cupcake!

 

He thoroughly enjoyed it.

 

And when your arms get too tired to pick it up ...

 

Just as I was finishing preparing dinner the Sister Missionaries stopped by to use the restroom and of course we invited them to stay for dinner. They got to enjoy my gourmet geared to a one-year-old birthday dinner! It was fun to have other people to celebrate with us.

12 Months

Videos and sickness

Below are a couple of videos for some specific people, but I'm sure everybody will enjoy them too.
Also, I know that we have had a significant birthday around here, but at least one family member has had some sort of illness back-to-back for the last month and a half, so I'm moving a little slow in getting birthday pictures and stories posted. Hang in there! I know you are all waiting on the edge of your seat. :-)

This first one is for Grandma Porter, she made a beautiful quilt for C for her 4th birthday, and here she is opening it up.

This one is for Aunt Jess, she and I had recently talked about teaching your kids to eat with a spoon. Here is L trying it out, however Jess, when you do it you don't have to do it "3rd child style" you know, without a bib, while standing at the coffee table over the brand new carpet. :-)

4th Birthday

My Cbug turned 4!!! How in the world is she getting so big?!? She has now spent more than 1/2 of her life in New York. Weird huh?

She is such a special girl. She brings so much joy and so much frustration into our daily life. A paper-cut, an accidental bump, cold hands, a wrong look, hearing "no" and so much more can send her into hysterics for minutes or hours. But when she wants to she can be the sweetest most complementing and helpful child in the house. She loves pink, princesses, ponies, dress-up, dancing, her brothers and her Daddy. She can dance for hours to music from the Nutcracker, and does so several time a day. She can memorize books and songs like no 4 year old I have ever met. She knows all of her letters and number and can already write several of them. I love this girl more than she will ever know and am grateful for all of the things she has taught me about being a mother.

Happy Birthday C!

On her birthday morning she woke up to a "birthday tree" with her presents underneath including a pink Barbie bike from Aunt Jess and Aunt Jo.

For her birthday she wanted to watch a movie with her friends, not go to a movie, just watch a movie. So we had a princess pajama party. Her close buddies came over to celebrate with her. My friend Karen did the girls hair and I gave them glitter tattoos.

C opened presents.

The party girls 

(minus one who wanted to eat snacks instead of take pictures)

We enjoyed pizza

and then pink cupcakes, although next time I think I might just give them frosting on a spoon. :-)

Finally I painted the girls nails while they watched Cinderella (and held still).

and of course it's not a movie without popcorn

After everybody left she danced till bedtime in her new princess nightgown and jewels.

Happy Birthday C!!

Christmas 2013

We had a fantastic Christmas this year. It was just our little family, no visitors, so it was nice and "quiet."
On Sunday we had a "Thanksmas Eve Day" (Thanksgiving, Christmas Eve, Christmas and Sunday) dinner with our good friends the Wildings.
Christmas Eve we had the Porter tradition of soup and sandwiches for dinner and then the kids got to open their Christmas jammies.

The kids were very excited on Christmas morning, but were patient enough to let us sleep till 7:30 (that's good!).

L got a ball popper but wasn't too sure about it in the beginning. I'm not sure if it was the noise, or the balls popping out of the top of it or what, but he warmed up to it pretty quickly.

One of C's most successful gifts (not necessarily favorite, but most played with so far) is a Leap Pad. She likes that it is hers, has her type of games on it and is covered in pink and princesses.

K's favorite and most successful gift is all the Skylander stuff that he got!

L loved his rocking dragon. He a professional dragon rider now.

C said over and over that she wanted a pink drum for Christmas. L enjoys it as much as she does. The set cam with a harmonica, an ocarina and a tambourine too, so we've had many family jam sessions.

We played with our new toys all day and then enjoyed a nice steak dinner that Great Grandma Porter sent us. Thank you to everyone for your wonderful and thoughtful gifts!!

Junior Yellow

Also this month, but deserved it's own post, K earned his Junior Yellow belt at Tae Kwon Do. 

Keep up the good work KMan!!

Most Our December

As I sat down to blog about our Christmas I realized that I have completely neglected to post pictures from any of our other December activities. Here is a "quick" recap of our month leading up to Christmas.

We set up and decorated our Christmas tree.

We played dress up.

Me made a countdown chain that first counted down to Christmas and then to C's birthday.

We made snowflakes. Check out the Star Wars ones.

GrandMary joined us at the Victorian Streetwalk.

The kids favorite part of the streetwalk is getting their faces painted, so we got there early and they were the 2nd or 3rd kids in line. :-)

We enjoyed Christmas through the eyes of an 11 month old.

We were in charge of the music for our church Christmas party and Matt sang "Angels We Have Heard on High" with 3 other men.

We went to see a performance of Nutcracker that was put on by the dance school that C goes to. GrandMary went with us and beforehand we went out for dinner and then to see the downtown Saratoga Santa and since we were the only ones there we got to chat with him for a good 15 min.

One night we got about 2-3feet of snow and was still coming down in the morning, so church was cancelled for the day.

The next Sunday we tried to get a nice picture of the kids in their matching Christmas outfits.

Our Elf on the Shelf, Clever, was up to no good all month.

On Christmas Eve, just in time to give some to Santa, we made and decorated cookies.

K kept licking the frosting from his fingers/knife/cookies ...

... but I know where he gets it from. :-)

Looking back, it has been a great month!