Merry Christmas!

We are so excited to go to Hershey PA after Christmas and have fun with Dave's family. Here is a quick photo and fun list of things we did this year. (for people that I couldn't get Christmas cards out to...sorry)This is as much for my journal sake as anything else.

Ben came Feb 25th of course mom was very anxious and wanted to get him out before leap year and before Siena's birthday.
Siena had her train birthday a couple days later. She LOVES trains. we made a train out of cardboard boxes and had lots of people over. The cake was amazing!
Nana and papa visited. Nana visited for the birth of Ben and then they both came out for Bens baby blessing.
We had lots of family for Bens blessing. Grandma and grandpa, Tricia and her family, Steve and Nana and Papa.
Hershey park for Memorial day with friends.
Fun in the summertime with fun at d.c. sites, the zoo and the beach in Maryland.
Down to North Carolina beach to a house for a week with friends. Siena loved it and would live at the beach. Ben didn't like it so much and ate a lot of sand.
Mom braved an airplane ride with two kids to UT and the kids had a great time playing with cousins and visiting farms. They loved seeing papa sing and the temple and going trick o treating. They were peter pan and tinkerbell.
Many trips to grandma and grandpas house in PA. We loved the duck pond and hershey chocolate factory with free chocolate! We even visited and climbed all over Gettysburg.
We visited PA again for Thanksgiving and enjoyed playing in the basement with our cousins.
Good happy times!

Ben has started walking the past few days and Siena continues to talk a lot and make her wants known.

Merry Christmas and happy new year!

A day in D.C.

We decided that we were going to go in to D.C. and see all the fun Christmas things. It was so much fun. We started out at the Botanical Gardens. So pretty. I have never been there but it was beautiful. They had a whole room of trains that Siena would stay in all day if we let her. She loved it. It really was amazing. They had all the sites of D.C. there too made out of the plants. I can't say enough about it, it was beautiful. Then we went over to the native american museum and had some lunch. Ben decided to impress everyone and took his first steps there!!!!!!!YEAH FOR BEN! He took 4 steps and of course I can't seem to get it on camera. I am still trying. Marcy is my witness that he walked and then he took a couple steps for Dave this morning. He is amazing! So we decided that the kids were doing well so we kept going with the D.C. sites. We went to the newly re opened American History Museum. It was wonderful. Honestly most of the exhibits I remember were still there and still the same but I guess it looks nicer and they have a wonderful exploration play place. Siena and Jacob and Ben loved it. We stayed there until it got dark so we could go to the white house decorations so it was about 2 hours playing. It's all about inventions and how people came up with their ideas it's fun. We walked from the mall to the white house and saw the White house christmas tree. It wasn't as great as I thought it would be. It just had white lights but it is huge. They have smaller christmas trees all around it from the other 50 states. Siena's favorite things were the huge bonfire that they had and the nativity scene. We tried to go and visit santa clause and she started screaming. I felt like the boy on the movie christmas story when they go see santa and the little boy starts kicking and screaming when they want to send him down the slide. It was kind of sad. It was a fun and an exhausting day.

we love t.v.

In the mornings Siena usually watches Thomas and Friends. Today I finally got her to watch something else. We watched baby Einstein which we haven't watched in forever. Ben loved it. He was fixed on it the whole time. I guess he had lost interest in Thomas and Friends after the 100th time watching it. So now we know how to quiet Ben down. It was funny he even got startled when one of the puppets jumped. Then we were coming home today and listening to the radio and a toys r us comercial came on and Siena says "Mom it's toys r us" and I asked her how she knew that and she said "because it sounds like the one on t.v.!" I don't know if this is a good thing or a bad thing.

 

christmas tree!

We got up our christmas tree last week. It was fun to go and pick one out. We waited a couple of days to decorate it and Siena got a little excited and decided to decorate it herself with her toys. So far we haven't lost any of the ornaments. Ben pulls them off the tree of course but no casualties yet.

babysitting group

We have been so lucky to have good friends here. We are in a babysitting swap where we get to go out 2 times a month and then we watch 2 other kids one night per month. It has been so nice especially now in December where Dave and I can go out and go Christmas shopping. It's great we have never paid for a babysitter. Here are the cute kids one night. They usually end up running around our house in circles and that wears them out pretty good.

Music class

We love our music class that we attend every monday morning. It has been so much fun. It is a bunch of mothers organized by a lady in our ward. It is the best $10 I have ever spent. Siena loves it and walks around the house singing the songs all day. Ben even gets really into the tapping sticks and shakers. So I finally got pictures.