Happy New Year!

New Year Affirmations:

Christmas in Omaha!

We took a road-trip to Omaha on Christmas Eve to celebrate the holiday weekend with the McGinnis Clan! For the 2nd year in a row we drove on Christmas Eve on ice/snowy interstate and had to call 911 to report accidents right in front of us. Sooo scary, but Molly slept through the worst of it (below). I kept singing sleep in heavenly peace to calm my nerves on the slick roads.

We arrived safe and sound! Molly was so excited to visit Grandma & Grandpa Pat!! She even brought her walker and doggie with her from Kansas City!

Grandma set up her entire Christmas Village this year - and Molly was in AWE as the little lights came on and the music played . . .

She loved seeing their Christmas tree too with all the beautiful ornaments!

She kept saying, Lights! Lights!

We all went to Christmas Eve mass at 4:00 p.m. It was a BEAUTIFUL children's mass and Vaughn and Molly were very patient to sit still for almost 2 hours!

Molly loved watching the choir sing so many Christmas songs!

She got passed around a lot . . . glad we brought lots of books!

Vaughn checking out the Nativity scene after mass . . .

We saw SANTA at mass too!! We didn't know Santa was Catholic???!! :)

Molly couldn't wait to take off her tights and dress shoes and walk around Grandma's kitchen when we got home!! She kept Grandma company as she prepared dinner.

Mike with his god-son and our nephew, Vaughn! He will be 5 in March and is such a sweet kid! We had lots of fun playing with him . ..

Opening presents!

Santa's elves dropped off a new bike for Vaughn!!!!

Molly had lots of fun playing with their toy stuffed doggie. She thought it was real - so did I every time I walked in the room! :)

Molly giving kisses to their doggies . .

Do I look like a reindeer??

Playin' the piano with Grandma Pat!! We love singing Christmas carols together!

Helping Grandma get ready for Christmas Dinner . . .

Grandma & Grandpa Pat carving the turkey on Christmas Day! We had so many wonderful meals during our visit!

SANTA came!

Santa came!! He must have remembered that Molly LOVES doggies as he brought her the puppy dog she had "eyed" at Toys R Us a few weeks ago! How does he know?? He also brought her a toy drum, a puzzle, a whiffle ball/bat set and new books --even a NEW bike for next summer!! It's a tricyle that mom & dad can push her on outside - and then when she gets older we can take off the handle and she can ride it all by herself!! SO EXCITING!! We are all set to play outside the first days of Spring this March!!

What do you think the FIRST toy Molly bee-lined straight to?? She could not crawl fast enough . . . . to get to the NEW BOOKS!!! She saw the bike, the doggie, and even the drum but went straight for her books and read all 5 of them, before she started exploring the other toys. Molly LOVES books!!

Daddy gave her a "spin" on the her new set of wheels and she thought it was pretty cool - they went in circle around and around the house . . .

Then Molly had her own idea - to put her new doggie and books in the bike and push it around herself! This girl is independent, after all. She can do it BY HERSELF. :) I swear I can already hear her saying that to me the way she looks at me sometimes . . .

I think I have all the books in my trunk here . . .

Here we go . . . Bye Bye! She waved to us as she drove away . . .

See you later, Molly! Merry Christmas!!

Merry Christmas!

Molly - 1st Steps!

And just like that - she's walking!

Shop LOCAL.

Sad news this week as I learned that one of my FAVORITE local boutique stores is closing their doors after the holidays. I have shopped there for 10 years and have become friends with the shop owner. Very sad news.

I am SO GRATEFUL I was raised in a small town for many reasons. One of them is that we had a downtown made up of ALL locally owned shops and my mom knew most of the owners by name. I remember shoe shopping at Sweeney's Shoe Store before school started every year and stopping to get an ice-cream soda at the local drugstore. Yes, we had a K-Mart for a small time period and then a Wal-Mart a few years later. But, we only traveled there for toiletries like soap and paper towels, etc. We shopped LOCAL for gifts and clothes and EVERYTHING and those relationships meant a lot to me as a child and I hope to share similar memories with Molly someday.

I wish for many things for Molly as she gets older. One of them is that she will have the opportunity to shop where the owner knows our name and greets us like family when we walk through the door. I hope we will walk up to Rainy Day Bookstore to buy that book she's been wanting or shop for a new barrette at the Dime Store in Brookside.

Please shop LOCAL. I fear the next generation could be filled with online shopping and chain stores only. With email, Facebook, and the Internet -we're already losing a bit of the human connection. Do we have to lose it entirely by doing all our shopping online or in chain stores?

A Girl and her Puffs . . . A Love Story

This is a long one . . . about 2.5 minutes. My favorite part comes at about 59 seconds when Molly has an expression of PURE JOY & HAPPINESS for actually getting the WHOLE CONTAINER OF PUFFS. I think she's even shaking a little she's so excited. Then, of course when she "shocks" herself by being able to pop the lid off with her teeth. Notice how huge her eyes get when she actually gets the lid off. Funny stuff.

A girl and her puffs . . . a love story, indeed.

Date Night!

Mike and I asked our babysitter to watch Molly last night while we strolled around the Country Club Plaza - just a couple miles from our house. It's so beautiful - all lit up - this time of year and now that we have Molly we don't get the opportunity to just "play" as often as we used to! We stopped for hot cocoa, window shopped, stopped for a couple glasses of wine, it started snowing, more window shopping - then a cozy dinner at a table for two. I'm so glad we stopped for a night to breathe - and enjoy the beauty of the season!

Christmas Countdown . . .

Playing "hide the doggie in the stocking" after naptime . . .

Watching Frosty the Snowman for the 1st time ever (while eating Cheerios).

When Molly crawls, doggies go in each hand . . .

Taking small steps on her own . . .from one piece of furniture to the other.

I'm sure she would hold on but she CAN'T let go of the doggies!!

Just 6 more days 'till Christmas!!

Flash of light

She's so fast these days walking around pushing her "walker". It's sometimes like a "flash of light" out of the corner of your eye. Notice her doggies are along for the ride as well. She always wants them to come too and sometimes has trouble keeping them up top so we have to help attach them for her. Cracks me up.

Christmas around our house . . .

Molly's Nativity Set from Grandma Pat! She LOVES it. Seriously - LOVES it. We probably play with this at least 30 minutes EVERY DAY. She loves finding Baby Jesus and she says Mooo whenever she grabs the cow. It rarely looks this organized, but I put it together for you to see what it looked like when Mike first set it up for her in our bookshelf.

What a difference a year makes! Last Christmas Molly was just a few weeks old - she was soo tiny and soo easy. I remember a snowy afternoon, going to the local Christmas tree farm to pick out our Christmas tree and she just watched us while mom and dad drank Baileys and decorated the tree!

This year, Molly is into EVERYTHING and LOVES to climb things (dishwasher, furniture, stairs, etc.) so we decided that this one year we will forgo the real tree. I decorated the fireplace mantel with lights instead - as the LIGHTS are really the coolest part of the Christmas tree (and the smell). Here is my version of an abstract Christmas tree--and yes, we still drank Baileys while decorating. It's our tradition.

Molly's little stocking . . .

We put the lights on our remote control switch that we usually have on our Christmas tree. Molly loves to push the button every morning when she wakes up to LIGHT up the "tree"!! :) She says Ohhhhhhh and her eyes get HUGE!

Last year I was bringing a gift to my OB-GYN for my 6 week follow up appt after giving birth to Molly. This year it's gifts for her gym teacher, music teacher, and our Parents as Teacher educator! Seriously-what a difference a year makes! Last year was special in a new baby kind of way - but this year is SOOO FUN getting to see Christmas through Molly's 1 year old eyes!!

My mom was so sweet to buy Mike and I our very own set of Christmas dishes! They are so beautiful! I look forward to using them for many years to come and hosting our own Christmas dinners in our home with our extended family someday! Mike favorite thing about them is that they are dishwasher safe. Ha!

Molly's little tree in our dining room. We have her ornaments on it from her 1st Christmas and then her 2010 ornament - ELMO! She is SO into Elmo right now - and every morning when she's eating breakfast she "talks" to the Elmo ornament.

I've always collected Christmas books. My Aunt Carol collects them too and when we would visit her when I was a young girl I loved reading them all at Christmas time. So around the age of 16 or so I decided to start collecting them on my own. I have fiction, non-fiction books and many beautiful childrens' Christmas books!

It was so fun to get these out this year and Molly (who LOVES books!) went immediatly to the new pile of books she knew she had not seen before and immediately began flipping through them! So fun to share my love of these books with her!

I love decorating our bedroom a little bit too for Christmas every year!

I treasure this picture of Mary with Baby Jesus, given to me by my mother-in-law. Perfect to have by my bedside this special time of year.

Merry Christmas from our home to yours!