pajamas and pigtails

On Monday, Arden's ballet/tumbling class got to wear pajamas and pigtails for their Christmas party.  The girls got to wear jingle bells and dance with candy canes the first half of class.  The second half was spent exchanging gifts and eating lots of candy and cookies! 

oranges!

Our oranges are ready!  Well, they've been ready for a week or two now.  We had a cold snap a couple of weeks ago, and we picked a few right after that to see if they were ready.  We've heard the cold makes the oranges sweet and I believe it because they're really yummy this year!  We picked all the oranges within reach last week (around 20) and then yesterday Woody got all the rest of the oranges from the top of the tree.  I counted 47 oranges just from yesterday's picking.  It's crazy to think that last year our tree only made around 10 total!  And as you can see from the pictures, our little cold snap only lasted a couple of days...yesterday and today it's been around 80 degrees...is it really the middle of December??  Arden and Esther were a big help taking the oranges and running them to the deck.  They have been so excited about getting the oranges and loved every minute of running back and forth! 

Woody started out on a ladder and then our neighbor, Peggy, let us borrow a handy little tool to pick the hard to reach ones.  I thought it was pretty cool. 

say cheese

We have a new photographer in the family.  Arden's always wanting to take pictures with our camera, and so as an early Christmas present she got her very own kid's digital camera from Nonie and Dagan while we were in Birmingham.  She opened it up the day we were leaving to head back home.  From about lunch time until it got dark, the girl took 317 pictures!!  As soon as the batteries were put in the camera, she went to work taking pictures of anyone and anything she could find.  It was so fun watching her with it and equally hilarious looking at all the pictures she'd taken once we put them on the computer!  I went through and pulled a few of the better ones for you to see.  Our budding photographer, Arden, took all of the pictures on this post.

Aunt Hannah and Nonie 

(the curtains are one of many cute little pieces of clip art you can add to the pictures on the camera)

Esther's silly face 

(I've been trying to get this face on camera for awhile...A beat me to it!)

Arden's view from the third row...there are literally 70+ pictures of this view of the back of Woody's head and then probably 30 of when I was driving!

self portrait

I love this one...we went through the drive thru at Arby's at Tiger Town to get a quick dinner...you can even tell it's raining!

thanksgiving part two

The week/weekend of Thanksgiving, Woody had a crazy work schedule, so I took off with the girls and went to Statesboro to see my family.  We got to see lots of family as we spent Thanksgiving day with my mama's side of the family and then got together with all the Groovers the next night.  Chloe had fun being passed around and Arden and Esther loved being able to have some extra time with their cousins!

Chloe with her Great Uncle Ricky and Great Aunt Martha 

"Flying" with Uncle Curt

3 silly monkeys

Harrison and Chloe

Papa and Esther roasting marshmallows

Papa and G.G. with all their grandkids

At Aunt Gale's for the Groover get together

We also got to meet up with Betsy and Hillary, friends I've known since at least preschool.  It was fun being able to catch up a little and see all our kiddos play together.  Here they are taking a break from playing at the park.

Chloe and the mommies

family of five

While in Birmingham our brother-in-law, Michael ( 268 Photography ), took some family shots for us.  These are a couple of my favorites.  Thanks Michael!

early Thanksgiving and Christmas

This year was our year to spend Thanksgiving in Birmingham, but because of Woody's work schedule we actually went up the week before.  Although we were gone for a total of 6 days, 4 of those days were spent traveling in the car!  Our visit was a lot shorter than normal, but we had a wonderful time seeing everyone and hope our next trip we'll be able to stay a little longer!

 Chloe was introduced to more family and a couple of friends during our visit...

with Daddy and Great Grandmom

Allison and Chloe

me and Chloe (10 weeks old) and Heather and Chloe's future husband, Ty (a week old)! :)

Uncle Michael and Chloe

The Saturday we were there, we all walked over to the Samford football game... took me back to my SU days!  

Dagan and Esther

Arden with the cheerleaders behind her... she had an absolute blast and I must say, was a little dangerous with that pom pom!

We celebrated an early Christmas on our last day in town.  It was a lot of fun watching the girls open their gifts and to see how different they are when it comes to opening gifts!  Arden flung tissue paper everywhere and looked like she was in a race to get hers opened first. Esther, on the other hand,  took her sweet time, carefully unwrapping and opening each individual gift.

The girls with Nonie and Dagan

so happy together

The last two mornings we've found Arden and Esther like this... both fast asleep in Arden's bed!  We've spent the last couple of weeks traveling to see family (which I'll catch you up on in some future posts) and the girls slept in the same room while we were gone.  They did really well with this, so we decided to go ahead and move Esther into Arden's room.  It was going to eventually happen when we move Chloe into Esther's crib/room.  We've got the toddler bed set up in A's room for Esther and we're putting her to bed in the toddler bed, but it seems she prefers to be with her big sis!