Christmas Eve

Lauren and Caroline put out cookies (on the plates they painted) and milk for Santa on Christmas Eve.  Lauren gave the cookies a taste test.  We decided its not reasonable to put a 2 year old down in front of a plate of cookies for pictures and expect her not to eat one. 

Of course then she needed Santa's milk to wash down the cookies.

2010 Christmas Tree Hunt

Some people get into the holiday spirit on Black Friday but for us, we always look forward to the tree farm.  Braving the cold, we headed out Sunday to celebrate Poohbah's birthday and the annual Christmas tree hunt.  
Lauren didn't seem to mind but Caroline would cry with each gust of wind in the baby bjorn so we put her in the stroller all bundled with just her sparkling baby blues peeping out.

Sydney racing down the hill

Baby Carter and Caroline stayed bundled in the Bob's

Caroline peeking out

Daddy and Lauren searching for tree

The only two who wanted to help cut down the tree

Timber

Sydney and Lauren pulling tree out

Lauren moments before she was run over by Christmas tree

Lauren being rescued by Unkiss (Uncle Chris) as Daddy lifts the tree off her

Unkiss, Sydney, JoJo, Aunt  Maggie, Lauren, Daddy, and Harry

Warm enough to sleep

Wagon ride to get tree wrapped

Wagon ride back with trees

Not even out of the parking lot and she's out

Father of the Year

Conquering a Fear

Lauren isn't afraid of much but when it comes to people in full costumes she is petrified.  She still talks about the "Mouse" from Chuck E. Cheese and we haven't seen him for over a month.  So, we figured Halloween would be a short and frightening experience that we'd hear about for months to come.  To our surprise, she got into her costume and had a great time.  She caught on to the whole "trick or treat" thing pretty quickly by following her older cousin Princess Sydney.  As an incentive to keep going we gave her a couple smarties from her pumpkin.  It worked, and for the rest of the evening as we walked between houses she would pick candy out of her bucket and say "open this".  Little Caroline, as usual, was quite the trooper not realizing she'd been dressed up as a pumpkin for her parent's enjoyment.  TOO CUTE!!!

6 Months

Where does the time go? Caroline is now enjoying rice cereal and gets to join us at the dinner table where her crazy sister loves to help her eat. We have realized the only thing messier than a six month old eating is a two year old feeding a sixth month old.

Competition

We have finally met a kid who can out-Lauren Lauren. We are always getting "Wow! You have a tough girl/active child!" comments when Lauren is out playing. This past weekend it was our turn to say that when we met Tatum (and her parents and little sister) up at Tarara winery.

Within the first 5 minutes of playing Tatum fell down and skinned her knee. She just jumped back up and continued running. No crying. No fussing. Nothing. And she really never stopped running after that. By the end of the afternoon we got the "Up please! Up please!" from Lauren for the walk back to the cars as she was completely tuckered out, Tatum however just kept on going, in pretty much a full run all the way back.

Look Closely

Caroline has been working hard.......





If you look closely, really closely, you can see Caroline's two brand new teeth just peeking out of her smile. She is so excited to show off these new pearly whites that appeared Thursday morning, she is smiling with a big open mouth all day. I couldn't resist a few photos during Lauren's nap.

Funniest Card

Quick video of Uncle Kevin showing Ronin's birthday card to Caroline.
This must be the funniest card ever.

Welcome Carter!!!

We were so excited to meet our newest nephew, Carter Patrick Ivey, born the morning of Sept 16th. We left Lauren to visit with JoJo, Poohbah and Sydney while we took Caroline to meet her baby cousin. Carter slept the whole time on Thursday so it wasn't until Sunday that he got to meet us! What a sweet little guy, it's nice to finally have a boy on the Ivey side of the family!!! I'm sure he'll be well taken care of with all the girls around him.

August with Nanny Love

RCC didn't start for Caroline until September but I had to return to work part time in August. The Charles Town Wilbers (Aunt Love, Ronin, and Brooke) happily covered 3 of the 5 weeks and since they live too far away to make the trip each day we had a full house, day and night, those weeks. I can't tell you how nice it was to have them stay here!
I heard lots of great stories while I was working but when I loaded my camera and found these photos, I knew I had missed out on a lot of fun.






























Caroline must have been exhausted!