Eliza Jo Arrives!

We were scheduled to have Eliza arrive by c-section this morning, but she had a plan of her own! I went into labor early Monday morning, and Eliza Jo Nance was born at 8:55am on December 29th. Here is our brand new baby girl......

8 lb, 20 1/2"
Clara and Hannah meeting their little sister for the first time. They passed her back-and-forth several times on this first visit. Then when they came to visit the next time, they both grabbed their pillows and sat down ready to hold her again!

Joe thought that it looked like Eliza might have reddish hair when she was first born, and that news spread quickly. (In his defense, her hair does look a bit red in the first pictures;) ) The first thing Clara did was pull off Eliza's hat and declare, "She does NOT have red hair!" Here she is examining Eliza's "not-red" hair...

Hannah adores her new baby

Hannah is already trying to share her toys with Eliza. She brought several different toys to the hospital to show Eliza.

She is also trying to share the chocolate pudding on her face! The girls loved getting pudding and graham crackers when they came to visit.

Clara was shielding Eliza's eyes from the bright overhead lights. Do you see the Christmas dress again???

Eliza gets a visit from a "princess"!

Ready to go home!

Daddy with his THREE girls....

Making use of the room in the minivan! Clara and Hannah each held one of Eliza's hands on the ride home.

Welcome home, Eliza Jo! We are so blessed by your arrival!! So far, she is a very content little girl and calms easily.....we'll see how the next few days go.

Christmas at Grandma and PaPa's

We got to celebrate Christmas again on the 26th with Joe's family. Grandma made some amazing snacks, dinner, and dessert. We loved getting to spend time with Uncle Danny, Aunt Heathyr, and the 3 Portland cousins.

The girls received an incredible Playmobile Circus....Joe might have been just as excited as Hannah to start playing.....there were so many little parts to put together, and the two of them stayed at the table for almost an hour getting it ready to play!
The 5 cousins range in age from 2 to 5 1/2 and had a blast playing together, both inside with their new toys, and outside having a snowball fight! I didn't get any pictures of the snowball fight because I was enjoying the warm indoors and the great food!!
We attempted to get a picture of the 5 of them, but probably waited a little too late in the evening when they were all tired and had eaten far too much sugar.......

I was laughing as I flipped through these pictures, and couldn't decide which one was a "good" picture, but thought that the group of pictures together captured it best!

A very sweet picture of Jaime and Clara. Clara looks up to Jaime and adores him!

Tried to capture our cute cousins together.....

What a goofy bunch!

Christmas morning...all about Princesses!

We actually started Christmas morning with just Clara, as Hannah slept in until 9:00! Clara was jumping up and down with anticipation of what Santa had left under the tree, so we let her go out and see, but waited to open presents until both girls were awake.

Singing Happy Birthday to Jesus with our cinnamon roll cake

Hannah's new dolly that opens and closes her eyes, cries, laughs, and falls asleep....good practice for the little sister soon to arrive!

New bath toys to cook up some treats in the tub

It's been so fun to have both girls really into princesses together. They got new princess blankets for their beds, and a HUGE princess poster that covers one wall of their bedroom. They love to insist back-and-forth which is the "favorite princess".....Hannah always claims Sleeping Beauty, and Clara will usually claim all the rest of them!

Hannah's latest stalling technique for bedtime is that she needs the light to stay on so that she can see Sleeping Beauty :)

Christmas Eve

We enjoyed Christmas Eve dinner with our friends, Clay and Emily, and their daughter, Evelyne. It was both of our family's first year not celebrating with extended family, but we had a great evening eating, talking, watching the girls play, and enjoying our new friendship!

London Bridges Falling Down...

Hannah and Evelyne taking each other for a walk on leash!
Hannah and Evelyne dancing
Two adorable just-turned-two-year-olds!

Family time

Heidi, Molly, Darien and Monica drove over 10 hours on Saturday to spend a fun weekend with us in the snow! We loved getting to spend some time with them before Christmas, and also loved that they drove a car with snow tires and we were able to get out of the house:) We spent time at two malls shopping, enjoyed indian food in Seattle, sledding, movies, lots of playing, and went to see Seven Brides for Seven Brothers at the 5th Avenue Theater.

The Santa Train

We ventured out in the freezing weather Saturday morning with Grandma to ride the Santa Train in North Bend. We bundled up, thinking we would need to just make it from the car to the train in the wind and snow, and then we could warm up......that wasn't exactly the way the morning went.... The train didn't have heat! The "refreshment car" when we got to the train depot in Snoqualmie didn't have heat either (although it did have hot chocolate and cookies). The line that we waited in to have our visit with Santa didn't have heat either. Then we had another 30 minutes to wait for the train to come back and pick us up for our cold ride back to the car. It was a morning of adventure, but I don't know that we will be making this a yearly tradition!

Hannah only had rain boots covering her socks, so we tried to warm up her feet with Daddy's gloves!
The girls enjoyed the hot cocoa and warmed up a little bit in the shelter of the train car.

It was truly a north pole experience!

Whee!!!

The girls are lucky to have a dad that loves the snow! I'm not sure who was the most excited about sledding down the hill last night:)

It was getting pretty dark by the time they were ready to head in!

Rosy cheeks and tired eyes....

??Christmas Cookies??

Joe and I had fun baking and frosting (and EATING!!) with the girls last night, but this is what you get when you let two little girls pick the frosting colors! They look a little more like Easter cookies to me! Hannah's favorite color is blue, and Clara likes pink and purple "the same". If you look closely, you might find the pumpkin and ghost cookies....luckily Joe found where we had stashed the Christmas cookie cutters soon after we had started!

Clara put this on just moments after waking up this morning....I don't think a Christmas dress has ever been worn so often! I'm sure it will still be making its appearance in June:)
Dressed for the snow- Joe took the girls out to make snow angels and have a snowball fight Sunday while I was at work. They were all so excited to get outside and play, while I was more than happy to head off to work in the warm indoors!!