Bring on the holidays!

Chloe dressed up in an outfit from her Grammy & Grumpy

Zach and Chloe at our Flagstaff Hotel

Chloe "eating" the table at the swanky Flagstaff restaurant

Cousin Allie giving a cheesy smile after "eating" her fries and ranch

Zach's masterpiece

Chloe helping with the decorations
The finished product

We've had a great and busy few weeks. After all the visitors were gone and Chloe was a year old it seemed liked a lot of things clicked with her. She started clapping, which I was very excited about as we've been trying to get her to clap for at least a month. Then she finally started saying "Ma Ma". This was huge as all she would ever want to say is "da da" or "daddy". She has also started giving kisses out and blowing the occasional kiss. Chloe isn't walking yet, but she is so close. She is pulling up and starting to let go from everything. Her hair is also finally growing. We still can't decide what color her hair is as sometimes it looks blond and other times it has a red tint to it, but I'm sure just like my hair it will change colors the older she gets. We did notice after her hair air-dried after a bath there were a few curls starting to form at the back of her head. Who knows what her hair is going to be like.

We've also decided on a theme for the new baby's room. I told Zach that I let him off the hook because with Chloe the minute we found out we were having a girl I put him to work on setting up her room. We've decided it will be a car theme, not the movie Cars but actual cartoon like cars and trucks. It took a lot to decide as there really aren't a whole lot of really cute boy themes that don't have monkeys in the theme. Once the holidays are over I will really start to get the room in order and paint on the walls. The baby has been moving around a lot more and Zach has been able to feel the baby a lot more. We have been slowly gathering some outfits for the new baby which makes it all seem more real to actually shop for him. Now when we go to the mall it is filled with stops to children stores and the baby department rather than for us.

With all the new things going on with Chloe and the new baby the holiday season has begun. Christmas is my favorite time of year. I love to listen to Christmas music and I love all the decorations and just the feeling in the air. For Thanksgiving we went up north to Flagstaff to spend a few days with my sister and her family. We stayed at a nice hotel that had hot breakfast and dinner for free as well as an indoor pool. We went to the pool the first day and Chloe was clinging onto Zach as it was too cold for her. The pool may have been indoors, but the cool outside was in the pool. After about 10 minutes Chloe started shivering so she and Zach moved to the hot tub. The hot tub wasn't too hot, but we still just had Chloe put her legs in to and splash around. She had fun and was much happier than what she was in the cold cold pool. The Friday after Thanksgiving we went to this swanky restaurant right next to the hotel. When Adam first checked out to see if it was open he didn't notice how swanky it was. Luckily it was not busy at all because I'm sure if the normal crowd saw a table with 2 six year olds and 2 one year olds they wouldn't have appreciated us. After looking at the menu and realizing there was no kids menu we kind of all looked at each other and wondered if we should just get up and leave. We ended up staying and all had great food. We then left and did a little Christmas shopping/browsing at the local mall. It was a very small and old mall, but you have to go out the day after Thanksgiving to do at least a little bit of shopping. Then on the Saturday on our way home we went out to our local mall and stores and got ALL of our Christmas shopping done!

Finally the Christmas decorations are up! Normally they are up the day after Thanksgiving, but I was a little slow this year. Zach had up the lights in perfect timing, but it took me about a week longer than normal to get the tree done. We've moved the tree upstairs to hopefully help Chloe and the dogs keep off of it during the day. We also switched out the old glass ornaments with the shatterproof plastic ornaments. Now it is time to wrap wrap wrap!