11 Months Old!!

I want to do a whole family update as well as talk about Georgia, so here goes:

We are getting ready and excited for Christmas. Our little family, my parents, and my sister all spent a Family Home Evening decorating the Christmas tree. It was weird not to have my brothers there (one is in the MTC getting ready to leave for his mission to Taiwan, and the other is in training camp preparing to be deployed to Afghanistan early next month). The girls had a lot of fun though. They wanted to keep putting ornaments on the tree even when there were none left. Gwen kept putting ornaments on the same branch of the Christmas tree-I think my dad counted up to eleven before he stopped counting (Gwen did eventually move to another branch). It was a lot of fun and really helped us get excited for Christmas.

Robbie was laid off last week. The company he works for just doesn't have enough work during the winter to keep him on. We were pretty upset about it...I thought we had at least until Christmas before he would get laid off but no such luck. The day he got laid off my dad let us know about a company here in Vermont that was looking for someone immediately and Robbie sent in his resume. And he heard back from them that day, and had an interview set up for Tuesday. Well, they called Tuesday morning and canceled. They decided to fill the position with someone "in house." So now we're back to square one. While we worry about the future and money, it is so nice to have Robbie around during the day to help out with the girls, and the girls love having their daddy around to play with. It's also been nice because Robbie has taken over a project I was planning on doing for the girls for Christmas and did it for me (and once it's done, I'll post pictures...it looks awesome)!! We don't know what the Lord has in mind for us, but this experience is bringing us closer together and I am glad that we have more time together.

I have been so busy lately. I've wanted to blog about things, but it just takes so much time and time is not something I have much of lately. I bit off more than I can chew and decided that to help save us some money this year I was going to make most of the girls (and other family members) Christmas gifts. Again, I will post pictures as I finish them, but some of them will have to wait until after Christmas (don't want anyone knowing what they are getting ahead of time!!). So I have been hard at work since Thanksgiving and trying so hard to finish everything before Christmas (which seems so close now that it's only 2 weeks away). Between that and taking care of the girls I just don't have a lot of extra time. I have also been struggling a lot with our situation and why we continue to be unemployed and what we're supposed to be learning, or what the purpose behing all this is. But I have found more faith and hope through our experiences here and know that the Lord loves us, has been there with us through it all and has a plan for our family, whatever it may be.

Gwen is still enjoying preschool. Oh how she loves it!! Very rarely does she come home and say that she had a bad day or that something went wrong. I am going to do a post soon about her preschool and the artwork and the things that she learns. This week they've been learning about bears...black bears, brown bears, and of course...polar bears. Gwen came home on Thursday reciting this cute little poem to us over and over again, "I'm a little polar bear furry and white...I get a big fish and take a big bite...And then I get tired and go to sleep at night." So cute. She has also memorized the first verse of I Love To See The Temple and I Am A Child Of God and loves saying the prayer all the time. She got to participate in our wards Primary Program with the rest of the Senior Nursery for a couple of songs and she did so good!! She is getting so big so fast!

Grace is seriously as tall as Gwen now, and really outweighs her. She is still such a sweet and cuddly girl and I love getting hugs and kisses from her. Thanks to Gwen being gone 2 days of the week, she is really developing a strong relationship with Georgia. It is so cute to watch the two of them play together. Gracie can get Georgia giggling more than anyone else, including me. She is picking up on things so quickly too. She sings most of the words to I Love To See The Temple and I Am A Child Of God too but she loves to make up dance moves to music more than she loves singing. She recently learned how to cut with scissors, and the other night...she cut her own hair. Thankfully the chunk she cut off were little pieces grabbed from here and there, so the short strands are spread out all over her head and you can't really tell that she cut it. She is always into everything...but listens pretty well when I tell her no. Don't know what I'd do without my Gracie.

Georgia!! Wow, she's only a month away from being a year old. So weird!! It's even weirder now because she is really walking. She started taking steps the week before Thanksgiving, and about 1/2 a week to a week after Thanksgiving she finally got the hang of it and was walking like a pro. She's been trying so hard to run now and it's funny to watch. She has 7 teeth now (we're still waiting for that slow moving tooth on the bottom so she won't look lopsided any more), claps all the time, likes blowing spit bubbles (especially when she is upset) and is constantly learning new words. She says mama, dada, baby, papa, and ba (for bottle). She's doing really well with solid foods now so hopefully it won't be much of a transition when we stop giving her baby food. She is 21 pounds now (up one pound 10 ounces from last month), and 31 1/2 inches long (up 2 1/2 inches from last month). She's such a cutie and I'm so glad to have her!!