"The Holidays"

Happy 2009! Seems that our kids are finally well again (took about 2 weeks for it to pass), and things are falling back into a routine. We celebrated Christmas here at the house and then went to my dad's house for New Year's. Here are a few pictures and stories of the past two weeks:

Joshie sitting on Jason's lap for his breathing treatment

The only way Joshua would go to sleep was if I "camped out" on his floor with his mattress next to me. Here's a picture of him FINALLY falling asleep after being up from 4am to 6:30am. I was so exhausted too!!

Grandma and Grandpa Lewis (my dad and Sherrie) got Joshie this cool easel for Christmas. He LOVES to color and draw letters on paper, so he thought this was the coolest present.

Here he is practicing his letters:

A New Year's tradition is to make your own sundae at about 11:00pm to ring in the New Year. Obviously my dad likes this tradition. Here's his HUGE ice cream - of which he did eat all of it!!

Little Jenna still has no teeth even though she is now 13 months old. So, she likes to gnaw on carrots to help strengthen her gums. She looks like she's smoking a stoggie though!! LOL

It was also a nice time of relaxing with Jason having some time off. He and I played some Nintendo (the original one!) and Joshua got a kick out of "playing" with us. Here he is pretending to play Mario Bros. with Jason:

Of course whatever Joshie does, Jenna has to do too - so she wanted some "daddy time" as well. She was so content just to be laying on Jason while he played.

Since I have been off, I thought it was FINALLY time to finish Joshua's baby scrapbook. I promised to make each child a scrapbook of their first year, chronicling every single thing from the first ultrasound to the first birthday. I didn't know that there would be so much that goes on in one year! Joshua's scrapbook is 4 1/2 inches thick, has thousands of pictures, but is priceless. It is fun to go back and look at all the memories that occured in his first year. Hard to believe that he's 2 already! Before you know it, he'll be 20! Here's a few pictures of the scrapbook:

The first page:

This is where I had left off before we moved:
And the last page - an explanation of the meaning behind his name "Joshua Eric":

I guess it would be a good time to start on Jenna's scrapbook since I have only ultra sound pictures in hers and the new baby J will be joining our family in April. I don't even have a scrapbook started for that one yet!! Time needs to slow down!