baker babies dedication

the baker babies were dedicated last weekend and they have so many wee ones that they did the dedication at their house because you know... it is seriously easier for us to come to them. matt stayed home with mr. contagious, so i should have been a really great photo taker without the distractions of a toddler, but i was an even worse one! gah! i took a few though. connor, hope, madison, and victoria are so super sweet and i was very happy to be included in their dedication... and matt and b were there supporting in spirit. i feel like every time the baker babies have a milestone my family is sick! i missed misty's baby shower (that i was co-hosting!) because my whole family almost died from the stomach flu. i didn't get to go meet connor and hope in the hospital because my nanny family was sick and i was scared to spread germs to newbies. and now matt and beckett missed the dedication. when june rolls around my whole family better be super healthy for a first birthday party... because enough is enough. i'm gonna go take some vitamin c right now, you know, to get prepared.

isn't this precious? it's misty and brian's sweet niece and nephew.

 misty started a photo wall! i don't even know how she is going to keep up with updating pictures, it will probably take over her house. i would love that.

merry christmas merry christmas

christmas eve

so i knew christmas would be better this year. b wasn't going to get everything about it... and that's okay because a lot of christmas stuff has nothing to do with anything anyways. and we talked about baby jesus a lot... so that makes me feel better. anyways, i was so excited to start family traditions, when christmas eve rolled around i could hardly handle myself. we made my oma's stroganoff for dinner and probably we will do that for christmas eve forever because it is super delicious. then we opened our christmas jammies (duh) which whitney made for matt and beckett this year and they looked like they were from the seventies and i almost passed out they were so frickin' adorable. beckett looked like a little man. thanks whitney... you are very wonderful. we also opened books (we do want, need, wear, read... so it's the read...) and here are matt and b just doing a little reading...

next we made cookies for santa. really, i made them... beckett sampled the dough. these cookies are my holiday favorites! they are too delicious. make them right away... gooey butter cookies

beckett picked cookies for santa and got a carrot for the reindeer.

this is maybe one of my all time favorite pictures. how adorable is he balancing that plate? this is what i imagined in my head when i thought about my future children. i die...

then he got eggnog for santa to drink.

then he said, "beckett has a tiny bit?" and drank all of santa's eggnog. poor santa.

he also wanted the feed the paper reindeer garland i made... so that happened.

then he went to bed and santa came!!! gah. i made picture tags this year, so that beckett would know whose gifts were whose and would be able to easily get his gifts and help pass out everybody else's. this worked super great. i highly recommend it for your littles and it looks pretty cute too. then we went upstairs and i sat in bed awake all night, anticipating what was coming. it was pretty perfect.

from johnnie

john came over to exchange christmas gifts (last year he gave beckett his first ever christmas gift... penelope beat him this year) and beckett weirdly started calling him johnnie. whatevs, that is his name now. he got beckett the b. drum and he loved it so much and had to immediately do a one hour drum solo. good pick john. i just so happen to have a crush on the b. line of toys and wanted that exact drum for beckett. he also got us a blu-ray. we are so fancy now...

oh! please ignore beckett's hideous mickey mouse christmas shirt. aunt saige bought it for him and he really loves it.

last year. shut up.

wiggle works

when we were traumatizing beckett with santa visits, i noticed the crossroads mall had a new play area called wiggle works. i decided that beckett and jane really needed to check it out (grace is too big... sad) and i took them back right away. jane really liked it. beckett LOVED it. we played for two hours and i was that mom carrying her screaming toddler out the front door. he did not know why we would ever leave such a great place. it's actually not very big, but it clearly had everything a small person could ever want. it's pretty fun for the little ones.