Happy Birthday Auntie Jen!

Yesterday was Jen Cruze's birthday & to celebrate we took the girls swimming. It was really a treat for me. There is no way I could take them on my own. When we first got in the pool, Sam cried, whined & moaned a bit. She was acting like one of those kids I would have hated to have in one of my swim lessons classes :) But by the end she was loving it. Alexis does great in the water but got a little tired by the end yesterday.

Sam the giant

I keep saying it but Sam is growing so fast! She is wearing clothes that Alexis was wearing at 1 and she's not even 6 months old yet. Here's some photos that show the size comparison.

Look! Sam's head is already bigger than Alexis' head-

Or maybe it's just a funny angle!

The pack & play is much bigger than Alexis (at 8 months old)-

Sam is much bigger than the pack & play-

Catch-up

It's been awhile! Here's some things that have happened in the last couple weeks.

Zoolights with the Lewis family-

Sam got a second tooth (she's trying to show you)-King family Christmas-

Working on eating still. Can't do it without Alexis' help and as you can see she does more eating than Samantha does-

Alexis is back in diapers :(

Obama's biggest little fan

Alexis loves Obama. We are not quite sure how she knows who he is. He is the only person on TV that she recognizes. When he comes on she says "Omama!"

After all the excitement of Obama on inauguration day...

Look what Sam can do!!

Sam's new trick of the day...

Yep, she's sitting all by herself.

I don't usually put pictures of our animals on here but I thought this was a good one. You would think that Jack had been outside for days. He was only out for a couple of hours!

Happy New Year

I think Samantha's shirt says it all...

She was definitely the highlight of 2008 for us!

We didn't do much on New Year's Eve. We did try feeding Sam some rice cereal. Not much of a surprise that she didn't like it. She doesn't use a pacifier, rarely will she take a bottle, and she won't drink formula. Alexis ended up eating it.

This past weekend we had 3 more days of Christmas! Friday night we went to Grandma & Papa Jolley's house. Alexis got a really cool rocking horse. When you press the ear not only does it make horse noises but the head and tail move. It took Alexis a few pushes of the ear to realize the horse was moving. This was her reaction...

Here is a picture of Samantha Kaye with her great-aunt Kaye.

On Saturday we celebrated with Grandma JJ, Auntie Darlene, Bonnie, Ciera & her family. It was really fun to have a Christmas party at our house- this was a first for us.

We'll end with a message from Sam...

For those of you who don't speak baby, she is saying "I got my first tooth yesterday!"

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas to all of our friends and family that we did not get to see for Christmas this year! It was an exciting Christmas for the Jolleys... it was Sam's 1st Christmas & it was a white Christmas! Also, Alexis was much more fun this year. We even got an "Ohhhhh!" from her when she opened up her new coat and snow suit- she had already been wearing these out in the snow but pulling them out of her stocking was exciting.

We'll start with some pictures from our visit with Santa...

Quite an improvement over last year...

On Christmas Eve we decorated our tree (finally) and Alexis decorated a cookie for Santa. If you look hard you will see that our tree is leaning back into the corner. You would think that this is because a toddler, dog or cat was too rough with the tree but no- we could never get our stand to work properly.

Here are some highlights from Christmas day...

Here's a fun snow picture of the snowman Alexis helped make.