happy half bday coke

cossette is officially 6 months today. wowzer. she has been loving her tummy & kicking backwards hard enough that she is making her way around a little bit. she's days away from mastering sitting solo & her facial expressions just draw you in. everyone is such a sucker for cocobean.

when she is happy she is the HAPPIEST but let me tell you this girl is insane! the last couple weeks she has literally eaten 4x's what she was prior. one moment she's calm & giggly & the next you'd think she'd been starved for 3 weeks.

crazy baby that we just can't get enough of.

ellery renee's birthday!

e had her second birthday -YAY-

she had fun painting her feet & marking the birthday tablecloth with her big old 2 year old footprint.

i want to dress like this. how flippin cute is she?!

it was so fun having everyone over & chasing them around & having elles-a-belle get so excited about all her new toys. the highlight was bringing out her red retro metal radio flyer trike. (craigslist find for 1/3 retail. gotta love it.) the men & all the kids ran downstairs to take turns riding the new trike.

she adored hearing the happy birthday song just for her. she tried so hard to use her fork with the cake like a big girl but it was just too tempting. she snuck quite a few cake pops too. always a hit with the kiddles. :)

loved celebrating our little jellybean! she is always surprising us with how attentive & smart & cute & sweet & random & funny she is. she is turning into such a big girl but i don't care. she's still my baby. :) happy 2nd birthday ellery!

sittin' on the dock of the bay, wastin' time

a want on my short list for where we end up is that i would LOVE to be near a big city. it doesn't have to be sf big but i feel like we take advantage of having such a metro hub close. always something to do. sooo freaking fun!

around new year's my whole family went up to the exploritorium discovery museum & ran around. ellery had a rough rough time (the smaller the nap, the worse the kid) but you gotta love the exploritorium.

this right here is awesome. the chief explaining the experiment/display & ooooing, elles: index finger on her chin contemplating the concept, coke with one sock on, the mama: MIA. afterward we went to a super retro diner & i ate the best, most gigantic reuben of  my life.

a little over a week later the girls & i met up with my 'rents who were up sf for work for a few days.

it was a gorgeous day just walking all over the place & let me just say that the hills in san francisco are not kind to the double strollered of the masses. haha. we checked out grace cathedral, hit the fairmont for lunch, walked china town, watched fortune cookies get baked & folded in a little alley shop, visited the sweetest fabric store ever (4 stories, kind of insane), watched ice skaters in union square, & bought out anthropologie.

SO worth it to head to the 'frisco bay.

2011

happy new year's!

i like new year's resolutions. really any time resolutions.

my little sister is a born hostess. she had all these cute new year's eve games which were a blast. one was submitting 3 resolutions & all of us guessing whose was whose. there was some fun variety: new job, defend thesis, read more, no baby - you know the drill :)

but young mamas, i have a quick bone to pick with you. why do i keep hearing so much about nye resolutions being more important for us?! i don't care if you're a big shot CFO, an empty nester, a 9-5er, a coach, a grad student, a stay at home mom, whatever. we all need to be better & more well-rounded. so while i think it's great to have resolutions, we don't need them any more than anyone else. it's been confusing me lately. i love my job. i am not defined by this job. i have interests, passions, & strengths that have nothing to do with taking care of my family. we should all challenge ourselves & work on weaknesses outside of the demands of our job. all. of. us. sure, the demands of my job are not the same as yours. ie. you need to find a different way to work on your patience (mine's a built in daily exercise) & i need to polish my vocab past farm noises.
okay, i'm done now. :)

to a happy, healthy, productive 2011!

december moments

a few of my ultimates from the month of december:

 seeing the lights by david/kara's house. one kid per adult.

lexy's fleece snowflake suit on miss cossette.

 c's elf hat is a scream; thanks elise!

lena kate & ellery renee doing just about anything together. here they are jingling along to gramvi's singing book.

 this festive jumper my mother made my little one. i mean do you SEE those embroidered elves?!

my little boy falling asleep while playing with blocks.

 the cocobean IN her stocking. makes my heart explode just a little.

 my sibs visiting from out of state. yee!

 just look at the face! ahhh!

 i wish kara was in this one too. i like the women in our clan. but i really really like our shoes.

these kids with g'pa's choo-choo, let me tell ya. my dad told me yesterday he's scared to take it down. like, ever.

our only family pic from the month. remember i'm not allowed to push for it until november. regretting that one.

i love december.

baby's 1st christmas

just a sidenote before i begin: last year my holiday post was also titled "baby's 1st christmas". & it was. just a different baby. haha.

this is the first year we got to have our own little christmas morning in our own little apartment with our own little family. it was a little awesome. :)

& yes that one picture is of elle dancing around with the orange from the toe of her stocking & singing 'urnge, urnge, urnge!'

we then ran on over to my parents house to play & open gifts. faves: 2010 giant shirts for the whole fam & a nice, framed copy of 3 of my dad's oil paintings i grew up admiring & jeopardy on the wii. :)

everyone but my oldest brother was there so it was VERY chaotic, loud, & fun with our 5 under 5 kids & food & toys & singing galore.


it was a pretty swell christmas day overall.

shepherd's dinner

on christmas eve we have a dinner like the shepherd's would have eaten when they were told of the birth of christ. it's a purposefully simple family tradition that means a lot to our hodgman side. on the floor, no plates, "ancient bethlehem's brown bag lunch" theme. (ritz crackers, etc have been added to the more authentic items so that austin has something to eat- haha) this year shepherd's dinner was cossette's very first anything dinner, having solid food for the first time! she's really bad at eating her rice cereal. like, really.

we then read a few verses from the bible, a modern cmas story (or 4), get pj's from the eve elf, & watch it's a wonderful life. it was a low key nice evening.

jolly old st. nicholas

santy himself came to our complex & i swear he was the real deal!

cossette may have been the most demure of the kids to sit on his lap.

her outfit kills me & i was so happy with this picture.

okay but to get the full effect, it helps to see the FULL picture...

i think it makes me even happier than the revised version.