Christmas, Family, Friends, Fun and Idaho

Its been a fun couple of weeks. After Rich finished his finals we headed up to seaside to have an early christmas with my grandpa at his beach house. It was a lot of fun. He gave all of us t-shirts from the fire station.

My grandpa is amazing, he still passes the test at the fire station and is in better shape than I am! He drives the #1 fire truck in portland.

The boys got some crab from behind the beach house. Something we do every time we visit. Rich really enjoyed the fresh crab and smoked salmon!

I was excited to see my friend from high school sara. We are both expecting a month apart.

Here is her little girl Maily (10months) and claire.

On christmas morning we spent a nice relaxing day with my family, opened presents and had a nice ham dinner. I think claire enjoyed her first christmas.

After christmas we headed up to idaho to visit with Rich's family. It is so much fun to spend some time with everyone. Claire is having a lot of fun with her cousins, aunts, uncles and grandparents.

A couple days ago we got a surprise call from Jeff and Alicia, they came down to idaho for a quick visit. YAY! We got to see Alicia, sad thing was that Jeff was working so we didn't get to see him.

Here are me and alicia (ignore how gross we look) Alicia is due the first part of February.

And of course I had to put in a couple cute pictures of claire....

I am thankful for healthy bodies

Here is a recap of the week so far...

MONDAY

Everyone was finally feeling better and getting over the colds we had over thanksgiving. Rich spent all day studying for finals.

TUESDAY

Claire woke up at 4am very unhappy, I went in to check on her and there was puke EVERYWHERE. Poor girl. Sick again! After a good warm bath and some medicine she joined me and rich in bed until morning.

Claire is tough and was pretty good all morning, by afternoon she was VERY upset. I then noticed she had 2 new teeth that had just popped out on bottom! Wow, good timing.

Rich took his first final in Law school and felt pretty good about it! Now only 2 more to go.

After cleaning up claire's room and some not so fun trips to the bathroom on my part, the day was over.

WEDNESDAY

We had a nice relaxing day and lunch with rich in the middle of his studying for finals. I made us a delicious chicken gnocchi soup for dinner and when Rich got home he was not feeling very good. Ohh NO!

Soon Rich was puking and having a horrible evening. I got claire to bed and then we went to bed early. By midnight it started for me too. We spent all night taking turns in the bathroom and no sleep. We couldn't keep anything down. (i wish i hadn't eaten that soup)

THURSDAY

By morning we were wore out and I was having REALLY bad cramps. Im pretty sure I was starting contractions. After a call to my doctor we were sent to labor and delivery to get pumped full of fluids and some nausea medicine. Claire spent the day with a friend. (Im so grateful for her)

Rich was so nice to take care of me and after hours at the hospital and a nap we went home, got claire to bed by 6 (amazing and so needed that night) and we were in bed by 7. We all slept soundly ALL night. :)

FRIDAY

Today Rich was scheduled to take his second final! I am so thankful that his teacher let him reschedule it. We still had no appetite but no more throwing up. We spent the day chasing claire and naps when we could get them.

Now 2 finals left, hopefully rich can get in a few more hours of studying and rock the tests.

Hopefully we will stop picking up every bug around. We are ready to be healthy again! No matter how wore out we are claire can still make us smile. Just look at this face.

She also read us a book. So cute. I can't believe she will be 1 tomorrow.

Hopefully next week will be a better one!

The last couple weeks....

The last couple of weeks have been crazy and fun. We spent thanksgiving at my parents house and enjoyed the company and the help. It was an interesting week. The three of us got sick, Claire's ear infection came back and Claire got her two top teeth. Other than a few sleepless nights and a trip to the ER we had a pretty fun week. Claire learned to say DOG and had fun following my parents dog around pointing at him and saying dog, dog, dog.....

We celebrated Claire's birthday a little early so my parents could be there and because Claire's birthday is in the middle of finals. I always have wanted to make a fun kids birthday cake and figured Claire's b-day was a good time to have a little fun. I know claire doesn't care but I sure had a blast. I made homemade fondant out of marshmallows and Claire sure loved the stuff! All she did was pick it off and not really eat the cake. :) I think I had a little TOO much fun but I really had a blast making her cake. Here are some pictures.

On saturday was the civil war football game. "University of oregon vs. oregon state" The boys had fun watching the game. Here is claire in her duck gear ready for the game.

James came home with us and spent the week playing with me and claire while rich finished up classes. It was so much fun and claire had a blast!

Here she is still recovering from her cold and ear infection, she was pooped!

She is climbing onto and into everything these days and getting really fast at walking. She sure likes to cause trouble but is SO cute! I can't believe how grown up she is getting. She is finally sleeping though the night and going to bed about 7! Wow, I forgot what it was like to get stuff done without a little monster making messes constantly. Thank you Claire.

This week I also made a cake for a friends baby shower. She has a 5 week old boy named william. I had so much fun making another cake! Yum, this cake was chocolate with cocolate frosting and raspberry filling for one layer and german chocolate with coconut flavored icing for the top two layers.

Well that was a long post, Im done now. :)