as you can see...

the girls were having lots of fun and were VERY happy before seeing santa!!

Grace being silly...

like her pink shoes???

I got her in the dress and tights without a fight,

so decided she deserved to wear her pink shoes if she wanted!

and being even MORE silly!!

merry christmas!

we hope you have a wonderful christmas with family and friends, full of peace, hope and a little more joy than the girls are showing here :)

sweet little things they are!!

best friends

today grace said to isabel and i "best frinds mommy. best frinds iz. we best frinds!"

how could anyone not want to be this crazy girls best friend?

or this ones either!

trains

We went to the botanic gardens this weekend to see the amazing train display - wonderland express! We went last year, and the girls really liked it. This year, Isabel LOVED it. She couldn't get enough of the trains. Her sweet little face!!! Got to love her!

And Grace, well she couldn't get enough of the fake snow that was falling. She was ready to go when the snow would go off, but loved it when it came back on. When we got to the car I asked her if she liked the trains, and in true Grace fashion she said "no tanks mommy!"

Sweet girls! I love this picture!!

And as you can see, Grace wears her tutu EVERYWHERE these days!

daddy's home!

the girls LOVE to surprise greg when he walks in the door. fun times for ALL of us!!

dressing up...

have i mentioned how much the girls LOVE to do it these days!!!!!

isabel

and here isabel has on her tutu, pumkin, fairy princess over that,
her boa, hat, and of course her babies glasses

and grace...

not quite as fancy as isabel THIS time.

one attempt...

This was acutally ONE of our many Christmas card picture attempts. We didn't use any, but there are some prety funny ones here :)

Grace has the blue boa, Isabel has the pink.

sweet, sweet girls :)

Funny.

I am better able to translate after listening. Isabel is saying "everybody", not party. And mentions her "Aura" or Laura, and I don't get that the first time either. She is not as persistent in making me figure out what she is saying as Grace is. So our conversations don't always go as planned, but they are usually pretty funny these days!

A little bit of this and a little bit of that...

That's what we have been up to. We have been staying very busy, yet I don't know what we are busy doing! But here is an overview of some of what we have been doing...and saying.

Grace is for sure our girl who is 2 going on about 20! She already calls me "mom" and Greg "dad" at times :( Makes me sad...oh how I love to hear "mommy" from her sweet little mouth. But this weekend she went beyond that even, calling Greg, "GREG!" and me, I am "Tol" for Cole. Oh is she something else these days! Such a little HAM!

yet SO, SO sweet when she wants to be (and lucky for us she is a lot of the time!)

And then there is Isabel...also getting TOO big, TOO fast!

She is for sure our fashion girl.

She picked this outfit by herself...the fancier the better!

Both girls are talking NON stop these days! Isabel beats Grace I think in the talking category, but there is rarely any quite time around here at all. They are saying the funniest things to us, and even funnier things to each other. They have been in speech for several weeks now and their conversation (or fight) last night as they decided who was going to go first today was something like...Grace - "you go first Is? Tay? Tay? Me go mommy? Tay? Tay?"

Isabel - "mines go first Reeen. Tay Gace? Tay? You go mommy."
Very sweet after I had to threaten that Reanne (the therapist) wouldn't come if they fought about her!

With their talking, they are becoming quite the phone talkers. And it is SO fun because Greg and I can almost have a conversation with them! We still have to translate for others on the other end, but we are getting there, and they love it (and I think Gigi, Papa, Grandma, Aunt Laura, and Aunt Brit do too...poor Doug, he is not a favorite to talk on the phone to right now :( but we are working on it!!!!!

And as sweet as they are together (which they are VERY, VERY sweet most of the time!), they are also VERY quick together. And this morning, we were getting ready to go outside for a walk, and the next think I knew, they had the door open...they had unlocked the deadbolt, and opened the door.

So guess what Greg is doing this weekend...

adding ANOTHER lock on both doors, up REAL high!