Talking Whiteheads

Christmas 2017

December 25, 2017 by Rebecca Whitehead

After a month’s worth of festivities, we celebrated our very first Christmas in our new house! Although the girls really missed going to Utah this year, there were definitely some upsides to not traveling over the holiday (e.g. no tiring road trip or hauling gifts!) Grammy and Grandpa came to us, so everyone was happy.

We spent Christmas Eve hanging out at home, tracking Santa’s journey through Alexa, watching movies, and setting out cookies/carrots for Santa and his reindeer. The most exciting event of the night was our kitchen almost being set on fire! I had ordered catering through a restaurant for our Christmas Eve dinner and tasked Grandpa with picking it up. I was on a bike ride with Meredith and was on my way home when I smelled smoke coming from somewhere in our neighborhood. I figured someone must be having a Christmas Eve bbq, but as I got closer, I realized the smoke was definitely coming from our house!

When I raced inside, the twins were already on the porch and wasted no time placing the blame! Apparently, Grandpa had put the aluminum catering trays inside the oven to keep the food warm, but didn’t take the out of the cardboard boxes they were in to carry and they caught on fire! Grammy quickly grabbed the flaming boxes and put them outside; thankfully, neither the food nor our kitchen was damaged. It was just really smokey! It was a good lesson in fire safety for the twins and we had a good time joking about Grandpa burning down our kitchen over Christmas!

We concentrated our money on getting the outside of our house decorated for Christmas, and I decided not to buy a bunch of decorations for the tree in our new house this year since our tree was super tall and required a ton more decorations than we already had. The twins decorated with homemade ornaments; hence only four feet of our tree had ornaments!

Santa came!

The twins were excited about the rings, necklaces silly putty and paint markers from Santa. Santa spent a lot of time at Claire’s this year!

Everyone loved the stick-on earrings!

Meredith’s favorite– animals!

Meredith calls candy canes “nandies.” Pweeeeease have nandy???

Special deliveries from Santa.

As requested, Santa brought Samantha and Amelia the frilly silk nightgowns they had asked for, plus chalk for Samantha and a few extra goodies for Amelia. Santa was very please that the girls asked for such simple gifts! The twins also told Santa that Meredith wanted her own apron for baking, like the ones they have, and Santa came through, thanks to the cute American Girl baking collection at WIlliams Sonoma! He also brought everyone a dollhouse, which no one cared about except for Meredith!

We took turns with each of the girls going to Target earlier in the month where they picked out presents for each other using their own money. Meredith loved her piggy bank from Samantha and her Moana rooster stuffed animal from Amelia! It’s fun to see what they pick out for each other. Amelia usually tends to pick out something that she herself would like, while Samantha takes a little bit more time thinking of something unique to her sisters.

My surprise gift from the girls was a homemade sign for our house with their handprints! Jake and Grammy went to the shop earlier that week to put on the finishing touches:

I’m always a sucker for homemade gifts.

Meredith is still obsessed with this code-a-pillar from Uncle Mike and Ali.

To my annoyance, Meredith is constantly bringing in her scooter and plasma car from outside and riding them around the house, so we got her an inside riding toy, which she quickly lost interest in. It’s only fun if if it’s tracking in dirt to our house!

Homemade gifts are always our favorite.

Underwater camera from Uncle Mike and Ali.

Cool books and a solar photography kit from Aunt Sarah.

Grandpa bought us a fire extinguisher, presumably for next time he almost burns the house down.

Peekaboo!

Books and crafts from Grammy!

We always look forward to seeing our yearly calendar from Aunt Sarah.

Pogo sticks!

Everyone was occupied the rest of the day trying out their new gifts and helping Jake rip up the carpet upstairs and put in our new wood floors. They accomplished a good amount of flooring over Christmas break!

“Helping” Daddy roll out the underlayment.

Meredith’s room all torn up.

Christmas dinner featured prime rib, garlic mashed potatoes, brussels sprouts, cranberry sauce, rolls, sweet potato pecan casserole and a delicious new pie recipe from Grammy.

The twins pranced in their new nightgowns while Daddy installed the floor.

Favorite pics from Christmases of the past..

Samantha:

Amelia:

A few video moments from Christmas 2017!

It was a very merry Christmas!

Lots of love,

Filed Under: Christmas Tagged With: Christmas 2017, Christmas eve, first Christmas in new house, kitchen fire, nightgowns

Baby #4 and Gender Reveal

December 20, 2017 by Rebecca Whitehead

After my 11-week ultrasound, we let the girls in on a little surprise and they didn’t miss a beat! The twins have been so excited and never miss an opportunity to tell people about their new baby. Meredith loves to feel my tummy and talks about the baby all the time, but probably won’t understand what’s about to go down until the baby is actually here!

Sheela insisted on doing a little gender reveal, and orchestrated the whole thing so that even SHE wouldn’t know the gender! Once the blood test results were in, Jake picked the sealed envelope up from my doctor and we gave it to Sheela, who gave it to her neighbor, who then opened it up at Party City and selected the applicable color of balloons to put into a box, and then gave it back to Sheela for the reveal. It was fun that everyone got to find out at the same time!

Who’s on Team Blue?

Who’s on Team Pink?

Yum!

We met up at the park for a playdate with a few friends, Jake, who drove from work to be there for a few minutes, and my Dad, who had just come into town for the holidays. We had kept the fact that I was even pregnant a secret from pretty much everyone except friends I see every day, so he literally found out we were having another baby when we showed up to the reveal! He was pretty confused for a minute!

I only had TWO teammates on my side hoping for Team Pink– Allie and Samantha! The rest of the crowd was cheering on for Team Blue! Of course, everyone was excited no matter what, but it was funny to see what everyone’s true loyalties were!

Time for the big reveal…

Team Pink wins!! I was so excited I forgot to grab the balloons, and to the disappointment of the kids, the balloons floated away! Amelia, who had joined Team Blue at the last second, started crying… whether because she felt like she was on the “losing team” or because she really wanted a baby brother, I don’t know!

Jake’s reaction was having to sit down and take some deep breaths and then proclaim he had to get back to work and make some more money, stat! While his reaction wasn’t as ecstatic as mine, he told everyone that he was so excited to just be having a baby, and the gender was a fun little bonus. He promptly headed back to work, likely strategizing how we are going to pay for four weddings and all those clothes! I’m thinking at least one double wedding in there?

Another girl to join this crew!

Since my mom wasn’t flying in until Saturday, we saved the box, bought more pink balloons and did our own gender reveal for her when she arrived. Like my Dad, we thought it would be hilarious to reveal that I was pregnant and that we’d be having a girl at the same time, so as soon as she got to our house, the twins told her they had an early Christmas present they wanted her to open. A look of confusion turned into an incredulous, “What??!!!” as the pink and It’s a Girl! balloons flew out of the box. The girls were jumping up and down in excitement and laughing at Grammy’s surprise!

While we are just hoping for a healthy, happy baby to join our crew, I couldn’t be more excited about my dream family of four girls— Little Women style! Except in our version, Beth does NOT die at the end! Thank you, Sheela and friends, for such a fun reveal! It was a blast finding out at the same time and sharing the news with everyone!

Lots of love,

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: baby #4, gender reveal, team blue, team pink

Preschool Sing Along, Hanukkah Party and More December!

December 16, 2017 by Rebecca Whitehead

The twins had been practicing all month for their preschool Christmas sing-along and we were excited to come see their performance and all of the super cute pajamas! Even though they practiced with the hand-actions and sang all the carols ad nauseam at home, they were less than enthusiastic to perform in front of everyone! They looked tortured most of the time.

Putting on our happy faces when all the kids are in complete meltdown mode.

Samantha and Amelia’s less-than-enthusiastic Christmas carol performances! It was a long show with seven other songs beyond these, but they were all pretty much like the following, so you get the picture.

Even though Meredith was in the audience cheering her on, poor Amelia was feeling completely overwhelmed by the end and started melting down. I read my preschool sing-along post from last year, and apparently, it was Samantha who had a meltdown and threw herself into Daddy’s arms that year! I guess they are taking turns.

Last year:

Pouty elf Amelia.

It’s okay, sister elf!

Last year by the preschool tree:

A number from last year’s preschool sing-along:

Another fun preschool event was the annual Santa visit, storytime and milk and cookies! Samantha said she told Santa she wanted some new pajamas and chalk. Incredulous, Santa asked her if she wanted anything else and she said that was it! Amelia said the same thing minus the chalk (despite the fact that they already have 10+ pairs of pajamas between the two of them and we usually let them unwrap new pajamas on Christmas Eve anyways!)!

I’m sure Santa was feeling bad for these clearly underprivileged children! When they were looking through a catalog earlier in December, I asked the twins what they would like to ask Santa for, and after bypassing all the toys, they fell in love with these old-fashioned silky nightgown sets in purple and pink. So that’s what they told Santa! Samantha added in the chalk because a few months’ prior, Meredith broke all of our chalk in half and Samantha was super upset. I never got around to restocking on chalk, so she added that in her Christmas list as well!

Samantha and Santa.

2016:

Amelia and Santa.

2016:

2017:

Preschool Christmas crafts.

Amelia was super excited to give me her snowman mug and hot cocoa kit.

On a cold and drizzly weekday evening, we also went to visit Santa at the local Santa’s Village. I stood in line for a ridiculous hour and a half, while Jake took the girls around to get hot chocolate, cookies, watch the trains, listen to the carolers, watch an outdoor movie and look at the decorations. Once I saw the insane line, I would have left immediately, except that the twins were adamant that Meredith needed to see Santa and we didn’t have anything else going on that evening, besides being warm at home and not being stuck in the rain. Still, next year, I think we’ll stick to the preschool Santa visit.

Samantha and Amelia again told Santa they wanted pajamas (and chalk for Samantha), and Santa winked at me and added in that maybe he could bring them a few extra surprises! Noooooooo, Santa! Pajamas and chalk sounds like a great Christmas to me! Meredith was a little starstruck, so Amelia spoke for her and told Santa she wanted a personalized baking apron just like the ones they have because Meredith didn’t have one. That meant an unexpected last minute shopping trip for me…I mean, Santa… that week!

2016 Santa’s Village:

2015 Santa’s Village:

More Christmas fun! Our town has a house-decorating contest and some neighborhoods are super coordinated and went all out. We explored a few of the extra decked-out neighborhoods and lighting contest winners with Parker, Maple, Phi and Michael. One fun neighborhood had hot chocolate and cookies for sale with proceeds going to charity and had their very own Grinch greeting all the kids.

Fortunately, our immediate street does not require everyone to go crazy for Christmas. This was an experimental year since it was our first Christmas in our new house.

Grandpa came into town from Utah and we went to see Disney on Ice with Noah and his family.

I thought the show was amazing, but the twins were pretty much there for the popcorn. They’ve never really been into shows. I’m glad I didn’t shell out more dough for the Nutracker this year!

Being goofy with cousins at Great Auntie Lynn’s and Uncle Steve’s for a Hanukkah dinner and gift exchange.

Attack Noah!

Grandchildren with Great Grandpa Leonard.

Meredith must have eaten 20 latkes single-handedly.

Bring on the goodies!

Great Grandpa and the Great Grandkids.

Lots of love,

Filed Under: Christmas Tagged With: Christmas 2017, Christmas activities 2017, disney on ice, Great Grandpa, hailey, hanukkah 2017, house Christmas lights, Maple, neighborhood decorating contest, Noah, parker, preschool Christmas crafts, preschool Santa visit, preschool sing-along, Santa's Village

December Happenings

December 5, 2017 by Rebecca Whitehead

In December, Meredith geared up for Christmas decked out in her hand-me-down holiday outfits from the twins and spread the Christmas cheer!

Meredith couldn’t make up her mind whether to be naughty or nice this December! We rarely went on an outing without some kind of throwdown… even preschool drop-off had turned into a nightmare because Meredith refused to leave and would regularly throw herself down on the ground, kicking and screaming.

I never take her to the store anymore, unless it’s an absolute emergency because she always manages to make some kind of spectacle. In December, I was at Target with her when she started tantruming in the check-out line over the fact that I was putting the various candy bars and random items she had thrown into the cart back on the shelf. Restraining her in the cart seatbelt is impossible and she can climb out of the cart herself, so I was left with little option but to scurry out of there once I was done with the self-check out. A kind soul felt pity for me and offered to escort me to my car, pushing my cart for me, while I held a kicking and screaming Meredith under my arms like a football so that she wouldn’t be able to kick my stomach! Once in the car, it was another 20 minutes before I could restrain her in her carseat. She is SO stubborn, this one!

Not so cheery today.

Elfie returned and while his hiding spots mostly included climbing candy-cane striped pipe cleaners and literally sitting on shelves, the girls thought his antics were hilarious! They didn’t even seem to mind that he stayed in the same spot for several days in a row (no one ever told them the actual rules, so our elf goes at his own pace).

The twins chatting before their holiday dance and yoga recital.

The twins had just barely moved up into the 5-7 year old class and tried their best to keep up! We had Mele Kalikimaka in our head for weeks.

The girls were mostly excited about the recital because they got to wear a little makeup and received a rose and Yogurtland afterwards.

Sammy the reindeer pulls the sleigh.

Cheese!

I am terrible at any kind of construction project and cringe at the thought of putting together gingerbread houses, but this train wasn’t so hard.

Practicing their ice skating skills.

Checking out the camels and other animals at the live nativity in our city.

Jake was elected to the Board of Directors for our city and enjoyed texting me pictures of his picture in the office whenever he had a board meeting.

We had some warm days in December, which meant doing basically the same thing we do every day… going to the park.

Starfish!

Biking to the orange grove.

Lemons and limes, yum!

The girls rarely wait until we get home to try out their spoils. The blood oranges and clementines here are super juicy, and I rarely buy oranges at the grocery store anymore.