It Never Gets Old...

Catching these sweet smiles:

Staring endlessly at the most peaceful sleep:
 

Playing with my mini-me:
 

Sharing moments of pride:
 

Watching pure joy:
 

Mr. Smiles

This little man is always smiling! I love it so much! He's right on the verge of having a real deep belly laugh too. We're trying and trying to get it out but for now we're pretty tickled about the squeals he is giving us!

Isn't he looking so much like Quinn now?  And yes, his eyes are blue too.  You can't really tell here in the picture but they're identical to his older sister's.  Crazy.

He is changing and changing literally by the day.  Today he woke up fascinated at looking at his hands!  I remember Quinn doing this and thinking it was such a milestone.  He is also constantly sucking on those little chubby hands too.  He's becoming a great little sleeper as well.  Takes about 4 naps a day and wakes up once at night around 3 am.  Knock on wood that this will continue and turn into him sleeping through the night.  Yesterday we had a hiccup and he was awake from 12:15 pm until he went to bed at 9 pm!!  Every time I would try to lay him down he would scream almost to the point of not breathing.  Not fun.  I'm wondering if he's begging to teethe?  At our 8 week well check our pediatrician said his gums looked swollen and not to be surprised if he started soon.  He's now 14 weeks and I can't tell if he's cutting teeth or not.  Time will tell.

I thought this was funny.  I think big sis got a little too close for comfort here!

The BEST Christmas!

We are finally coming back into reality and getting things in order around here after having such a fantastic holiday. Here is my dilemma as a mom- do I take tons of pictures and not really feel like I was IN the moment or do I make lasting memories and not take as many pictures? Well this year I definitely took the ladder and was left with hardly any photos at all. It is a little harder now to take pictures as I'm pretty much always holding Joshua too.

Anyway, my family arrived and it was the first time since we've lived in Texas (seven years) that we've had my entire family here to celebrate a holiday. My sister and her family arrived on the 22nd and my parents and brother arrived on the 23rd. We had a wonderful meal at Maggiano's in the Domain on the 23rd to celebrate my brother's graduation from college! Woohoo!! His next step is to try and enter the Fire Academy in Albuquerque, NM. He's doing lots of physical work and studying so hopefully in the next few months he will be accepted. We're so proud.

We had a fantastic Christmas Eve dinner here on the 24th with all of our traditional New Mexican food: posole, red chile, tortillas etc... The kids opened their presents this day as has been our tradition since we've been little. It was a blast to watch them- THIS is what Christmas is about! Pure joy!

I love it!

On Christmas Day we were woken at 6 am, no not by sweet Joshua but by three excited little kiddies to open up Santa gifts!  More joy watching children who truly believe- they were so amazed that Santa ate the cookies and his reindeer ate carrots!  Quinn almost cried when she saw Jaime throwing the carrots away later in the day she screamed "Noooooo!  Those are for Santa's reindeer!".