Clara at 23 months.

Clara is quite a character!  My favorite Clara-isms of late are:

"I choose..." (and then she picks a color of hair band or crayon)
"Just kidding!"
"I be wight back!" (right back)
"Clara do it!"
"Moo juice" is milk
"Daddy-O!  Macky-O!" (she's adding o to the end of everything these days!)

She has grown three inches since Thanksgiving day!  She is now 34 inches tall!  Crazy!  I'm a little shocked, because her eating habits are so up and down.  Sometimes she eats like a horse, and other times she doesn't touch anything!  She still loves milk though.

She can count to 14, but don't ask her to...she'll refuse!

She can identify quite a few letters.  I haven't done a formal assessment (are you surprised?) but if my memory serves, she knows the following uppercase letters:

c ,l ,a ,r ,h ,y ,w ,e ,i ,o ,k ,x and j, which is called candy cane, didn't you know?

She knows all her basic colors, and some shapes too, like circle, heart, and star.

She has learned to joke around.  Last night we asked her what puppies she loved, and she said, "Oma" and giggled.  Sorry Mom, we know you're not a dog!

She still can be a little naughty challenging, mostly to Kurtis and I, but at times we can reason with her and logic does the trick!

Here she is tonight!  Apparently she was feeling inspired, fashion-wise.  She had her jammies on, and then found the socks and shoes and managed to get them on.  And to finish her look, she grabbed the hat from a hook in her room!  After I put the camera away, she added a backpack to her look.  But I didn't capture it for you.  Whoops!

It is so hard to believe that Clara will be two in a few weeks.  She is the light of our lives, and keeps each day interesting and exciting!

Baby Bill turns one!

This little guy turned 1 on January 14!

 He's a happy fella.

 He's just so darn precious!

 We adore him!

 So, we ate dinner and had some cake to celebrate!  And then, the babes needed a bath (of course they did, you heard me mention cake!)

 So Steve and Teenie washed, dried, lotioned, and dressed all three little ones while the rest of us cleaned up from dinner downstairs!  Steve and Teenie are good, I tell ya!

We're so thrilled baby William Henry was here in Boise on his first birthday!  We remember last year when Emmy, Mom, Clara and I drove up north to Palouse on a snowy January weekend with hopes of meeting the new babe, and his timing couldn't have been better last year!  So happy first birthday Baby Bill!  We love you!

And just because flashbacks are so fun...

Happy Birthday Baby Bill!!!

Waldon family Christmas.

We celebrated Christmas with the Waldons the weekend of Jan. 11-13.  I know...a little late!  But better late than never!  So the Kaufmans came down from Lewiston to celebrate!  Friday night after work, we all headed over to Mom and Dad's to have dinner and open gifts.  It felt a little strange.  There were no decorations up, no lights, but that was ok!  We made the best of it!

Clara was thrilled to receive her very own baby doll.  She has a whole bunch of dolls, but they're all hand-me-downs from me and my sisters.  So she loved opening her own baby.  However, she was completely uninterested in gifts at first.  We kept trying to get her to rip the paper open, but she refused!    She just wanted to play with her cousins, who she adores!  I finally had to tell her, "There's a baby in here!" in order to convince her to open her gift.

She was showered with other gifts too...books, accessories for her baby, a backpack, cute alphabet cards to hang up in her room, and lots of other goodies!  She's a lucky little girl!

 Heh heh heh!

 Clara and Daddy were so coordinated that evening!

 Ben and Will got things with wheels...and they were happy!

 Trying to convince her to open the darn thing!!!

 Oma and Opa also got Ben and Will a big playmat with a city on one side, and a construction site on the other.  It was a huge hit!

 And Baby Bill got a cute rocking horse for Christmas...which he was afraid of!  Classic!  But he warmed up to the idea of the horse as the weekend wore on!

I didn't get a single shot of Steve or my Dad!  Oops!  Sorry guys!

But it was a fun Friday evening.

We spent Saturday hanging around the house trying to keep three babes happy...which isn't that easy!  Then that evening, we had Christmas dinner.  We didn't see the guys that much on Saturday...they hunted that morning and went to the Stampede game that night!  So we girls spent the evening playing board games and trying to get three babies to sleep.  Once again...it wasn't that easy!

But Christmas with the Waldons was loads of fun!  Spending time with family is the most important part of the holidays, and we were glad we could finally make that happen with my side!  It was a fantastic weekend!

Stay tuned for Sunday of that weekend...baby Will's birthday!

Dinner with Lee.

I am so lucky to be teaching next door to Lee, who is in the midst of a Fullbright teacher exchange for this school year.  She is here from Scotland, and is delightful.  She came over for dinner over the long weekend, and we all had a blast.  Clara loves Lee!  Lee even brought her a little stuffed penguin and some Cadbury chocolate buttons from Scotland, not to mention the truffles she brought Kurtis and I!  Too kind!

Here are a couple cute shots I got of Lee with Clara, before Clara crashed out for the night.  We didn't do anything fancy, but it was so nice to sit and chat with her outside of work!  Thanks for coming to dinner Lee!  Please come over again soon!