Christmas part 1: The Willards

Well, I'd hate to have to do a post called "Christmas in July", so I figured I better get my Christmas pics up on the blog before summer rolls around. And we have a bunch of travels coming up, so I really need to get ahead of the game NOW.

I have so many pictures from our Christmas/New Years in California that I'm going to break it into 5 or 6 blog posts. So here goes the first!

Christmas with The Willards!
Jeff, Nicole, and the kids came to town for a few days and it was a blast. We love to hang out with them and the kids just act silly together. There was a lot of this going on:
(cute Harrison and aunt Nicole):
and if we weren't eating grilled cheese, we opted for donuts:
mmmmmm.
Owen at his morning best:
I snapped photos of the darling girls. Jillian has the most amazing eyes.
and great expressions too.
These were supposed to be her "3 years old" pictures.....just a few months overdue.
Jacqueline is fun to take pictures of too. Both girls are very photogenic.
and she has cute little feet.
This pic just makes me laugh. Can't remember now what she was bothered by.
and, cheese! Such a cute girl.
Cousins, playing together in Grandma's front patio.
One night while they were in town, we braved the LA traffic and drove from Simi Valley to Fairfax.
We ate at Messob (Ethiopian food), which Chad and Lauren introduced us to...and also announced that night that they were having a boy! And to follow that up: she just had baby Henry last week! The Willard male/female ratio is now balanced.
The food was quite tasty and it was fun to eat adventurously. My only complaint is that the bread was a bit too spongy to me. Now if you put some Indian Naan with it?! Perfect!
We had a great time eating family-style in the middle of the restaurant. And when the kids got restless, the staff entertained them. Does it get better than that??
Thank you Messob!
After dinner we walked around the LA temple to see their Christmas lights.
Everything was cheery, bright, and festive.
Moroni still:
Moroni moving:
We had a slight scare while at the temple grounds when we lost Lucy for 20 minutes. She was with all of us but at some point she must have lost sight of me or Casey and decided that she needed to go back around the temple to find us. So she started walking in the opposite direction of us. Some people saw her and asked, "what do you need?" She calmly responded, "I'm looking for my people!" Of course we were not as calm as she was and were a bit worried. So we circled around the temple as well, Casey going one way, me going the other, and yelling "Lucy! Lucy!"

People who heard us asked, "little blonde girl? She went that way...."
So we knew she was close by, we just needed to find her. And eventually we did. PHEW. Scary to think of what could have happened instead, in LA, at night time.

On that note, to finish off the night we hit up our favorite ice cream sandwich shop in Westwood:
I quickly snapped photos inside the shop, before getting busted.
Yum. I wish I had this right now in my house to devour.
For the rest of our Willard hang-out, we just played around the house, went to the outdoor mall to see the "fake snow". All the girls went to see The Princess and The Frog (and the boys went golfing). Jeff, Nicole, Casey, and I had a date-afternoon where we got In-N-Out to-go and smuggled it into the movie theater to see A Christmas Carol.

I'd been wanting to make Lucy a jacket for a while now. And since the cousins were here I made one for all three girls and ended up using them for SYTYC. It worked out great. And the girls were just cute together.
Jacqueline really could model kids clothing. She was so perfectly posed in all these shots.
Jilly's amazing expressions again.
Thanks for coming down to California Willards! It was a fun, fun weekend.

It was hot

So we ran through the sprinklers.
Actually, Casey was testing the system to make sure they were working properly and the kids could not resist jumping out in the middle of it all.

Can't blame them. Who wouldn't want to run through firey sparklers? The sun-thru-water was just gorgeous.

Easter!

Yea. It's time for some family blogging.
So, here's our Easter recap. First off, you'll have to remember that these fun people were here. We loved it.

There were decorations...
Peeps Bunny Bunting:
Little Lamb Pillows:
Colored Rice Easter Eggs hanging in our archway:
and plenty of good ole fashioned easter egg coloring going on:
I left the dyeing, prepping, cleaning, decorating to the men (while I got our post roast dinner in the oven, compliments of the Pioneer Woman's recipe. Mmmm. It was yummy).
So the boys and Lucy did their thing (we decided it was a good time for Owen to take his nap. Next year little guy).
And Lucy thought it was great fun. She totally got it.
And they came up with this. Well done men! Such pretty colors. Vibrant.
The men then hid the eggs, we woke up Owen, and had our hunt.

Lucy quickly caught on that the plastic easter eggs she was finding had candy in them, while the real eggs were just....boring eggs. So she was kind enough to share the real eggs with Owen each time she found one. Or in this case, throw it at him:
Owen's basket got pretty heavy but he kept lugging that thing around. In the mean time, I hid their real Easter baskets behind the car and Lucy was overly thrilled with her Princess Tiana goodies.
She showed her toys to everyone:
Then she shared her toys with Owen:
and later that week, I made a Ruffled Hobo Sack for her toys (that blue Tiana is now decapitated. Sorry Princess)
The adults started cracking, peeling, and eating eggs so Lucy wanted to join in the fun. Grandpa's head was the perfect crakin spot.
She loved peeling the shell but refused to take a bite.
And Owen looked for bugs with his big over-sized magnifying glass (which the kids got from Grandma and Grandpa). Owen wrote his own song recently that he sings on and off at the house, "a lady bug? (going up in tone), a lady bug (down in tone)" (and repeat). It's really dumb and really cute.
And that was our Easter! (in a nutshell) (or an eggshell) (nononono)

The Audience is listening

Lucy's finally at that age where she's really aware of/hearing/processing all that's going on around her. Casey and I can no longer talk about her in the front seat of the car, without her picking up on it. Her fox ears hear it all. She's a sponge. And it's only the beginning of the rest of her life.

SO, time for us to be more careful with what she hears and sees...since these two things happened recently, which were kind of funny but made me aware of the fact.

* On Saturday Lucy was watching a cartoon on youtube (which we had turned on for her) and when it was done she started clicking around on the site.
"What's she watching?" I asked Casey.
"I think she found a Dora clip."
"Okay".
When I checked on her a few minutes later, sure enough she was watching Dora.....or something called "Dora on Heroin". And the related videos next to it said, "Dora the alcoholic", "Dora smokes Pot."
Nice.
"Mom, I was watching Dora! But it was a little bit different," Lucy informed me.

* Today in the car a Justin Timberlake song came on the radio, so I turned it up.
Lucy asked, "Mom, what's this song called."
Hmmm.
How do I disguise or shorten the name "I'm bringing Sexy Back"?
I was stumped, "um....it's called Hey Hey".

dumb name.