Merry Christmas!

Christmas was really fun this year! Aubrey was TOTALLY into Santa this year. It was really fun watching how excited she was. Last year, she was excited about Christmas, but having a (nearly) 4 year old at Christmas time was really fun! Both kids got lots of fun toys, and loved spending time with family (although we certainly missed Grandma and Grandpa Stiles). Here's some pictures:

Aubrey, Austin, and their new cousin Kaitlyn!

Aubrey LOVES this Dora umbrella from Grandma Carlson! We can't get it away from her. :)

This is Christmas morning at our house. We opened a few presents from Santa at our house, then took the rest up to Grandma's.

Aubrey with her "Little Miss Chatterbox" toy. That toy definitely fits her. :)

The kiddos in their new jammies on Christmas Eve.

Last week, we took the kids to see the lights at the zoo. It was fun, (and obviously freezing!), but Aubrey was slightly disappointed that she didn't see more animals. I think next year, we'll just stick to going to the lights at Temple Square. There's more lights and it's free, which is nice. :)

Christmas time sure was fun this year! Now I'm working on Aubrey's birthday party for this weekend. Last year for her birthday, we took her to SeaWorld, Legoland, and Disneyland, and now she thinks we should be packing to go to California for another birthday extravaganza, lol. But I think she'll still have fun having a party here. Hope so!

FINALLY!!!!

Well, for almost 2 weeks now, Austin has been SLEEPING THROUGH THE NIGHT!!!!! We love our baby dearly, but needless to say, the past 7.5 months have been EXHAUSTING!!! Guess I just didn't know how lucky I had it with Aubrey since she was always a good sleeper. It took a couple attempts at the "Ferber Method" with Austin, but eventually, he learned to sleep all night long. From the time he was born, he pretty much woke up every 3-4 hours. After 7 months of that, I was starting to be a wreck. :) The trick for Austin was to let him cry it out at nap time. In my failed attempts to get him to sleep through the night, I was still rocking him to sleep at naps, but as soon as I stopped that, he learned to soothe himself to sleep. He's sleeping 10-11 hours a night! So, now that I'm actually getting a good night's rest after almost a year (I couldn't sleep well at the end of my pregnancy either), I feel fabulous!!!

Random

We often ask Aubrey, "where do you live?" She almost always rattles off, "Cent-o-ville Utah!" without much thought at all. Today when I asked her where she lives, she paused and said, "uh, North Cawolina." Haha, she's so random sometimes. :)

Aubrey-isms

It's been a while since I posted things Aubrey says. Here's a few:

-One day, Aubrey kept coming out of her room at nap time, and she was mad at me because I sent her back upstairs to go to sleep. She reluctantly went back to bed, but I could hear her crying a little. I listened through her door, and heard her singing in this cute little high pitched voice while she was crying. It was so funny, because she obviously was all alone, singing her sad, sad song to herself. :) She sang, "♬ I'm soooo sad. ♪I have to be in bed. ♬ I miss Mathis. I just want to go to the library and my mom is making me be in bed. ♫ I miss my Daddy, Mathis. I loooo-ve him so much...." She sang things like that for a while, then I gave her a hug, and she wasn't mad at me anymore. :)

-A couple weeks ago, I came into the room, and Aubrey looked at me and shouted, "What's up, Ho!" I said, "What are you talking about, Aubrey???" She replied, "I like to watch Kai-lan and there's a character named HoHo. I thought you would think it was a cute little nickname!"

-A couple weeks ago, Aubrey got mad at her dad and said, "Dad...Jesus wants us to be nice"(pause) Then in the deepest voice I've heard from a 3 year old, she continued, "NOT EVIL!!!"

-When Mathis got home from work one day, Aubrey walked up to him and said, "Dad, you look disgusting. Go take a shower!"

- Aubrey was talking to Cindy on the phone:

Aubrey: "So, Cinny, did you kiss Jonny??"

Cindy: "Um, yep, I did."

Aubrey: "You sure aw lucky, Cinny!"

-Yesterday, I was lying on stomach, playing with Austin on the floor. Aubrey came up and smacked me on the butt, then said, "Mom, you have a cute butt!"

-Aubrey bumped her nose yesterday, then immediately ran out of the room, and came back with a band-aid covering her nose and nostrils. She looked pretty goofy...and I was laughing at her. In a slightly nasally voice she said, "What's the big deal?"

-A while ago, Aubrey spilled something on her shirt, the said, "It's okay, Mommy. You can use oxi-clean to get the stain out!" (The funny thing is, I've never bought that before. She's a commercial junkie, apparently.)

-And lastly, I thought I'd jot down some examples of Aubrey's keen sense of time. (She said these one night a couple months ago, while I was getting her ready for bed).

- "Mom, Austin is almost ready to be a Dad"

- "Mom, Austin was born a couple minutes ago."

- "I just took a nap for a couple of years."

Disneyland!

It kinda took a while, but here are the pics from our Disneyland trip. The kids had so much fun! I wasn't quite sure what Austin would think about everything, but he LOVED the rides. We wore him out though. He actually slept through the nights while we were there, which is, like, AMAZING for that baby! He's kind of a stinker in the night time, but slowly improving.

They got SOAKED on Splash Mountain!

We stayed dry. :)

Here's lunch with the princesses in California Adventure. We've done that once before. It's a bit pricey, but Aubrey LOVES it, so we did it again with her.

Jack-Jack

Wow, two blogs in two days. That's pretty good for me! Haha. Anyway, when we were at Disneyland (I'll post pictures soon), several different people told us that Austin looks like Jack-Jack from "The Incredibles." I hadn't seen that movie in a while, so I had never made the connection. When I got home and googled Jack-Jack, sure enough, those people seem to be right, haha! So here's an animated version of my son. :)

Halloween!

I guess I better get around to posting these Halloween pics, before we leave for Disneyland in a couple days. We had fun! So, here are some pics of the kids in their costumes.

Aubrey had lots of fun trick-or-treating. We went trick-or-treating on Main Street (all the little shops hand out candy) to a trunk-or treat, then all around our neighborhood. I was a little sick of trick-or-treating by the end, but Aubrey had fun! Austin didn't go around the neighborhood (too cold), but he liked strolling around during the day!

There's Aubrey dressed up as Ariel with Wyatt, the Transformer. They walked all around holding hands and telling people that they are going to get married when they're older. So cute!

This was the day before Halloween at the "Spooktacular" at the Rec Center. We go there every year, and Aubrey loves it! I had her hair spray painted red that day, and it looked way cute, but Aubrey didn't like how long it took to wash the stuff out of her hair, so she opted for no red hair on Halloween. I didn't mind either, the red got everywhere! It was fun for a day, though.

Austin was a cute little tiger, but the rec center was pretty crowded and noisy, and he really doesn't like that. He gets fussy (and sometimes scared) if there's too much going on. And of course, Aubrey gets bored and cranky if there's NOT ENOUGH going on. So my kids are opposites in that way, and I just have to try to keep both of them happy! :)

Goofy poses, as normal. :)