Merry Christmas!

Chris and I have both realized that Christmas is twentybajillion times better with kids. They are SO excited about everything. We’ve made the celebration last even longer by incorporating Elf on the Shelf into our December.  Elf on the Shelf, he (or she) is a mischievous little elf that watches all your actions and reports to Santa daily on if you’ve been naughty or nice. Our elves got into so much trouble every day! In fact, the night before Christmas, they tee-peed the ENTIRE house with 2 rolls of toilet paper. Alas, they have flown back to the North Pole with Santa and will return next year.

This year’s Christmas was particularly special because cousin Alise has joined the family. She is growing like a champ, soon to overtake Lily. Cheriss, is an amazing Mom and Erik is a fantastic Dad. We can’t wait for baby Alise too start walking so she can join in all the cousin fun.

Lily is wearing an outfit my Mom purchased for her (before Lily was even a twinkle in our eyes) over a decade ago. We start our holiday family time off with (not a surprise, given our family’s love of cooking and food), Christmas Eve dinner where I made a version of this lasagna and added butternut squash and spinach. It totally worked.

After we had eaten, we took in a beautiful Christmas Eve service. My Dad was thrilled to have baby Alise (yes, that’s her sitting upright in my Mom’s lap up there; she is so wide awake and alert!).

All three kids did great as we adults were reminded of the true reason for the season. For the kids, the concept is still a bit esoteric and very ‘opening presents-y’. We left out cookies, milk and of course, a treat for the reindeer and Jamisen hoped that his good behavior would push him over the edge for a gift-filled Christmas morning.

Santa left a note in return saying that he was unable to fit all the gifts down the chimney and may be back to deliver more. And then, this happened. And Jamisen’s little brain exploded with unicorns, puppies and glittery fairies because life  just does not get any better for a 3 year old than this:

Santa delivered quite a gift: a motorized scooter that Jamisen is so very excited about. I’ll be purchasing him a helmet to go along with that scooter if it ever goes outside.

Lily was not so sure about this Santa with the beard. Jamisen was catatonic in joy, wonder and anticipation. Alas, Santa had a few more houses to go to and was not able to stay for lunch (though he was invited).

Wishing you a loving, fun-filled holiday season week as we ponder the upcoming year and look back at the current year with a mixture of thankfulness, wistfulness and joy. Here’s a fantastic 2015 for us all!

Lily Discovers Fashion. Jamisen Discovers Sugar.

Aw, sweet sweet Lily; she is starting to really talk a lot with many new words. Every day, her vocabulary expands in some new and wondrous way. Just today, she started saying 'bubbles!' for the bubble bath she was taking. It was adorable. She also is getting quite vocal about what she likes and doesn't like. And she does NOT like being told 'No.' Oh, the crocodile tears....

Jamisen has found sugar and it is love at first bite. This holiday season has not been kind to our kale loving household, with the slow introduction of the white poison. Plus, the elves on the shelf (more on them later!) delivery sugar many times a week for breakfast (oh, those mischievous elves!) so that's not helping us. 

Boss woman Lily is so good about finding her place in our house. She and Jamisen are getting along better than ever, and, she completely knows when he is going to come running over, screaming: "Get her out of my Standy Thing!" or "No! I don't want her playing with that!" and is generally cooperative about complying with personal space needs. It will be interesting to see what happens as she gets bigger!  She LOVES to dress up and show off her outfits. She's very proud when she's wearing a dress or sparkly shoes. 

Jamisen loves cooking and loves baking. Here he is both baking a cake WHILE using his trucks as instruments of cake making. It's quite a feat and there are still cookie crumbs on the floor. Yes, the elves provided both the cookie (Erin Baker's of course!) and the marshmallows!

We went to a birthday party and had the best time at the gym it was hosted at. The kids got to run around and everyone was happy, especially little gymnast-in-training, Lily.

I jetted off to NYC for a whirlwind Handmade Beauty Box trip. 

I visited 26 editors in two days (!) and even managed to take in a show (The Elephant Man). It was a great trip and I hope it will pay dividends in the months and years to come. I did miss my kiddos, of course, but was thankful that Chris held down the home front just fine! =)

Our Fall Photo Shoot for Christmas Cards

We did our Christmas card shoot in November.

Our photographer Dawn Matthes has been photographing the kids since they were just a few days old. 

She photographed Jamisen and Lily in the hospital and we have fallen in love with her style and the way she charms our kiddos.

For this shoot, she spent weeks scouting the perfect location to drag the big red couch to.

It turned out to be a private road in the county.

She also picked up balloons for the kids to play with and be entertained by. This dress is especially meaningful because it is Auntie Anamarie's dress, passed down to Lily.

Jamisen was so sweet in showing some brotherly love to his sister.

He also was so helpful in telling her where to run and encouraging her to run with him for this photograph.

This photo is just a little 'Children of the Corn' but the lighting is SO adorable that it makes the cut.

I love our 2014 family portrait. I'm proud of how the kids are developing and how our family is coalescing around our values of Positivity, Integrity, Quality Time, Always Achieving and Love.

Los Angeles + Thanksgiving

So much has happened in just the last week. I feel like I've been on a whirlwind travel schedule (and yes, I'm writing this from the airport on another trip, again!). First of all, a big thank you to UPS for sending my friend Patrice and I on a once in a lifetime, outta-this-world trip to the American Music Awards!

The trip was complete with behind the scenes visits to the American Music Awards, where we watched the artists really hone their crafts. It was incredible to see these very young people fully participate and direct their brands. Also, they sound pitch perfect without any help. They just opened their mouths and it was as though they had been fully sound corrected ... only they were raw, just them, solo. That alone was worth the trip.

In a completely empty auditorium, the music reverberated through us, through our seats and through the floors. I cannot begin to express what an almost-spiritual experience all that harmony and perfect music sounded like at such an intense volume. Everyone in our group found themselves blinking a few extra times to absorb the additional moisture that had magically appeared in our eyes.

UPS treated us to manicures, pedicures, limos and a police escort to the awards. The police escort was off-the-charts cool; they stopped traffic for us (!!!). People on the streets were staring and wondering who was in the limos (spoiler alert: not stars!).

Patrice and I were super excited to get front row seats to Fox's Cause for Paws taping, their animal rescue show. Their 2 hour live show taped a couple days early and took a bit longer than 2 hours to tape (cough cough). We were not prepared properly and were both cold and hungry. It was an impressive showing by a star-studded cast that kept us entertained and feeling blessed to be there. And it was super fun to watch ourselves on the big screen later!

We came home to our kids, so happy to be there. We both teared up on the airplane when we saw a little baby, about the size of our youngest girls go by.

And then, it was time for thanksgiving prep! We were lucky enough to host at or house and were so happy to have Baby Alise join the family in celebration and thankfulness. That little baby is so loved and so wanted, even by her cousins!

Grandpa brought games to play with the kids. Jamisen did not like the dice game of 'chance' so he said, 'I have an idea Grandpa! Let's do this!'" and he proceeded to make up his OWN game with his own rules. His rules made sense. You could only roll a one. And if you could only move one space. If you rolled anything besides a one, you changed your die to show one dot only and only moved your player one space. Thus, it became a predictable, reliable game. By the end of the weekend, Jamisen was playing it the way it was supposed to be played but the jury is out on if he liked his more orderly game better.

We loved Thanksgiving this year with our full family and happy kids. We have many blessings to be thankful for and our family and our health is top at that list.

Shout out to Grandpa Winston and Grandma Kelly for the adorable outfits on Jamisen and Lily. They love their knits!

Date Weekend

Wozers! James Bond is in our midst! Chris surprised me with his amazingly gorgeous tux. He purchased it for a special date night weekend to Los Angeles. 

We loved getting all dressed up and spent the evening eating amazing food and meeting new and interesting people. A big thank you to Grandma Faiola who took care of our kiddos for a full 3 days and nights by herself. It's not as easy as it sounds! Our little Lily and Jamisen have more energy than any little people that ever have walked the face of the planet. 

Freight elevator selfie! 

Another hairdo for another fun evening. Noted to self: middle parts; meh. 

We are so excited that our Handmade Beauty Box Kickstarter was a huge success, raising 5X the original amount requested. We're almost up to our full goal for December shipments. Last week, we sent out 75 kits to our PR team in NYC to start press efforts in earnest. 

Jamisen loves his kitchen and has taken to building 'forts' around it where Lily is not allowed to tread. It seems silly to get Lily her own kitchen but with Jamisen not sharing (ever), it might be necessary to keep the peace. After all, she deserves her own toys too!

Here Jamisen is making maple syrup cottage cheese. Yum? He loves cooking. He loves helping. He loves mixing. He loves creating. Jamisen is creative and asks to smell almost everything. 

Here Lily is helping me unpack from the Los Angeles trip. She continues to learn words daily - bird, up, down, help, more - and loves to say 'Oh no!' and 'No no'. She has such an adorable inflection that it's impossible not to laugh and smile, even as she says 'no.' Lately, she's been trying to get away with something naught: crawling from one end to the other of the glass table before we can catch her. She sneaks off and generally waits until we're in eyesight, gives us a 'heh heh' look and rip roars on all fours across the glass. It's funny now but really, it's a terrible idea and also unsafe. 

She is definitely a little 'monkey see, monkey do' child, copying everything Chris, I and Jamisen do. Here she is, rolling out her tight tendons right alongside Mama. We love our precious children so much and are so thankful for our couple time away but much happier to be back home. 

We've discovered music and salmon!

Happy Fall! We took a tour of the happy salmon fishing (well, salmon holding vessel) the Hokum. Jamisen was in awe of the giant tank that the hold the fish in and even got a tour of the engine room. Chris was in mortal terror that Lily would get hurt because the ship wasn't exactly child proofed! Captain Dwight even sent us home with smoked salmon caught right off his ship when it was out to see in Alaska!

We did our annual Christmas photo shoot - and I can hardly wait to see the finished product and order Christmas cards. 

Jamisen is a big big helper in the kitchen and loves to cook. He enjoys working with his hands, seeing how materials work and is getting better with his manual dexterity every day. 

Lily remains a cheerful and delightful child. She loves talking now and babbles all day. Her big words are "No, 'nana, more, and good'. It's such a joy watching her communicate and try new words. She consistently tries to mimic what we say; it's adorable. And now that she can say "No", she really is getting clear in her boundaries, especially when she doesn't want to stop playing to change her diaper for example! =)

The weather in the PNW has gotten rainy but it's still beautiful for hiking. It's been about 40-50 degrees and easy to hike in as long as you're bundled up. This is my friend, and banker (!), Dimi. 

We love this little dress. I am pretty sure that Grandma Kelly gave it to us and I'm hoping it's a hand-me-down from Aunty Anamarie. 

Jamisen has discovered music! He loves loves loves listening to an iPod that I have fillllled to the brink with children's, classical and Christmas music. The other day, he actually just listened to music for a good 4 hours. Straight. Given that Chris and I are singers, we wouldn't be surprised if he's naturally musical. 

Though Chris has introduced Jamisen to cartoons on his iPhone, Jamisen still loves reading. Nanny McKenna is a big fan of reading and it's a beautiful thing. She's been with our family almost 4 years and we love having her as a trusted family member.