Andrew celebrated his 30th birthday this past week! 30- how did we get to be thirty!! (Well Andrew is 30- I am still 29 for four more months!
We had some of his dearest Princeton buddies over for the day last weekend. Ted, Dave, Andrew, and Erik came out from NYC and Philly to celebrate with us!
We had lunch together.
And of course Samantha and Caleb loved their lunch as well!
While the boys went to play sports- Anna and I hung out with the babies.
Caleb smiled for the picture- Samantha crawled away. Pretty indicative of most of the afternoon.
One pic where S stayed still!
We tried them both in the wagon. They were less than amused.
Happy Birthday husband! Cake after tennis and basketball.
And then post cake a little N64 for old times sake.
While they played, Samantha climbed stairs. Lots of stair climbing these days!
We tried to give Ted a handicap, but a squiggly baby on his lap couldn't bring him down.
S wanted in on the action!
We finished the day with some asian food. Samantha loved the lo mein and the dumplings.
The whole group (Caleb's hands make it in the very back!)
Then on Tuesday for Andrew's actual birthday we had a cupcake after dinner to celebrate! Samantha is clapping for her Daddy!
We have all spent a lot of time at home in December. After being gone so many weekends, it's been nice to sleep in our own house for quite a long stretch! And with a few weeks of really cold weather, we've been trying to keep busy inside.
She loves remotes!
And notecards- basically everything she is not supposed to have!
Oh and everything in my wallet!
Oooh a credit card!
We had the Whitehouse twins over for a play date-S couldn't figure out why there were two babies- she kept going back and forth between the babies!
We brought the bouncy seat up for the twins-S wanted to try it out again. She's a little bigger than she was the last time we had it out!
Aunt Christine and Uncle Stan got her this cool wagon for Christmas! She's excited about it :)
Also fun to put little monkeys into kitchen bowls.
Loving bath time!
And eating yogurt! Now to teach her to use her own spoon.
Beautiful morning sunrise!
Loving this nap face!
Looking so proper in her chair! Fun that she's able to climb up into it and just hang out now.
She's gotten good at moving all these little beads now.
And she loves peeking through the window of the tv cabinet (which means she is also opening it all the time and taking out all the games, cards, and dvds).
Love her!
And all snuggled up for our walk- finally a little warmer!
There have been a few additions to the normal Christmas decorations this year. So fun to prepare for Samantha's first Christmas, and it's fun that she can participate in it a little bit this year as well!
Three stockings now at the Lieu house!
Our Christmas card this year!
And one new ornament for the tree! (super cute- but who knew getting an 11 month old to open her hand wide in clay and not try to grab it with her fingers would be that hard! I think this was try number eight!)
On Tuesday about four inches of snow fell in Pennington. It was the first real snow of the season here, and most programs (and school- although I haven't been paying as much attention to that this year!) were canceled. Andrew still went to work because the roads weren't too bad, but my bible study was canceled and we figured we shouldn't try to run any errands in the snow. Thus, Samantha and I had a snow day. I try not to stay at home all day any day because S seems to nap much better after we've been out for the morning (and I'm much happier getting my daily dose of people). But it was nice to be snuggly warm inside for a super snowy day. And since I don't normally take pictures of our average day inside, I thought I'd record our snow day.
We had the quiche I had made for bible study for breakfast. Delicious!
We took some selfie pics with mommy's iphone (always of great interest to S).
We looked out the window at the snow (and played with the blind cords!)
We looked out the front window- pretty snow!
Then we headed upstairs and read some books- right now Feely Bugs is her favorite!
And I picked out a few to read that were perfect for the day (although we only got through the finger puppet one before she crawled away!)
After books, Samantha took every toy out of her toy bin.
And after a nap it was time for lunch- leftover chicken and wild rice. And then for the first time I gave her my apple on the core to bite. It seems that having her four teeth on top all the way in make her a budding biter! She definitely got a good bit off of it.
After lunch we decided to go out in the snow to play.
It was beautiful...
But Samantha was not really amused...
We decided to stay in our pajamas all day- and after a rather short nap- we did what we do most every later afternoon...
We crawled around and under the dining room table...
We played some drums...
Helped mommy with some laundry...
And worked on our new favorite skills- stair climbing, pulling up, and starting to cruise along the couch a little bit.
