My messy and happy Annalisa:
Then I kept taking pictures while she was talking, and I thought this was cute too: 
Katie did her hair all by herself:
Ryan put blue icicle lights on the roof line of our house, then lights up the center of the tree, with nets on the branches. I think it looks really fun. The picture didn't turn out great, but trust me, it looks good.
My cute girls, snuggling in a blankie together. Well, Katie and Elayna are snuggling. It looks like Annalisa is trying to escape:
I love seeing Annalisa's feet like this. I remember Katie and Elayna doing this also. It's so cute!
One night, we were downstairs, and the girls thought it would be funny if we took a picture of us all "asleep". This is the result:
Katie loves to collect anything and everything. One day I went in and cleaned out all her drawers and shelves. These are some of the things I found:
-jewels, -necklaces, -bracelets, -pictures, -beads, -a "special" cup from Kylie (I had written Kylie's name on it so she would know which drink was hers ) -pictures colored and given to her from cousins, -a bag of different colored corn from Hannah, -pieces of broken hangers, -moldy carrots, -candy wrappers, -grocery ads, -bandage wrappers, -paper snowflakes, AND the pieces from the holes in the paper snowflakes, -and my favorite, some little rocks.
I wasn't sure what they were, until I remembered one day, when I was grinding some wheat. The wheat bag that I was using had small rocks in it that I would fish out one by one so it didn't ruin my grinder. I had a little pile of them to the side of the machine. Katie took them, and, you guessed it, kept them.
These things are all important to Katie for some reason or another. I'm not sure why, but in the past, whenever I've tried to throw away wrappers, for instance, she will start crying and say she really wants to keep it. So I was a little nervous to see her reaction when she came home from school. She went into her room, and it was silent for a long time. Just as I was bracing myself for a crying fit, she came out and said, "Thank you so much for cleaning my stuff and doing my chores!" That wasn't exactly what I wanted her to get out of it, but I'm glad she wasn't upset about it. 12-19-11
When I ask Elayna what book she wants, she usually replies with something like this, "I don't know...I don't know what one, do you know where is it? The different one? not the other book, the different one?" Or if I ask her what song she wants me to sing to her before she goes to bed, "You choose". I'll start listing some songs, and then she will say, "No, no, the other one?" And I'm always expected to know the right answer. 12-19-11
I've had Urinary Tract Infections for the last year and a half. I was on antibiotics the whole time I was pregnant, and I've had 3 or 4 since then. I finally went and saw a Urologist. After I had emptied my bladder (I thought), they did an ultrasound and there was still 10 oz in there. That's a lot, so Dr Kronmiller scheduled a cystoscopy and dilation. That means he can look at my bladder to see what is wrong, and then dilate part of the urethra that might be keeping the fluid in my bladder, instead of emptying it like it should. I went and saw him on the 27th of December, and he said he was keeping the 31st of December open for people who wanted to have procedures done this year. Since we had met the deductible with Annalisa's birth, we decided to do it then. I was only under for about an hour, and I didn't have any pain. It took me a day to recover because I was really tired, but that was the worst thing, thankfully. I'll go back in 6 weeks to see if it worked.
Christmas 2011 is on a different post. Too many pictures to put them both together!
