Hiding Places!

I went to check on Rachel the other day and this is what I saw.

Rachel LOVES small spaces that only she can fit into. She cracks me up though because if she doesn't get in at the right angle she gets stuck and she lets you know!

Pee-Boo

Rachel loves getting in the drawers and cupboards in my kitchen. One of her favorites to get into are my drawers of dishtowels and washcloths. She pulls them out and puts them over her head and says "Pee-boo" (peek-a-boo).
She does this with blankets or even just her hands too.

As you can imagine, she makes it hard to keep my kitchen picked up, but it's totally worth it! I just love this little girl!

Isn't she such a cutie?

A Little Christmas Happiness

Well first off, I tried taking a few Christmas-y pictures of Rachel and I am definitly not a photographer but I thought one or two of the 30 pictures or so turned out . (At least Rachel was looking in them anyway.)

I just love this happy girl of mine!

This year was our first year having Christmas with just our little family and it was fun and simple and we liked it, but we also missed seeing the rest of our family.

In both Jacob's family and my family we have the tradition of opening pajama pants on Christmas Eve, so this year I thought I would try my hand at making some for the 3 of us.

Jacob's are a little too big and a little too long. I was trying to surprise Jacob so I couldn't use him to measure off of. I should have measured his other pajama pants but oh well. Rachel's are way way way to long. In fact, I made a pair for Rachel that would be matching mine, but they went up to her armpits so I tried again and they were still a good 3 inches too long. I guess she has something she can grown into. Mine were perfect. I thought it was a fun project and we will definitly be making more for future Christmas Eve's!

Unfortunately on Christmas morning I couldn't find my camera, so I only got a few pictures with my phone.

Here is Rachel enjoying a little Christmas morning chocolate from her stocking. She was tricky and figured out how to open some of the little chocolates on her own. 

Rachel LOVES hats, so we decided to get her one for Christmas! Here she is trying it on for the first time!
I'm not sure why, but she reminds me of my little brother Jeremy in this picture.

Rachel digging into her stocking! The m&m's were her favorite part!

Rachel's Uncle Josh got Rachel a box of mini musical instruments and it was by far her favorite Christmas present! She loves playing on the mini xylophone and shaking the mini maracas. Her other favorite present were some water flutes that my sister Sarah got for her. Between her aunt and  uncle Rachel is on her way to being the next Mozart! Okay, not really, but she really loves the fun instruments they got her.

Jacob and I got Rachel a Mr. Bucket for Christmas (sorry no pictures) which is a bucket that walks around and spits out balls and you are supposed to put the balls back in the top before it runs out. It sounds perfect for Rachel right? Wrong. Rachel was terrified of it! My favorite part was when she spilled her m&m's on the ground and Jacob turned on the Mr. Bucket. Rachel got scared and ran away from it but then she went back to save her m&m's from the possessed bucket. It was pretty funny. Maybe we'll do a better job picking out a present for her next year! :)

Doors

Rachel is so funny! Lately she loves to shut doors. If we go into her bedroom she always has to shut the door behind us. Sometimes it gets her in trouble though. Sometimes she wanders into the bathroom or the laundry room alone and shuts the door behind her. Usually when she does this, she turns around to the door and starts knocking on it so we will come let her out. Other times though we see this:

"Let me out!"



This Rachel girl definitly keeps us laughing!

Surprise!

We found out some awesome news last week!

Our little family of 3 is soon to be a family of 4!

And we couldn't be more thrilled!

Our little Rachel girl is going to be a big sister!



We found out just in time to celebrate and share the news with our families on Christmas!

Our new little one is due on (approximately) August 22, 2012, and with one cousin born the 21st and another one born on the 23 it is possible that this new little one has a chance of sharing a birthday with one of them just like our Rachel girl was! That would be so fun!
We aren't very far along yet, only about 6 weeks, but we just couldn't keep the good news to ourselves any longer!

We aboslutely love our little Rachel-girl. She brings so much happiness to our lives and we can't imagine our lives with out her and are so excited for our family to be growing again!

Our lives couldn't get any better than this!

A few things about this pregnancy so far vs. last time. By the time I was pregnant 6 weeks with Rachel I was super sick! It was hard to find things I could eat because everything was contaminated and made me throw up. This time so far I haven't been sick (knock on wood) and I've just been craving really spicy foods but for some reason I haven't been able to get my mouth spicy. :( Sad I know! I'll totally take weird cravings over the morning sickness any day though! With Rachel I didn't really start to "show' until about 14 weeks or so but I feel like I'm already starting to show a little bit. I don't look pregant by any means, but I definitely have a little pouch that wasn't there just 2 weeks ago. Both times exhastion set in pretty early, but this last time I didn't have a little one to chase around. Rachel sure keeps me busy, but I wouldn't trade this for anything in the world! I love my life!