Musings on life, parenting, Jesus, and more...

For those of you who aren't aware of my work situation these days, I've been able to stay home with Jenica full time and still do a little part-time work with out having to worry about child care. Jenica gets to come to the office with me. I work one or two mornings a week at Hilltop Tax Service, which is conveniently located only a couple blocks from our house and I also spend about half a day a week at Rob's office doing bookkeeping for them. Jenica thinks it's fun to see her dad at the office once and a while and at our last visit, she even got a quick ping pong lesson during his lunch break. We feel very blessed to have such flexible employers.

We had a great time with the Bachelders (Rob's dad, step-mom, brother and sister) on Christmas day. Here Jenica is modeling one of her gifts from Grandma and Grandpa (a onesie that says, "Who needs Santa, I've got grandparents!") She also got some cute red leggings, a soft pink sweatshirt, some new socks, and a cuddly teddy bear. Thanks Grandma and Grandpa! Oh, and they gave mom and dad a "date night"... A gift certificate to Regal Cinemas with babysitting included :) That will be a treat! Plus, Aunt Amy has offered up her babysitting services for free anytime we like. Jenica already likes her Aunt Amy a lot, she gets the biggest smiles for her and even some little giggles. We had a delicious holiday meal, complete with jello cake (Dan's mom's family recipe) which I had never had before but thought it was so yummy I had to go back for seconds, and then we taught the family how to play Settlers of Catan...so now they'll know what we're talking...

Jenica, Rob and I wish you all a very Merry Christmas and Jenica would like to give a shout out to all her loyal followers and say thank you for making her first Christmas the very best ever. Cousin Kayla went all out and got her about 7 or 8 new toys to play with. She loves some of them already, especially the little slippers that make noise when she kicks her feet. Grammy got her a pretty bracelet (she loves the bling, ya know) and sent along a dress that Shay's Grammy made for her when she was one (pictured above). She also got Jenica her very own kid size rocking chair, which Rob is excited to assemble later. In her stocking she got some fun new socks and a teether toy from Santa and Grandma Judy and Grandpa Arlo got her a pretty stuffed animal. Grandpa Ken's gift, a video camera, isn't really for her to play with but will still be all about her in the years to come as we make fun videos of her to share with you all. Well, it's only 1:00 and we still have more Chris...

We woke up this morning to about 3 inches of snow on the ground and it was still coming down. I just had to post this picture because it makes me laugh. It certainly makes the weather look much more treacherous than it really was, although by the end of the day driving conditions were starting to get a little harry. We'll see what tomorrow brings, but the weather man is saying below freezing temperatures for the next couple days. I love snow, of course, being a North Idaho gal and all...plus we have our annual New Years Day snow shoeing trip coming up so we've been praying for the white stuff to start falling. Hopefully though, Rob can work from home tomorrow so he doesn't have to try to drive with all those other native Portlanders out there who aren't use to driving in the snow. As usual you can check out more pictures on facebook if your interested.

Jenica had her first picture with Santa today. The office I work at part-time does a canned food drive every year and offers free pictures with Santa with a donation. Jenica got to be the very first to sit on Santa's lap this morning before he opened to the general public. She's really the perfect age for a cute picture with Santa since she's big enough to sit up in his lap but not so big that he scares her. She was actually pretty indifferent to the whole occasion and since it was past her nap time we didn't get any adorable smiles out of her, but it was still fun. My co-worker Shannon's daughters were elves so we had to have Jenica's picture taken with them too. Sooo cute!