Christmas at Auntie Laurie's

We then were off to Auntie Laurie's for our immediate family McGinnis Christmas Celebration the weekend before Christmas. It was my sisters year to spend Christmas with her in laws so we had ours early. Andy Sam Ali and I got to have Christmas for most of December... We loaded the minivan and allowed Sammy to watch a DVD finally--it was terrific! And Ali did pretty good! She slept for most of it! Even as Sammy sang Hannah Montana.

Of course we still celebrated with our annual matching pajama's. This year my Mom went nuts with Flannel Camouflage (my bother in law hunts).

Samantha was definitely a fun age this year making a Christmas list. I think it was about 4 pages long... She had asked for a Fisher Price Dog that Grows and had showed everyone the catalog. So my Mom ordered it for her..but as Sammy opened it..she can be too smart sometimes...she actually turned to Andy and said.."I pointed to the White one in the book not the brown one, but this is OK"... This dog is a bit creepy and actually says your child's name ( a little like the guy from Silence of the lambs) and does grow every day. Sammy loved it.

Here are the cousins..I am not sure why JP is doing his best John Travolta imitation...it is not easy to get 5 kids between 6 months and 9 to lay still!

Ready for Church

Day-Care Christmas

The daycare Christmas party got postponed due to the crazy snow storm that hit Chicago land that day (Dec 18?) but the girls were already dressed so of course I took a picture--or 30!

Turned into a stay home day!

Anderson Christmas

My 2 nieces and my 2 monkeys.
Andy's Grandma and Sammy

Andy's Aunt Karen will not put the baby down! : )

The girls caught at the dessert table....

Andy called this fishing for baby...entertainment with children...

We opened gifts the next day...

Alaina spit up on her dress at church so she is in her Hawkeye jammies instead of matching her sister...

Auntie Amy got creative and crafty this year and made Sammy a Whale Tale Pillow!!!!

She loves it!

Early December 2008

Auntie Amy was coming in from Florida for Anderson Christmas and Sammy wanted to help clean the house!!!!! So I put her to work cleaning the floor...Auntie Amy and Alaina

Ali was able to Army crawl and get her own toys out!

6 month Check up

My Ali girl was 6 months in December and doing great. We hadn't started her on much food yet cause at her 4 month check she was still a little low on the weight charts (still bigger than her sister was) and we had to get her more fat. We did start cereal at around 5.5 months and the doctor cleared us for veggies. She eat like a champ. She was 25 In long (~25th percentile) and 13 lb 15 oz. (~20th percentile) She started rolling a little before 4 months and got around with a purpose by 5 months. She was sitting pretty well at 6 months but not for long periods of time.

happy half birthday

Sammy feeding her sister!

Eating a pancake...

Our MV

After we had 2 kids--Andy and I decided my 2 door Alero was not going work any longer. We had been procrastinating buying a new car and had looked at about 50 different SUV's and crossovers but decided that a Minivan made the most sense! Our crazy 2 car garage is just that--a 2 car garage so when both cars are in there you can not open doors all the way...so sliding doors made the most sense.... At the end of November we really got serious and shopped around and were able to negotiate a pretty good deal! This was the first car we actually had to negotiate on because we didn't go with a GM product...
Andy calls it our MV--trying to deny the fact that he drives a minivan, but I can not tell you how many times he has looked at me and said-- I really like this van...

I still can't believe I went from a cute little sporty 2 door red car to this...but as you can see in the first picture 2 kids in the back of the Alero was way too squishy!

Random November & Thanksgiving 2008

Still Catching up...

Matching sisters..yet again...

We started Sippies with a little water in November and she did great with them!

We hosted Thanksgiving again this year with my parents and Andy's parents. Andy frys a turkey! YUMMM! I could not get a good picture of the two pink polka dot Monkeys---

We started to decorate for Christmas and Sammy loved the train.

Andy finally set up his Dad's train from when he was a kid.