"Christmas" at Mom's

We got to celebrate an early Christmas up in Paso Robles at my mom and ELM's house. They got Keira her first hair bow at I just love it! I love this pic of my mom with her too.

This pic and the next demonstrate Keira's first and second loves. First, dad.

Second, Grandpa(s). She has a special place in her heart for both Papa ELM and Poppa.

Cute Gram-Gram shot.

We had some fun with mustaches that Andrew got for Christmas.

Note that Andrew is not the only one in this pic wearing a mustache.

Cute Papa ELM shot.

I have to admit that I LOVE having a girl and this Christmas brought out some of the more ridiculous reasons why. She got a cabbage patch kid and I was thrilled. I used to have a whole family of them when I was young. They were so special to me. Even if this one wasn't for me, I was just excited to have one join our family. :) Keira also got the tutu above. Talk about cute! I still love sparkles and poofy dresses and pink. The problem with that is that I'm (yes, it's true) almost 30. I'm not quite as welcome to walk around wearing something like this tutu. I now have to settle for living vicariously through my daughter every time she wears it. :)

I put this pic in because of my face in the background. I have learned how awesome it is to watch my kids enjoy something given to them. I think of how God must feel when He gives us a gift and can watch us be excited about it. I think He feels like how I look here.

We also had a great opportunity to visit the Peaks, who we love so dearly. Visits with them are so meaningful to us.

Our official Christmas card photo... So... Merry Christmas!

Early December

The past two months for us have been INSANE so I'd like to catch up a little. I have been way too busy to blog, but we've been so busy doing things that are absolutely blog-worthy. So please, sit back, eat a candy cane, and pretend that it's the Christmas season again...

Gabe compared this to a picture he has of his bro and him. I hope this will be a memorable pic for our little kiddos too.

Barbers in Sleeping Beauty's front yard.

Heards on King Arthur's playground.

Keira's first carousel ride. For some reason, this is one of those big "firsts" in my book. It just makes them seem so big and independent... compared to an infant, anyway.

Brayden and Andrew holding hands in line for Peter Pan... So cute!

Isn't my nephew cute?
Keira with Santa.

Andrew "with" Santa.

Keira's new way to sit that makes Gabe cringe. It's so cute, though.

I have several nativity sets that I love putting out at Christmas. This year, I saved them all and each time Andrew wanted to hear the Christmas story, I would get out another set. We would go through the story while setting up the figurines. This one was at Andrew's level and so he changed the set up several times. I was only able to get a couple funny set up's on the camera, but there were many times that I would walk past and wonder what was going on in Bethlehem. The above shot shows off Andrew's need for everything to be neat and in order. My bro-in-law, Brad, would be proud.

This was an interesting one... Many questions come to mind when looking at it. One of which is: Where is Mary?...

Oh. There she is... on the couch.

Both of my kids love the laundry basket.

My Hero

Undeniable cuteness strikes again in the Barber home.

I'm Brilliant!

Here are some random tid-bits for you:

The other night, Gabe asked me what modified food starch was. I wanted to give him a good definition, but not make it too scientific and over his head. My response was as follows. "It's a starch that can be from a number of different foods that has been modified in some way." Yup. I'm brilliant.

Andrew loves dressing up so much that he pretends like Keira is dressing up most of the time too. Each day, he'll look at her and decide what she is and call her that for the rest of the day. Some of her "costumes" are: grape, candy cane, mango (This one has no outfit. I accidentally called her "mango" one time and Andrew hasn't let me live it down), penguin, and the one I think is the cutest: dolly.

Gabe is getting ordained this Sunday which has led me to think a lot about our church. I am so blessed to be right where we are right now. I love the people at our church. They are so special to us.

Keira took her first step the day after Christmas. Details will come soon. :)

This is my break for tonight. Gabe and I have been working until 12 am every night this week. It's actually been fun work, though.

Peace out. (It's still cool to say that, right?)

Merry Christmas!

For Andrew's birthday (I will post soon from his birthday), my in-laws got Andrew some dress-up scarves. We've been having so much fun with them. Here are some characters from Jesus' birthday story. Above, Andrew is one of the Magi carrying gold.

This is a photo even to make Pastor Gabe proud: The Magi is giving his gift to Jesus. Please note that Jesus is about 9 months old, not a newborn. (EFCOC knows what I'm talking about!) Andrew's favorite part was dressing Keira up as Jesus.

MaryShepherd-boy

Santa Claus at the North Pole.

Yummy chocolate soy milk!

Our little snow bunny. (Just without the snow.)
Keira getting me all ready for the ball.

Andrew got everything ready for Santa tonight, including his letter for him:
(By the way, this is Andrew "dressed-up" as a snowman. Look at the snowman on his shirt if you're curious about any of his outfit.)

Dear Santa and Reindeer,

Thanks for coming to our house. It's raining outside. The reindeer won't get wet, but Santa will. Here's a towel for Santa to dry off because Santa will get pretty wet outside.

Here is some of my milk for you because I can only have soy milk and not cow's milk and Santa is like me. Santa is pretty big, but cow's milk is pretty big too. (editor's note: Santa ended up getting cow's milk.)

Thank you for the presents for me and Mei-Mei. We hope you had a good trip to our house. Have a good trip home.

Merry Christmas!

Love, Andrew

Night-time Feeding Problems

Here's another good sleep-deprived story. (I'm still waking up 1-2 times a night to feed Keira.)

Last night, as I was tucking Keira in, I thought of how cute she was, dressed in pink in her crib. She sleeps with two dolls, both dressed in pink too. I said good-night and soon after, went to bed. I got up, hours later to nurse her when I heard her cry. I went to pick her up, but on accident I picked up the doll's legs. "oops," I thought to myself, "that's her legs." So then I gingerly picked up the doll's body, just like you'd pick up a baby. "wow," I thought, "she's much lighter than I remember her being." Then I heard Keira say, "Mooooom!" at which point I woke up a little more and saw her sitting up next to the edge of the crib and noticed myself picking up a doll... oops.

Rock the House!

Send your own ElfYourself eCards

Moose

(stock moose photo)

Last night, all 4 of us were on our way home from a party pretty late. (Well, it was 7:30, but that is past the kids' bedtime.) It was dark and things were pretty quiet in the car. Gabe and I were talking up front and hadn't heard anything from either of the kids for 15-20 minutes. Out of the blue Andrew said, "Does anyone here see a moose?... anyone?... anyone?" I turned to look at him behind me and found something like the picture above. Andrew then exclaimed, "Mommy sees a moose! Yay!"

Keira had here 9 month appointment today. She's not actually 9 months just yet, but this was the only time available so...
She's healthy and doing all the things a little 9-month-old baby should. She's cruising along furniture and people, crawling the big-girl way, and "talking" more and more every day. She just started sitting herself up from a laying down position, which is very helpful for me. I think she'll be standing on her own pretty soon too. She's eating pretty well and likes to eat finger foods. Keira is a fun and funny little girl. She loves her daddy and big brother. She cries if Gabe walks past her without picking her up. Keira and Andrew play games together and can be left unsupervised together for short periods of time, which is another big blessing. They love each other more than I had ever imagined and it's a greater blessing than I thought it would be. Keira is a huge blessing to our family. I was wondering when I wouldn't be able to remember life without her and I think I'm there. I looked at pictures not long ago from our trip to New Zealand. There was a pic of Gabe, Andrew, and I and I wrote under it, "our family picture". I laughed because of how funny it seemed to have a "family" pic without Keira in it. It's official. She's part of the Barber fam. We love her so much!
As for the stats...
height: 29.25 inches (95 percentile)
weight: 16 lbs. 13.5 oz. (25 percentile)
(This explains why her pants always fall off!)

Even though this pic is blurry, I think she looks so cute! (We were putting our Christmas stuff up!)

A post on our Turkey Trot to follow soon!

My Family

(This picture is not posed.)

Yes, those are potholders on his feet.
Above: Entering Disneyland
Below: Leaving Disneyland

I'm starting to think Gabe and Pluto might be related...
On another note, if you have a baby who (for no reason) is afraid of dogs, it may not be a good idea to introduce her to a 6-ft. dog.

My kiddos.

Can you see Andrew's writing below mine? It's actually pretty impressive to me. (You can click on the pic to enlarge it.)

Scrunchy Face

She's the cutest hillbilly I've ever seen!

This is one of her funny faces that she does all the time now to make us laugh. Actually this face and the one above it are her two main silly faces. She does them constantly and I laugh every time.

Keira pulled herself up for the first time on 10/26. I can totally see her as a little toddler. She's so cute! This is a pic from the first day I found her standing up in her crib. I heard her squealing for joy repeatedly and much crazier than normal so I knew something was up. Then, I heard her start crying hysterically. I think she stood up and got really excited because of her new trick. Then, she freaked out when she realized she didn't know how to get down. (She's starting to catch on now.)

Here are some pics from Heritage Park in Cerritos the day before the fires. We haven't gone out since then except to the grocery store. It's been too smokey and "ashy" for us to feel comfortable letting the kids out. Today was the first day I've seen kids outside so I think tomorrow may be a good day to get back out.

I'm really proud of Andrew for doing this. He's not much of a risk-taker and he had never done this before. He had no help and caught on pretty quick.

These pics are from a week ago Monday in Newport. Andrew has completely forgotten his sand-fear and digs his hands and feet right in!

This was Keira's first time to play in the sand. She seemed to enjoy it, but wasn't going crazy over it.

A Disneyland smile.

Here's Keira standing up and then trying to climb up onto Andrew's bed.

Here are some of Keira's (and Gabe's) new sounds.

Interesting book display.