Cousins

The Romney family had 6 little girls all born in the past year.  Technically, they weren't quite all born within a year of each other--we started it off with Aleta, born last year on December 16, and Kalie & Ben just barely had their little girl, Lily, on December 28.  But we think it's close enough that we can say they were all born within a year of each other.  I am so excited for when these 6 little girls are older--they are going to be the best of friends!  (I stole most of these photos from my sister-in-law Jen's blog... so, thanks for the photos Jen!) :)

This was taken a couple months ago... we were missing Sarah, who lives in Utah right now.  She had her baby, Elizabeth, in October.

From left to right--Rachel & Hazel, Me & Aleta, Jen & Lena, and Celeste & Mira.

This was taken on Mira's blessing day.

All of the babies on Christmas day, except for Lily who wasn't quite born yet!  They are lined up from oldest to youngest--Aleta, Hazel, Lena, Mira, and Elizabeth.

Lily Anne Romney, born December 28th!

All of the Romney cousins on Christmas Day.

Aleta's First Birthday!

Aleta turned one on December 16th.  We had wanted to have a big party at Jacob's parents' house, but it ended up not working out because of all of the holiday happenings, so we just had a little party here instead.  Some of Jacob's family members were still able to come, so we had a good time!  Poor Aleta was pretty sick, so she was miserable most of the time.  She would take little breaks in between eating her cake to just sit in her high chair and cry... it was pretty sad!  You can see in the videos and pictures that she is all snotty, and her face is red and chapped from being wiped so much.  Poor girl!

 

Jacob refused to ask the bakery worker to put Aleta's name on the cake, so I had to do it myself, which is why it looks terrible!

Trying to get her to blow out her candle...

I think she likes it!

Yummy cake!

Sad, sick baby girl!

My cutie Naomi!

She wasn't really sure what to do with her wrapped presents, so Naomi and Daddy helped her open them.  We got her a ride-on toy (that I bought used for only $10!!  I love getting awesome deals!) and two little outfits that I also found second-hand for amazing prices.  She and Naomi both love the ride-on toy!

Since she was so miserable for her birthday party, I wanted to have another birthday cake for her once she was healthy so that she could really enjoy it!  It took until after Christmas for everyone to get healthy again, but we finally managed it and yesterday we had a second birthday cake for Aleta.  She loved it!  The rest of us liked it a lot, too... the Hyvee bakery makes pretty yummy cakes!  And it looked much prettier than the first cake.

 

 

 

 

 

Daddy & Naomi looking cute!

 

Happy First Birthday, my sweet baby girl!!

Our family at Aleta's party

Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving this year, at least for me, was pretty dang awful... probably the worst ever.  One year in high school, I had my wisdom teeth taken out on the Monday before Thanksgiving, and on Thanksgiving I was still so swollen that all I could eat was a roll.  This year was much worse.  Thanksgiving fell right in the middle of my 40ish days of being really sick, and it fell during what ended up being the worst week of my sickness.  I was much too sick to go to the Romney Thanksgiving so Jacob and Naomi went without me and Aleta.  I spent the day laying around, watching Christmas movies, crying, and feeling sorry for myself... haha.  I didn't handle being left alone at home very well, but in my defense, I was so physically and emotionally exhausted from being so sick for so long that I couldn't really handle anything.

I was glad to have this cutie home with me to keep me company though! 

I felt bad that Aleta's first Thanksgiving was so crappy... she didn't get to try any yummy Thanksgiving food, and the only pictures I got to document her day were of her lounging around in her pajamas.  At least she looks adorable!

Christmas

Christmas this year did not turn out at all like we had planned, but we still had a wonderful holiday.  Both of our kiddos got very, very sick last week, so we had to change most of our plans.  Naomi was over the worst of it by the weekend, but poor Aleta came down with the bug on Saturday and had a fever that spiked at 104.2--it was terrifying!!  Naomi's fever had spiked at 104.3, which was also super scary for me, but I was even more worried when Aleta's got that high.  She is just barely one year old and still so little!  I went in her room and checked on her every few hours that first night--I was just so scared that her fever would spike back up when the medicine wore off, which it did, so I kept checking on her and giving her doses of tylenol and ibuprofen as needed.  Thankfully, on Sunday her fever was MUCH better.  I don't think it went above 102.  What I was especially grateful for was that Aleta didn't have the vomiting or the rash that Naomi had when she was sick. Naomi was throwing up for 2 days and had an awful, itchy rash all over her entire body.  She would just sit in her chair, scratching her stomach and arms and legs and crying.  It was so sad!  I knew if Aleta got the rash, it would be even worse because she is so young and wouldn't understand what was happening.  And she would be too young to take Benadryl, which was the only thing we could give Naomi to help.  So I am so grateful that Aleta only had the fever!! 

Since Aleta didn't get the bug as badly as Naomi, she seemed to get better much faster than we had expected.  By Christmas Eve, she was pretty happy again and only had a low fever.  We still stayed home on Christmas Eve instead of going to Jacob's parents' as we had originally planned, since the girls were still sick.  There are a lot of young babies in Jacob's family, and I didn't want any of them to get what our girls had!  And I was worried about our kids being exposed to any other sicknesses or germs when their immune systems have been so run down.  So we stayed home.   I made peanut butter fudge and chocolate fudge and sugar cookies.  We had chocolate chip pancakes and bacon for dinner, and then spent some time as a family decorating the cookies.  Then the girls played in their bath, and we read a Christmas story before bed.  It was a nice, low-key day, which was just what we needed.  After the kids were asleep, I stayed up late cleaning, arranging the gifts under the tree, and making our crock-pot breakfast casserole for Christmas morning.  I was so glad that I had wrapped everything ahead of time, because I was up until almost 3 in the morning doing everything else!  I wrapped the gifts slowly this year, taking my time to make them look extra good.  I was proud of my gift-wrapping this year.  I used bows that actually matched the wrapping paper, and I used curling ribbon on some of the presents to make them look pretty.  I even searched online for free gift tags and found tags that looked good with each of the different wrapping papers that I used.  Then I hung the gift tags from the bows with thread.  I especially liked the special tags I found for the gifts from Santa... they were so cute!

Reading our Christmas story

Special gift tags from Santa... how cute are these?

My pretty wrapped gifts!

Thanks to the generosity of others and a few amazing deals that I found, the girls had some great presents to open on Christmas morning!  Aleta still doesn't really know what to do with a wrapped gift, so we had to help her, but Naomi loved opening her presents.  The play kitchen from my parents was a huge hit, as I knew it would be.  The girls will be having lots of fun with that over the next few years!!  I think Aleta's favorite gift was a Build-a-Bear teddy bear she received.  It was adorable, and she especially loves stuffed animals and teddy bears.  She was so cute with the teddy bear, hugging it and patting it on the back.  (She recently started doing that whenever we hug her--she pats us on the back or shoulder while she hugs us.  It's pretty adorable.)

She did not want Daddy's help to unwrap her present.

Naomi, unwrapping her present SO fast!

Aleta with one of her new toys... it was wrapped in a trash bag, haha.

Aleta with her new activity cube!

Naomi LOVES soccer balls, so we finally got her one of her own.

Since the girls were feeling so much better, we were finally able to go see Jacob's family and spend the rest of Christmas day with them. We had a delicious Christmas dinner, and we even got to make gingerbread houses, which I had really wanted to do this year.  We just ran out of time and were too busy with everyone being sick this month, so I was happy that we got to make one on Christmas day!  Jacob constructed our little house, but I did something stupid when I started to decorate it and accidentally collapsed the whole thing.  We still had fun eating graham crackers and icing though. :)   

A bunch of the girls went to see Les Mis at the 9:50 showing last night, so I went, too.  Jacob stayed back with the kids and played Halo 4 all night with his brother, so I am pretty sure he had fun as well.  Les Mis was amazing!  But since it was so late and I had slept so little the night before, I was exhausted, so I want to rent it and watch it again when it comes out on DVD.  I think I will enjoy it even more when I'm not falling asleep in my chair. :)  We didn't get back to our house until a little after 3 in the morning, so Jacob and I spent most of today taking turns napping!

We hope you all had a wonderful Christmas!!

Halloween

Well, it's been over a month since I blogged, which means I haven't posted anything about Halloween!  We had a pretty good October and were able to do quite a few Halloween activities despite being insanely busy.  We didn't get to carve a pumpkin yet again this year (that is 2 years in a row now... eh!), but we did actually BUY a pumpkin, which is a step farther than we got last year!  :) 

We also made it to a pumpkin patch this year, which was a lot of fun, especially for Naomi.  They had a hayride around their little farm, and lots of different animals to look at and pet and even feed (like turkeys, chickens, goats, donkeys, bunnies, and some cute little puppies!).  They had a straw maze, which Jacob tried to take Naomi through, but she got too scared and turned around at the first bend.  I think she was afraid because it was really dark in the maze.  They also had a bunch of places around the farm to take pictures.  It was a bit colder than I had hoped for on the day we decided to go, but we had fun anyway!

Daddy & Aleta on the hayride

Cold little baby!

Mommy & Naomi on the hayride

straw maze

Naomi got scared and came right back out of the maze.

Goin' to jail!

GIANT pumpkin

Aleta was not happy to be put down.  She was cold and tired and just wanted to be held.

haha poor Aleta.

The Saturday before Halloween, we had our church Halloween party/chili cook-off/trunk-or-treat.  I was really excited for the party, because I love holidays and holiday parties and activities, but it ended up being a pretty awful night.  I wasn't able to finish Jacob's costume, because I had been so busy with work and other stuff at home, so instead of being a "man in a cauldron" we just taped a sign to Jacob's sweatshirt that said, "Costume Under Construction... Coming October 2013."  But the costume thing wasn't a huge deal...  The big problem of the night was Aleta.  She was TERRIBLE, so Jacob and I spent the entire time trying to deal with her and make her happy.  The only time Aleta was happy was near the end of the night when she was crawling around and found another little baby to play with.  Aleta LOVED playing with the other baby.  When I picked her up so that we could go outside for the trunk-or-treating, she freaked out and started screaming and crying.  It was cute how much she wanted to play with the other little girl! 

They did a costume parade after dinner for all the kids, and I wasn't going to make Naomi walk in it (I didn't think she'd want to), but when they came around to our table, Naomi hopped in line without us!  She looked adorable walking in the parade in her costume, but it made me sad in a way--she didn't give a single thought to leaving us behind!  She's not my little baby anymore. :(  The last part of the evening was trunk-or-treating in the parking lot.  I don't think Naomi reallly understood what was happening when we took her around to all the cars, but it was a madhouse with all of the people trying to walk around in the parking lot.  After only going to half the cars, Naomi wanted to come home, so we gave up and left.  Once we got home, however, and Naomi discovered that there were now treats in her little cauldron, she was SO excited!  The first thing she would do after waking up every morning after trick-or-treating was to ask for her "back-is" (that's how she says, "basket", which is what she called her little trick-or-treat cauldron).



Me & my girls!

Aleta & Daddy

crawling around on the floor...

Naomi walking in the costume parade

My girlies, at home after the party.

Then the night before Halloween, Mizzou's sorority houses held a trick-or-treat thing for the kids.  So we got the kids all dressed up again and went around to all of the sorority houses on campus.  Usually I have to drag Jacob, kicking and screaming, to any kind of holiday activity.  But for some reason, when I suggested taking the girls to the sorority trick-or-treating, he actually seemed excited! haha  Honestly though, I think the sorority house trick-or-treating was my favorite activity this year for Halloween.  It was a lot of fun, and the girls got SO much attention.  Most of the kids that we saw were a little older--probably at least 4 or 5 and most were school-aged.  Since our girls were younger (and let's be honest--they're indredibly adorable), the sorority girls were exclaiming over their cuteness before we'd even get to the door.  It was also more fun because Naomi understood what was happening this time, and she was SO excited to run around and get lots of candy.  So that made the activity more enjoyable for Jacob & me as well.

My cute kitty, home from trick-or-treating!

On Halloween, I took Naomi to one of the Hyvee grocery stores here in Columbia to trick-or-treat around the store.  They had a bunch of stations set up around the store, with employees dressed up in their Halloween costumes to hand out candy.  They even gave you a cute trick-or-treat bag at the door.  They didn't only hand out candy--Naomi got a bunch of different things from them, like an apple, a can of root beer, a pudding cup... stuff like that.  At the end, they even took a picture that we could pick up later. (I forgot to pick ours up... but I'm sure my photos of Naomi were cuter.)  I took a bunch of photos of the girls on Halloween, but there are a TON so I will post them another time.

I'd say we had a pretty good Halloween/October!  I hope you all did as well!