The exciting life of Joel and Adriel: January 2011

Adeline is 4 Months

Adeline Louise is already 4 months old. I cannot believe how fast time has gone!
She is so great! She smiles very easy at anyone and everyone, she laughs easy as well. She loves being surprised and playing peekaboo, but her favourite source of entertainment is her big sister Violet.. she laughs and smiles at her all the time, quiets down when she comes in the room. And Violet loves taking care of her too!! Now that she is a bit older, her attention span is getting longer and she doesn't need to be entertained as much. She loves to play on her mat trying to put things in her mouth and laughing and smiling at her animals attached to it. Also she is so close to rolling over. soon, i am bet in just a few days she will be rolling over! Can't wait.
Addie has given us a few health scares, but God has been good and all results are good and now we can breathe easy for a while.

Violet's Birthday

Violet is 2 years old.. now two and a bit but still! I cannot believe 2 years ago we didn't have this amazing, funny and sweet little girl in our lives.
Violet is truly a very sweet little girl, she loves to talk and laugh, and she is very funny and loves to make us laugh. Also she is very sensitive not only in herself but to others and when they are upset. She has never really thrown a tantrum because she is really easy going and will listen and go along with most things. one thing is that she insists on a response when she is talking and will repeat herself until you respond and respond correctly. She is talking all the time and with real words that most people can understand, if not mummy and daddy know what she is saying and will happily translate. Before she could properly talk she had her own made up words that only Joel and I knew the meanings to... and that was so much fun. She still uses some of them like kurwitz for Thank You and shee shee for lotion.. amoungst others. She shares her toys and others things and she loves to have friends over to play. When we picked her name I was really worried that naming her after a flower wasn't really good enough, and that's why we decided on her middle name to be Joy.. and boy is she a joy, truly brings Joel and I joy every single day (also she brings joy to her sister Adeline who simply adores her!) and also she loves loves purple so hey there you go. Even when she was a baby she didn't cry all that much and went along with anything, and is very adaptable and now its the same way! God has truly blessed us with our Violet Joy and cannot wait for more years to come.
We had a birthday party for her, she had a blast, she had about 6 of her friends come over and a few adults as well. Grandma Jan bought her a big birthday cupcake forher birthday.. i will post a picture of it soon, her godfather Dave took pics of it!

THis is the birthday cake I made for Violet.. its the Oct-alert from her fav show

the day of her birthday she got to sleep in her big girl bed

she loves loves to help cook

her birthday party

she got two capes from her Auntie Sarah and she got a balloon that she still has

and she got flowers from Grandma Jan

Christmas 2010

Hello!
Its been a while..but here's to catching up!
We had a really great Christmas here in Brighton. We were very sad that it will be our last Christmas in England, and we hoped to make the best of the season! We geared Violet up to be very excited about all things Christmas.. she fell in love with Christmas trees the first time she saw them, and adored Christmas lights, we also slowly introduced her to Father Christmas (Santa) so she wouldn't be scared of him. Her first encounter with him didn't go that well, but at least there were no tears! She just shied away and hid her face in my shoulders, but after he gave her a present she was okay with him. After that she wore the necklace he gave her everyday and talked about him a lot.
On Christmas Eve I arranged for our friend Dave (Violet's godfather) to dress up as FC and come over and give her some gifts. Well sadly Dave was super sick with the flu so Joel stepped in and dressed up. Amazingly Violet didn't notice it was Joel and was just excited FC came into our house and gave her a DVD! That evening we had our annual beef fondue with our good friend Jack... it was a really fun day.. oh yeah and on Christmas Eve our church holds a crib service which means that you dress your child up as any part of the nativity scene and then during the service htey read out the story of Jesus' birth and when their character comes into the story they walk on stage.. well Violet was the ONLY angel at the service so when it was her turn to go up on stage she loved it.... and then she proceeded to play hide and seek with herself on stage and shout loudly.. 'here i am'... awesome.
Then Christmas day we woke up and opened our stocking gifts, we were so excited to see what Violet thought of the Octonauts (which is her very favourite show on tv) Joel made for her... lets just say she was so thrilled to have them. Also we got her a little baby frog to add to her frog family she carries around obsessively. These frogs used to be her bath toys but then she labelled them daddy, mummy and violet frogs.. so we got her an Addie frog too! She loved it. After that we had breakfast and then went to church. With 2 children I find it so hard to get out of the house on time.. I used to be on time or early to most things, and I used to hate to be late it made me nervous, but now I just have to relax and take our time... we will get there, well church started at 10.30 and we left the house at 10.30, but hey we made it there.
After the service we spent the rest of the day at a lovely family we know from church.. we had a great big meal and opened presents..and basically wiped us all out. Because of church and the time we got to the house Violet didn't really get a nap and Adeline didn't sleep well at all, so when we got home around 6 the poo hit the fan... both girls were crying (Addie screaming) violet just in floods of tears for some reason or another.. and at the end of it all both were in bed by 6.45!! Christmas is the best.
Actually this year renewed my love of Christmas and all that it means and the special memories it holds. For a while I just liked it, but now having a toddler who just loves Christmas and really got into it, made me love it again. And it was nice being able to teach her about Jesus and the reason we celebrate the holiday! And I know next year will be even more fun!