Christmas!

Chaching! Stocking time and Gwen cashed in!
In Kristin's stocking was an US Weekly subscription, and in Ryan's was a bag of coal! Maybe next year Ryan will be a good boy.
Gwen turned out to be an expert present opener. But it did take a while. Because as she would open a present, she would want me to take it out of the box so she could play with it for a little bit before she'd move on to the next one. And toys these days are so screwed into the packaging you need a chainsaw to get them out!
Perhaps the best present the girls got! For two days Gwen and Claire were Snow White and Belle respectively. They LOVED their dresses so much! Thanks Grammy!!

Drake was such a good little boy. He slept through just about all of the present opening, but was still so happy. Maybe the key to his happiness is his beautiful pink and purple sassy passy?

Christmas Eve

For Christmas this year, we went up to Sacramento to spend the holiday with Ryan's mom. We had so much fun spending time with the family and Gwen loved spending time with her cousin Claire. Here's Gwen opening her Christmas Eve present.
Everytime Gwen and Claire get together they become the best of friends again. While we were driving home, Gwen woke up from a nap and immediately started asking for her sister Claire. I asked her "do you mean your cousin?" and she said, "no, my sister". I don't know how she knows that sister is a closer relation, but that's what she prefers. Here's the two in their Christmas dresses.

This year we had a baby Jesus! Gwen was Mary. And this is what happens when you have a two year old acting out the Christmas story. Luckily daddy was there to be Joseph and keep the Christmas story under control.

Gwen is at that magical age when a bandaid can fix any "owie". But the problem with that, is that she is always looking for more owies to get more bandaids. I don't remember why her upper lip was hurting here, but we thought the bandaid mustache was pretty cute!
We had our ward Christmas party this last Friday. Drake had been pretty sick all day and we didn't think we could go, but we went anyway and he was so cute. Since he wasn't feeling well, we let him wear his Santa pajamas. :)
This is Gwen at the ward Christmas party. She's into wearing dresses lately. In fact she won't wear anything unless it's a dress. But it was the end of the week, and all of her dresses were dirty. So I got her to wear this skirt by telling her that it was Ariel's wedding skirt. Once she's in her dress/skirt, she grabs it with one hand, puts her other hand up in the air and dances around the way the princesses taught her how in Disneyland. It's so cute!
Drake is so grown up now! He had food today! I gave him some rice cereal and he loved it! It's funny that I waited until he's almost five months old to try food with him. With Gwen, we tried just about as soon as she had head control. But the advantage of waiting an extra month and a half was that he could actually eat it from the spoon and swallow it. It was sooooo much easier than first trying to feed Gwen.

Looking at this picture just made me realize how big the kids are now. Gwen's doing her cheezy smile, but won't really take her eyes off the tv. And this is her all time favorite dress. The pink mumu! Once we get it off, we have to hide it until it gets washed, and as soon as it comes out of the dryer, Gwen's got it on.

I don't know why sometimes I can't get the writing to match up with the pictures they are supposed to. Oh well.

Grammy's been in town lately! She loved getting in her snuggly time with Drake, even though he's a slobbery little guy. :) This is them at the Phoenix Zoo for Cloe's third birthday.
Ryan and Gwenny in monkey village at the zoo. The monkeys were unbelievably close, just inches away, running along the path and jumping on the benches that people were sitting on. Gwen loved it!

Gwen LOVES playing tea party. Today when our home teachers were over, she just kept serving us tea, making us drink it, then she would gather up our cups, pour more, and make us drink again.

When we were walking into Disneyland on the first day, Gavin and Emily were approached and asked if they wanted to be the grand marshalls at the parade that night? Duh, of course! Luckily we got to ride along with them. It was so funny, we rode in this cute little fire engine and waved at all the people waiting for the parade to begin and the whol time this guy was saying of the speaker system, "And the grand marshalls this evening is the McPhie family from Chandler, Arizona"! And then all the people that were from Arizona would yell at us where they were from and cheer really loud! It was awesome, then we got to sit in resereved seating at the front of the entrance for the rest of the parade. Talk about a once in a lifetime experience!

Why do these pictures never come up in the order I want them to? Anyways, I tried publishing these pictures back when I put up the other Disneyland stuff, and for some reason, the website didn't want to put these pictures up. So I tried again and it worked!!! Gwen was so excited to get to meet Ariel, (I think she's her new favorite) and Ariel even kissed her on the cheek!

Here we are in front of It's a Small World. Gwen was just in awe of all the little dolls in there.

And this is the whole group after our ride in the fire truck, this is where we got to sit during the rest of the parade. It was a sectioned off area up above everyone else. :)

HALLOWEEN!

For Halloween, Gwen was Cinderella and Drake was the cuddliest caterpillar ever! Gwen LOVED trick or treating! She learned early in the day when we (Gwen, Drake and Jack who was the sexiest gold fish ever) went to Gigi's work and then aunt Tawnya's work to show everybody in the office how cute the kids were, and Gwen raked it in big time. Then we went to our ward's Chili Cookoff and then more trick or treating. Gwen would knock or ring the door bell, and then whisper so quietly, "trick or treat" with her little hand stretched out, open, waiting for candy. Then she would quietly whisper "thank you". It was so cute! And now all she wants to wear is the Cinderella dress. Too bad everyday's not Halloween.

Disneyland!!!!

Here we are in front of the famous Mickey in Disneyland. He's dressed up for Halloween. Disneyland was all decorated for Halloween, it was so cute!
Gwen loved the Dumbo ride! She was a little scared at first, but it was something she asked to do everyday. Too bad the line for this one was always long, so we only rode it the first day. I guess we went during fall break for the Arizona schools and then midweek the Utah schools got out, so Disneyland was pretty full.
Daddy, Gwen, Jasmyn and Aladdin.
This was the moment we had been waiting for since we booked out Disneyland trip! Gwen meeting Cinderella. We had to wait in line for almost an hour and a half to get to meet the princesses, and when we got there, Gwen was so excited. She'd get close to the pincesses and then get shy and back off. But she was sure to ask Cinderell if she could see her glass slippers.
Mommy and the kids riding the tea cups.

Drake's Blessing

Here's Drake in his blessing suit. He looks like a minature ordinance worker. We ordered the suit and when we got it two weeks ago, he had a lot more room in it than he has now. He's growing so fast!

We blessed Drake today. And it was so special. Drake was a good boy and was smiling up at Daddy the whole time! And because we are all going to Disney Land tomorrow, Molly and Darren were able to come down for it with their two girls, Claire and Laurel. And mom was able to be here too. It's always fun to get all the family together.
After the family picture, Gwen had to stand on this rock and have her picture taken too. Who could resist?

Camping Time!

For Papa's birthday, we had a surprise party for him.....at the cabin! It was so much fun, we all came up early, and waited with the lights off. He thought him and mom were going to go fishing by themselves this weekend, but nope! We were there to surprise him, and boy was he surprised! He taught Gwen how to fish, and she loved it! She just kept dropping her line and then reeling it back up. On the way home, we stopped by Saguaro Lake and drove down the Apache trail to enjoy what a beautiful state we live in. We had so much time and came home smelling like campfire. :)

One of Gwen's favorite things to do is go to the Zoo and going back into the monkey village. When we got there, so many of the monkeys were up so close playing around. And three of the monkeys had babies recently, we saw one. The baby monkey stayed on it's mom's back the whole time, it was so cute! This baby monkey is 13 days old!

Twins or Cousins?

The boys are getting so big! And look Tara, Jack's cracking a little smile in the picture of them on the couch. Today we put them in their little twin outfits and took them to the zoo, and everybody thought they were twins. When we'd tell them that they were actually cousins born on the same day, they thought that was even neater.

After a long Sunday, Drake's tuckered out.

Today was a very special day for our family, dad was finally baptised! We all felt the spirit so stongly, it was so emotional. So here's the family except for Eli who left before we got the camera out, and Ethan who's on his mission.

Gwen is really trying to fight the nap lately. The other day, I tried putting her down for her nap but she played for so long, and was just knocking on her door which is what she does when she wants out. After an hour and a half, it was quiet, so I peeked in to see if she was asleep, she was on her bed and I saw that she had pulled all the clothes out of her drawers. Look close to see her asleep on her bed.

Gwen or Drake?

Last night Ryan and I were looking through old pictures on the computer, and we were shocked at how much Gwen's baby pictures look like Drake. So see if you can figure out who's who? And if you want to try the best ice cream ever, it's out right now. It's Blue Bell's Key Lime Pie, and ooohhh it's so good! It's seasonal so don't wait. I've waited two years for this because I didn't see it last year, and I ate it up when I was pregnant with Gwen.
Okay, we've got Grammy holding Gwenny, then Daddy holding Drake. And we thought it was cute that Gwen had hair on her shoulders, then we thought it was cute too that Drake had hairy everything.