Christmas Festivities

Christmas festivities according to my phone...
1. Went downtown to see the lights, and we picked a beautiful night. It was stunning, and not very busy since we went early evening. The girls loved it!
2. Got our Christmas tree! Lilly loved helping us set up Christmas, and Claire has really enjoyed taking ornaments off the tree and pulling the hooks out. :)
3. Santa brought Elf on the Shelf. Big hit at our house. BIG hit! For mom and dad, and for Lilly & Claire!
3. The Woodward family did a service project with the refugee program (Refugee & Immigrant Center) my Dad is involved with. It was really fun, and also very humbling. The two girls I was in charge of basically grew up in a refugee camp in Tanzania, and have only been here for 5 years. They were absolutely darling. We put together boxes for each girls family which were filled with tons of food and some sort of a present (DVD's, games, crayons etc.). Then, we went and picked them up from there homes, brought them to the church where we were putting together boxes, and they performed some of their native dances for us. Unbelievable dancers! Lucky guy, Anton, got pulled up to dance. I thought he would faint from sheer terror! It was hysterical! From there, we took each girl to buy some shoes. You can see my dad in the bottom picture buying the shoes. What a guy. I became emotional during the dances, thinking about what hard lives some of theses girls have had and how sweet of my father to try and make their lives a little bit better. Whether it be helping with college tuition, rent, or simply having our family do a service project for them. I am so proud of the man my dad is.
I am really looking forward to the next week or so until Christmas!
 

Claire Bear

Here is what Claire has been up to, according to my phone pictures...
1. She LOVES the snow. Although, she isn't good about keeping her "glubs" on, so her little fingers freeze.
2. She always has the most random outfits on. I always get her dressed, and she always finds some random accessory to put with her outfit.
3. She is Potty Trained!!!! Wooohooo!!!
4. She is hysterically funny, and oh so very naughty. She makes me laugh every day.
5. At the moment, she really wants her independence. Doesn't want to sit in the cart at the grocery store, doesn't want to hold mom's hand in the parking lot, doesn't want to be told what to do. Ever. It's super fun on mom. Super fun.
6. She is really fun to talk to, and is very animated when telling stories. She, like Lilly, has a little lisp...it's so cute.
She drives me crazy, but honestly, my life would be so incomplete without her. She is a ray of sunshine, and could put anyone in a good mood. I absolutely adore and love her more than I could ever begin to describe. I think she gets close to 500 kisses a day from me. She is my little love bug.
Love you precious little Clairey Beary!
 

Lilly Bug

Here is what's going on with Lilly, according to my phone pictures...
1. She has found a new love of sponge rollers. And, let me tell you, she has the hair to do it with it.
2. She is loving preschool. As am I. It is so good for her. Although, I am not sure I am ready for next year, when she will be gone everyday. I love all the little "projects" that she brings home. She gets so tired of me always taking her picture in them.
3. She had Claire have finally turned a corner. They are actually friends!! Praise the heavens above! They play so cute together. It is really fun to see their love for one another grow.
4. Lilly is still WAY into Princesses. Believes 100% that they are real. So, when Disney had Sofia the First on, we snuggled with with popcorn and our blankies and watched it. She asked that night while going to bed, "Mom, do you think Aurora will visit me tonight". I love her innocence.
5. I took her on a Mommy / Daughter date to see the play Mulan at a near by jr. high. She didn't love the play, but loved everything else...being with mom, without Claire, getting skittles, she got to wear pretty lip gloss. It was a fun night.
She is the sweetest little bug. She absolutely melts my heart. There is no way I could love her more than I do right now...she is so very precious to us.
We love you Lilly Bug!
 

Thanksgiving

We had a wonderful Thanksgiving this year at my parents house. It was a small group, which was really fun....not so hectic. The food was divine, company was excellent, and games afterward were a blast. We joked that when you play games at the Woodward house, you better bring your cash. I was the big winner of Bingo (we had some good laughs about playing bingo - and Anton being the "announcer" - all he was missing was a megaphone and a florescent green visor!)...I won $14 bucks! Big winner over here!
It was an excellent Thanksgiving!!
I have to say how incredibly thankful I am for my little family. Each of them individually brightens my life so much. I thank my Heavenly Father for them each and every day. Anton is such a good man, and such a darling father. Our girls, especially Lilly, are so smitten with him. Life is good, so good, and for that I am so very Thankful.
 

 

 

 

Snow Man

Claire and Lilly were so excited to finally have enough snow to build a snowman. We weren't equipped with carrots for his nose, but scrounged up enough random stuff to make it look cute. As you can see, Claire loved it, and cried when it melted. I have a feeling we will be making lots of these this winter!
 

 

 

Snow Days

My girls LOVED the big snow storm we had. The morning it snowed, they had to go out first thing...in their jammies. I made them come back in after a few minutes and at least get dressed before going out in it again.
Oooh, I love them.
 

 

 

 

Happy Halloween!!

Another fabulous Halloween has come and gone. The girls had a ball - even though Claire was scared to death at my parent's party! She wasn't a fan of people in masks, but she LOVED going door to door with Lilly!
I love that my girls love Halloween. Aren't they cute in their costumes?!
Happy Halloween!
 

 

 

 

 

Phone pics

*Claire is still as random as ever. I love her so much - it's hard for me to watch her growing up.
 

*Had a festive pumpkin carving party with friends!
 

*Hit up the aquarium with some friends (thank goodness it wasn't busy - I hate that place when it's busy!)
 

*The girls freaked when they woke up to snow! Before eating breakfast, they insisted on going out in the snow. They loved it!
 

*I love all the projects that Lilly brings home from school. They are so darling.
 

*We even made some crafts of our own...
 

*Squirt getting into my makeup!
 

Fall Fun

What we've been up to:
*We went to the pumpkin patch with Lilly's school class.
*Frightmares - so fun!
*The zoo with cousins!
 

 

 

 

 

 

Lake Blanche

Last weekend, Anton's mom came into town to spend some time with the girls. So, we took advantage of having her and spent the weekend doing things that we felt like we don't get to do very often, thanks to our 2 and 4 year old! We went out to dinner twice, went out for dessert, went to the Home Improvement show, and went on a great hike! We went with the Larsen's up to Lake Blanche. It was awesome and SO beautiful. It was a little drizzly, but in my opinion,  it made it even that much more beautiful  We had such a fantastic time, even though my legs were killing me the next day (wearing my heels to church the next day probably wasn't the best idea). I now have a new appreciation as to why Anton loves hiking so much.
It was such a perfect weekend! Thanks Debbie - we love you!!
 

 

 

 

Bragging Rights

Check out this cute little bug....modeling my sisters fabric line.

I am in love with with picture.

Primary Childrens

What a week. Glad it's over, and so glad Lilly is home. Last week, Lilly woke up with a tiny cold...so tiny, I contemplated sending her to school, but as the day went on she developed a cough and started having a hard time breathing. I gave her a "treatment" to try and help her to breath and told her to rest for a few minutes then we would see if she would start to improve. She started to become really lethargic and hard a hard time keeping her head up. I took her right to the doctors office (in hindsight, I should have just taken her to the ER). There, they did a triple dose treatment with no improvement. The moment they would remove the oxygen, her heart rate would shoot up, and her oxygen would drastically drop. That's when they called the ambulance and she was taken to the ER at Primary Children's. As her parents, we had a hard time holding it together seeing her put on the stretcher and wheeled out the door.
When they told her she was going in the ambulance, she freaked. She was so scared. But, when they arrived to pick her up, they were so cute with her that she ended up feeling OK about it. On another note, every time I pulled out my phone to take a picture, she would smile....trust me though, she wasn't really that happy. Poor thing could hardly talk.
We spent about 5 hours in the ER. They continued to try and give her treatments, which were not working...so we were informed that she was going be heading to the ICU, unless they could try and open up her lungs. The last resort before sending her there was to give her a steroid. The steroid helped immensely. From there she was moved upstairs where she stayed for several days.
The scary thing about when this happened is, it happened SO quickly, and by simply looking at her, you wouldn't realize she was SO sick. The doctors said at one point, they listened to the lower part of her lungs and couldn't hear anything, which means some of the valves or chambers had completely closed off. After the steroid, those "valves" began to open up, and there began to be some movement of air.
She can't officially be diagnosed with asthma because she is so young, but that is what we are calling it. She had a severe asthma attack. We now know that her "trigger" is virus related. So anytime she gets a cold, or the flu, she is more susceptible to have an asthma attack...which is really hard with a child in school. The doctors and nurses really helped us understand and educate us on what we are dealing with and sent us home with the medication that she will now have to use every morning and every evening, and another medication we will use when she does come down with a cold/flu.
It was a rough week. Lilly was a trooper though. And, that hospital is simply amazing. The nurses, doctors and staff could not have been better. They were so helpful and so great with Lilly. Every time I left to come home and shower, I would come back to someone playing a game with her or painting with her...they were awesome. I did however, become emotional several times, at how sad some of the situations are up there. My heart aches for so many of those families who are up there. When we got ready to leave I about burst into tears because the darling little girl across the hall from us (about Claire's age) isn't going home for a long long time, and it broke my heart as she and her parents watched us leave. It was heart wrenching. It was humbling and I was grateful that we were up there only for asthma and not up there for something much much worse. Another thing I learned...we are very blessed. Blessed to have such amazing family, and incredible friends. Lilly had so many visitors and so many phone calls asking how she was doing. So many people sent messages saying she was in their prayers. One friend came and stocked my fridge so when I came home, I would have something to much on. We have the most amazing people in our lives.
Lilly is doing really well now, and is back to herself. When we got home from the hospital, she ran and jumped on her bed and smothered he face in her pillow....she was happy to be home!
We love our Lilly bug so so so much.
We are glad she is home!