Merry Christmas!

We had planned on spending Christmas Eve and Christmas morning in California. However, due to weather, we were in Spokane. It was our first Christmas "alone" and we decided to make it special. Though sad that our plans had changed and we wouldn't be able to be with family, I was a little excited to be able to create our own Christmas, and perhaps, some of our own traditions. On Christmas Eve, I cooked my first turkey. We ate on our fine china -- turkey, stuffing, cranberry sauce (basically a Thanksgiving meal) and drank apple juice from wine glasses. For dessert we had delicious apple pie. mmmmm I love apple pie!

But our family activity revolved around creating a family movie. This was so much fun, and I believe was the first year of a new tradition in the Marcus and Jenny Green household. After the kids went to bed Christmas Eve, Marcus and I got to work editing. We were laughing so hard we were crying. I'm sure your kids are funny, but man were our little girls hilarious. This isn't the original video. Long story short, I had to re-edit it, but this is pretty close to what the first was like. Take a few minutes, enjoy the video, and Merry Christmas.

(Click on "A Green Family Christmas")

A Green Family Christmas

Early Christmas

A couple days ago, we got a little Christmas package in the mail from my sister and her family. We were supposed to fly out to California tonight, but we are among the hundreds of flights that were canceled. Thinking we wouldn't be here Christmas morning, we opened the package. Thanks Adam, Leese, Ian, Lindsay, and Alex. It was a big hit!

Dancing Queen in the Making

That's right. Callie's a dancer; she must take after me. When music comes on, she starts doing her little side steppin'. I don't think it'll be long before she starts shaking those hips!

So Much Fun

A long time ago, my mom bought me a yoga ball, with the intention that I'd use it for exercise. Good intentions. But though I don't regularly use this ball for yoga, we have found many other uses: I use it for therapy exercises for Samantha, it's our computer chair, and it has become a much beloved game of our kiddos. The laughing goes on and on when Daddy hits this ball with all his force! Who would have known that this ball could bring so much joy to our family?

Let it Snow, Let it Snow, Let it Snow

For those of you who do not follow Spokane news and weather, Spokane has been hit with a record breaking snow storm. We have received 24 inches of snow so far. Yesterday I was on the roads quite a bit and boy was it getting bad. It's all the hills around here. I couldn't get up one, but luckily there was a group of 5 men and a woman standing in the median ready to push people up. The city is shut down -- buses are stopped except a few, all schools, universities, city buildings, etc are shut down. Today they plowed our parking lot and our car is completely packed in. We'll have to get a shovel and take care of that if we want to get out ever. I was told today that if there is a hault in the weather, the city suspects it'll take 4 days to clear the roads. Chains are required in the South Hill area, luckily not by us because we don't have chains, and we don't have the hills. I called Marcus yesterday at work to tell him to come home early if he could. It took him about 2 hours to get home when he left at 4pm. Poor guy. But he sure is cute.



Here are a few pictures from outside our back door.

Yesterday around 3:30pm

Last night around 9pm

This morning around 10am. Notice the huge snow mass in the middle of the picture. That's a car.

Being a snow day and all, we decided to make it fun. So, Sammy lounged...



got dressed in winter gear...


ate some snow....


played with Daddy......


and measured the snow in Sam - eters. Yes folks, Spokane has been hit with a 1/2 sameter of snow. (As is indicated by the level of snow on Sammy.)

Piggy Tails

It's been awhile since I really posted about things going on, so I apologize and here comes a big catch-up.

Last Saturday I gave Callie a bath. This alone is not worthy of a post. However, the following is. I decided to try a new product in her hair. Awhile back I bought a conditioning styling hair lotion. An African American woman had suggested it to me, so I just bought it. I haven't really used it because I haven't done much along the lines of styling Callie's hair. As the weather gets drier, so does Callie's hair. So, during Callie's bath, I thought, "Why not try this conditioning lotion?" I often use quite a bit of conditioner for Callie. Most white folk would think it's insane the amount of conditioner Callie's hair uses, since we aren't used to lathering our hair in conditioner. So, it seemed fitting that I would use a lot of this new conditioning lotion. Well, I got it in her hair, and the stuff would not rinse out. Her hair was white and greased up. I was worried that she'd look funny for church the next day, but what's a mom n0t trained in black hair to do? With her towel, we absorbed as much of the goop as we could, but her hair was still a little crazy looking. And, we decided to try what has not yet been tried before: pig tails for Callie. She's not a fan. Getting a part is hard enough on Samantha, but try getting a straight part through a jungle of curly, thick, CURLY hair. Not easy, and I obviously didn't succeed.


Callie has such a mass of thick hair, it looked quite strange when it was all pulled up. Her head seemed so small of a sudden. We took pictures to remember her first piggy tails, especially because it may be some time before it happens again.


As her hair dried, we realized that these piggy tails weren't going to stay in very well, so we took them out. And this is the crazy hair that remained.


Better luck next time I suppose.

Keep Dreaming

Do you all know something that I don't? Because in the period of 5 days 3 people have told me that they have had dreams about Marcus and I being pregnant. Straaaange. Just to clarify, we're not. But keep dreaming! :)

We Won!

How fun is it to win?! A lot! We won the 11th day giveaway at Simply Sweet Marriage! Wahoo!

Sweet Marriage

Dear Sweet Friends,

Do you want a Simply Sweet Marriage? hmmmmm? During this holiday season and during these financially rough times, why not win something for free! Yes F R E E ! ! ! It doesn't get much better than that. Simple Sweet Marriage is having a giveaway and you could be the lucky winner of some pretty awesome stuff. Check it out here!

Another Hair Cut

But this time it was for Samantha. Her hair was just getting too long. We wanted to cut it awhile ago, but Marcus wanted to be able to show his family Sammy's french braid over Thanksgiving. Well, that never happened, unfortunately. The little one was just too squirmy. So then, I thought I'd do it last night. That didn't happen because I was at an Enrichment Committee meeting until 9:40pm. Tonight wasn't lookin' too hot either. Sammy was really tired and not cooperating. But I decided, I had to do it. No matter what. So, after her bath, I took the scissors and took off a good inch or so. It was rather difficult because I don't know what I'm doing and she wasn't too fond of sitting on our little table.

I had wanted to take pictures, ya know, to remember this event, but that too was rather difficult seeing that I was cutting her hair, Sammy was sitting on the table, Marcus was jumping around doing a mini circus act trying to keep her attention (keeping her from wanting to just turn around and see me), and Callie was...come to think of it, I'm not sure what Callie was doing...knowing her probably picking up things off the floor and eating them. We did take this after shot. Sammy was giving me a hug and Marcus took a picture of the back of her. Where my hand is placed is approximately where her hair was when it was brushed flat. You can see the difference. There was quite a bit of hair cut off.

"Baby"

Callie has officially said her first word: Baby. Sure, she says "mama" and "dada", but that's just babbling we think, because she has never, to our knowledge, called us mama and dada respectively. So, baby it is -- her first word.

I was putting her back in her car seat after Sammy's physical therapy, and Callie was squirming all over the place. She hates going in her car seat. To distract her, I gave her her doll and said, "Callie, here's your baby." She looked at me, looked at the doll, and said, "Babeeee." It was so so cute. Echo (Sammy's physical therapist) was there to witness the event.

And she just did it again! Yeah! How fun is that?!



Callie also held her own bottle today. She's a girl who knows what she wants. For instance, she knows she wants to feed herself. She knows she only wants big people food -- none of this pureed baby food business. And, she ONLY wants to feed herself. Unless, that is, it's her bottle. She wants someone else to hold the bottle for her. But today, Samantha hurt herself so I was attending to her needs. Callie was hungry and crying. I handed her her bottle and she tried to drink from it, but it just didn't work sitting up. I leaned her over with my one hand, she dropped her bottle, picked it back up, and started drinking. We could be on to something here folks...something that may change my life!

AND, her 5th tooth came in today as well. What a day it's been.