hello titus: December 2014

Piper's 3 Months

Our sweet and mellow Piper Gray is three months old!

This month Piper

started smiling a ton more
started trying to laugh
started reaching for toys
continues to gain more neck control
loves mommy. Being in mommy's arms instantly calms her.
loves her binky.
naps and sleeps like a champion. We feel incredibly blessed to have had two girls who sleep very well. She naps 3 times a day and sleeps 10 hours at night before waking up for a quick feeding and going back to sleep for a couple more hours.
Loves to lay on the floor and just watch everything around her.

We love you Piper!

Christmas Day

I posted little snippets about Christmas in our Christmas Countdown post, but here are all the details.

Christmas Eve, Josh got off around 3pm. Kendal and Matt headed over shortly after. Kendal brought sugar cookie dough, frosting and sprinkles for decorating and we made cookies. See the pictures from cookie decorating in this post. Then we ordered Papa Johns. We ate pizza and watched the Grinch with Elliott before she went to bed. We set out cookies for Santa, bid farewell to our Elf, read our new Christmas book, opened one gift and put Elliott to bed. Then we played Love Letter and Scum. Love those games. After games we got this hilarious slow motion dancing video from the part of the Titus family that is in SC. So we spent the next 2 hours recording us dancing and editing a video to send back. It was so hilarious and such a fun night.

Mr. Potato Head

Lady and the Tramp.

Christmas morning we woke up, checked out our cookies that we left for Santa and then got to our present opening. We got dumped with snow that night so we enjoyed looking at the beautiful snow too. Josh and I didn't get gifts for each this year because we bought a car for Christmas. We got holiday Provo shirts a couple weeks before and those were our gifts. But we did have gifts from the Titus exchange and from my mom to open. The girls got totally spoiled. Our big gift to Elliott was a craft box. I got the box at Hobby Lobby and filled it with paper, scissors, glue, glitter, stickers, beads, beading string, etc. She loved it. She always wants to use my nice craft stuff, so I thought it was time she had her own. Then she got a few little things; Mr. Potato Head, a princess crown, bubbles, and a gift just from me. I made Piper and Elliott ten clothespin dolls. They turned out adorable. Piper got stacking barrels, rattles, a new baby doll, and a wood flower toy. Grandma got Elliott a Daniel Tiger toy (huge hit) and new bath toys. And Elliott also got a Little People castle from grandpa. My mom got me a beautiful sweater from DownEast. I'm obsessed with it. Josh got cured meats from my mom and an Amazon gift card. Perfect. Gift opening was a blast and a huge hit.

Ornaments from Great Grandma Linda.

Mom's gift from Jamie! Adorable wood blocks with photos on them.

My beautiful book from new brother-in-law Tanner!

Kendal's here!

Making necklaces.

Kendal and Matt arrived shortly into gift opening. We ate cinnamon rolls and finished gifts. After presents we played (of course) before getting ready for dinner. We had pheasant that was left over from Morgan's hunt before Thanksgiving. Josh cooked it up in this amazing vinegar cream sauce with pomegranate seeds. It was scrumptious. Dinner was so yummy! After dinner we all bundled up and headed out for some sledding and snowman building. It was a beautiful day. It snowed all day long. Elliott loved sledding. See photos in this post.

After sledding we came in and warmed up with pie, hot chocolate and the Muppet's Christmas Carol. It was such a beautiful day. The perfect Christmas.

Christmas Countdown Part 2

Day 13: Whoops! We missed a day. We were so busy all day long!

Day 14: Make a homemade ornament for the Christmas tree. I found these little CD ornaments on Pinterest and I already had all the material. Perfect. Elliott loved painting them and gluing all the pieces on. And she has played with them everyday since.

Putting on his buttons.

Hanging them on the tree.

Day 15: Race to see who can eat a candy cane the slowest. This was pretty hilarious. We didn't do a whole candy cane because it was right before bed. So we each took a piece. Elliott was on track to beat me (she eats candy so slow) but then frantically started saying, "yucky candy cane, too spicy" and ran and spit it in the trash can. Apparently they aren't here favorite. Haha.

Haha. Elliott's fake smile.

Day 16: Share a favorite Christmas memory. Elliott just sat on the kitchen floor for this one and she listened to me intently as I shared with her some of my favorite Christmas memories from growing up and from the past couple years. I love telling her stories and seeing her sweet little face looking up at me.

Day 17: Give service. This year for my sibling gift exchange we did service for someone instead of buying gifts for each other. Our family decided to put together a care package for a close friend of mine with Christmas gifts, scripture references and conference talks to uplift. It was a great service activity.

Day 18: Play a game. This was Morgan and Jenn's last day in Provo before their big (final) move to South Carolina. I went over and watched the kids for a couple hours while they did some final cleaning on the house. We played hide and go seek and made up all sorts of fun games while we played in an empty room.

The house was empty so we had to get creative. Kate is washing Kitty Jane's fur.

**The rest of these activities weren't necessarily done in this order. We just squished in as much as possible while grandma was here**

Day 19: Go out for a special treat. This wasn't so much family as a date night for Josh and I. My mom babysat the girls so Josh and I could go out and grab some ice cream at ColdStone. Yum! Thanks mom. (Josh also realized he was hungry so we swung by SLAB Pizza for some delicious pizza too.)

Day 20: Build a snowman. On Christmas Day Provo got dumped with snow. We got about 6 inches in one night. It was magical. So after dinner we went outside and built a snowman. He even had a carrot nose! He was adorable. We wanted to make a huge one but the snow was so powdery that it didn't pack very well. We also went sledding on a little hill next to our complex. Elliott loved sledding. She was so brave. She went down multiple times all by herself, including a couple times on her belly.

It was chilly!

Day 21: Make a gingerbread house. I picked up a kit at Target before my mom got here and we put it together as a family. Let's be real, Elliott was mostly interested in eating all the candy. But she loved putting the frosting on and sticking on the candy. She was pretty cute.

Day 22: Watch a Christmas Movie. On Christmas Eve we watched How the Grinch Stole Christmas and after sledding on Christmas day we watched The Muppets Christmas Carol. The original grinch was so cute. It had been years since any of us had seen it.

Playing games on Christmas Eve

Day 23: Go see the lights at Temple Square. (Dec. 27) On the Saturday after Christmas we finally got up to Temple Square. Kendal and Matt met us up there, which was awesome. The lights were absolutely stunning (as always). Josh had to work that night, which stunk, but we made the best of it. It was less than 20 degrees that night so we bundled up really warm and enjoyed the beautiful lights with some hot chocolates. We went up to the top of the Joseph Smith Memorial building to see the lights from above which was really cool. I had never done that before.

Day 24: Make Christmas cookies. On Christmas Eve, Kendal brought sugar cookie dough over and we made cookies and decorated them. Elliott loved decorating the cookies and using the sprinkles. Then we picked out a few to leave out for Santa that night.