Welcome to the little City of Duvall where every year the True Value Hardware Store offers free Santa Clause pictures!

I was so excited to get have the kids take their pictures with Santa that I wasn’t even hungry for lunch…which should have given me the hint that I was maybe a little over excited to see Santa myself and should have re-evaluated the Santa vs. little kids thing.

So we get to True Value and of course there is a line, but it was fairly quick about 15 minutes and of course the line comes with friendly Duvall neighbors to talk to which made the time go bye pretty quickly.  In fact it went by so fast that when it was our turn Luke was frantically waving for me to stop talking with our neighbors midway through the line and come to the front of the line.  So I sideways slid to the front of the line with Alyssa meanwhile noticing she had chocolate cookie and mocos on her face.  So I took a baby wipe and wiped her face as we walked up to see Santa. 

What was I thinking?!  Was that the stupidest thing to do right before meeting Santa or what?  Alyssa flung her head back and loudly complained and then took one look at Santa and started crying.  Just great!  To ease the scared cry, I sat with her next to Santa which helped just slightly. 

Evan did a great job and Santa seemed to enjoy holding him, Alyssa on the other hand wasn’t so sure.  Here’s the pictures Luke was able to snap off while trying to distract Alyssa away from Santa:

Here is a cuter picture of Alyssa in the Christmas dress our friend let us borrow:

And here’s a better one of Evan’s outfit…

The other day Luke was dressing Alyssa after her morning bath and after he had these pants on her he asked “Are these hers?”  I looked up and laughed because no, they are Evan’s pants.  But they fit perfectly around her waist.  They have the same waist size!  Too bad it’s in the 40’s here otherwise she could be sporting some pretty cute Capri pants. 

I weighed and measured Evan today and he is 15 pounds and 25 inches long!  Alyssa is 23 pounds I think.  I tried to get her to stand on the scale, but she wouldn’t have it.  She, of course, only wants to do it when SHE wants to do it and I can never look quick enough to see the numbers – uh, oh well.

In the picture below she’s pointing to the TV and saying “Meat!”  For some reason she decide that the word “movie” should be pronounced as “meat.”  When we tell her “MOOO-VIE” she just looks at us, smiles really big and then says “Meat!” and laughs. 

Also, recently Luke will ask her “what movie do you want to watch?” and she has begun to respond.  She’ll either say or sign “baby” indicating one of her favorites- Baby Praise or “Barney” for her Barney video.  Luke is trying to get her to scratch or break the Barney DVD so that she can’t watch it anymore because he doesn’t enjoy listening to kids songs.  He won’t let her watch it when he’s home.  He thinks my mom bought it for her and I never corrected him…but it wasn’t my mom! hehe

Oh and so here is Evan in Alyssa’s seat. He’s starting to hold up his head really well these past few weeks and starting to drool and coo lot more. And he does actually smile quite a bit, but of course never for the camera.