A Rivera Christmas

Our Christmas celebrations finally ended today with Gigi, Pop Pop, Titi Molly, and Uncle Craig driving up from Illinois to see us. We started the party early by helping mom clean up while she was making dinner. Licking whipping cream off the beaters may be our new favorite treat! Then we headed straight to the good stuff...presents! I think we all got a few of our favorite things. Titi Molly got her Snuggie, Pop Pop got his convertible, and I got some race cars. Lily while modeling one tutu discovered that wearing two is even better! Uncle Craig stayed busy putting all of our new toys together, and Lily decided to vacuum up after all of us since we made such a mess. Dinner was great with Lily providing the entertainment singing every song she knows. I tried to sing too, but Lily just ended up singing louder. I took that as my cue to sit back and enjoy the show. After four Christmas celebrations in one week we are pooped out, but we have to admit it was a good time. I guess all that is left is for us to say, Merry Christmas to all and to all a good night!

Christmas Evening

After opening our gifts and eating a yummy Christmas breakfast courtesy of Daddy, we headed up to Green Bay. We were pretty tired...so tired in fact that Lily asked to take a nap halfway through opening presents, but we sure are glad we made the trip. We had so much fun chasing our cousins around and opening presents. That's right we'll admit it, we love presents! We definitely opened some of our favorites at Grandma Jackie's house such as Lily's purple tutu that she wouldn't take off once she got it on, and my airplane that comes with tools to take it apart and rebuild it again. We also became independently wealthy upon opening piggy banks from Grandma Jackie. There was all sorts of money on top and once our cousins, Ben and AJ, finished counting it, we found out that we each received ten dollars in fresh, crisp ones. That's a lot of money right?!? After presents and dinner we we able to enjoy some great cake. Two cakes in fact, one to celebrate Grandma Jackie's birthday, and one to celebrate baby Jesus' birthday. I again wasn't so keen on everyone singing Happy Birthday, but once Mom put that slice of chocolate cake in front of me I was all good! To top it all off, Grandma Jackie almost forgot to give us one of our presents so later in the night a giant bag appeared, and when we unwrapped it, we found a giant Mickey Mouse. He was almost as big as our Mom so of course all of us kids couldn't help but give him a few hugs and some tackles. Family, food (cake to be precise), and presents...it doesn't get much better than that in our world!

Merry Christmas

Ho, Ho, Ho...Merry Christmas everyone! We woke up this morning to rain, but quickly forgot about it when we saw all of the presents under the tree. I got my choo-choo trains and Lily got her purple baby doll. I guess sitting on Santa's lap really does work! We also got new sleds, or slip n' slides as Lily calls them. Hopefully this rain turns to snow again so we can try them out. We're off to Grandma Jackie's this afternoon to see our cousins and celebrate Grandma's birthday so surely we'll have more pictures to post later. We're enjoying Christmas in our world!

The Williams' Christmas

Moving to Wisconsin means seeing our family a lot more. Today we celebrated Christmas with the Williams family in Green Bay. We got together with so many people we can't even name them all, but we do know that 14 of Great-Grandpa Williams' 16 great-grandchildren were at his house to wish him Merry Christmas. We stayed busy playing hide-n-seek and chasing zhu-zhu pets around, but Mom was able to get seven of us to pause long enough for a picture.

Many Shoes to Fill

A few times a week we entertain Mom by trying on all of the shoes in her closet, or at least all of the shoes we can reach. We usually leave the closet a mess, but Mom never seems to mind. We're loving shoes in our world!

Visiting Santa

After a lot of coaching by Mom and Dad we were actually really excited to go see Santa today. When we got there I took off running trying to find him and I even ran right up to him, but when it came time to sit on his lap...as you can see that's a different story. I preferred standing about 5 feet away, but when asked I immediately shared with Santa that I wanted a choo-choo train. Lily seemed to like Santa and went right up to him and struck up a conversation with the man. She jumped right into his lap, and although the pictures don't show it, she was pretty happy to be there. She told Santa that her name was Lily Rivera (or Vivera as she says), she told him my name, and how old we were, and she quickly shared that she wanted a purple baby doll. Mom and Dad did convince me that it was okay to give Santa a hug, but their second attempt at a picture didn't fair much better except for the fact that I wasn't crying. After a yummy candy cane treat, both Lily and I wished Santa a Merry Christmas and we were on our way. Happy holidays from our world!

Christmas Cookies

This morning we got to make Christmas cookies with Mom. She let us use any cookie cutters we wanted so needless to say we have a lot of choo-choo train cookies. Lily was a little more adventurous and tried out more of the cookie cutters, but I stuck to the cool engine, caboose, and railroad crossing sign. We even got to sample our work and all I have to say to that is yummy! We love cookies in our world!

Bling Bling

Everyone always says that Ryan got the better bedroom when we moved into our new house and I think Mom and Dad felt bad about this so they bought me some bling bling for my room to make it cool. Pop Pop was able to hang my new chandelier this weekend while he and Gigi were babysitting us and I absolutely love it. Now I really am a princess and trust me I am going to tell everyone in my world!

AthletiCo Milwaukee

It is official, Daddy's clinic opens on Monday! We got to see it for the first time tonight and we love it! There is still quite a bit of work to be done so we thought we'd help by trying out some of the equipment to make sure it was working properly. Everything looked good to us. Good job Dad!