Santa Will Share The Cookies With Me! - Dec 28

Chloe may or may not completely grasp the concept of Santa Claus and the whole "comes into your house and leaves you presents" thing but we did our best to explain it to her. We told Chloe she should leave out some cookies for Santa and she insisted that Santa would want to eat only one cookie and share the other with her. LOL. Sure. This year, Santa did not bring any outwardly obvious gifts such as the tricycle she received last year rather, he wrapped one special present and left a few toys around the tree ready to be played with.

Chloe was suffering from a pretty nasty cold but all things considered she was in good spirits and extremely excited to see everyone as we made the rounds between our families. She was very well behaved while opening presents and to my shock she was completely content with waiting her turn while making/helping other people take their turn to open gifts. Once again she received a ton of awesome gifts from all of our family and we got her a bunch of stuff as well. Oh yeah, Santa, too. She is one lucky kid that's for sure. =)

I thought I would just share some photos from our Christmas morning at home which was of course only a small piece of our Christmas excitement. I hope you had a nice Christmas as well and I guess we'll see you back again...next year!

-Brian, Heather, & Chloe

Towin' In A Winder Wonderland! - Dec 21

Sorry, for some reason the only thing that came to mind when I was looking back at these pics is the Disneyland Christmas comercial where "Tow Mater" Sings a "Cars" version of "Walking in a winter wonderland" as "Towin' in a winder wonderlaaaaaand!", lol. If you want to sing this song for the next 2 days, click here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YbkstM5SKsA =)

So Christmas is upon us, only a few more days. I loathe Christmas shopping but as you can imagine, shopping for Chloe is EASY. Fortunately or unfortunately for Chloe her birthday is just a few weeks after Christmas so we just buy her stuff and then decide which one she is getting it for, lol. Heather found this "Cars" Christmas shirt and I think she was going to give it to her for Christmas but the decision was made to just give it to her now because once Christmas is over..it's...over? Plus it's a 3t shirt so in about 2 more days it's not gonna fit her anymore at the rate she seems to be growing. Every once in a while I take photos of Chloe and I just think she looks completely different. This is one of those times. Changing every day, I suppose. =)

Have a great weekend and Merry Christmas! Don't shoot your eye out. ;-)

Yes, Santa! - Dec 14

So these photos actually happened 2 weeks ago but as I said last week I decided to hold off and make a post about Abbey. Things are still pretty strange around here as we knew it would be but it's gonna take time and we know that.

So two weeks ago we took Chloe now for the 3rd time to see what is as far as I'm concerned the real Santa Claus. =) Seriously, comparing this guy to one of the mall dwelling Santa's just isn't fair. This year Chloe was just as excited to see Santa as last year. Heck, she remembered seeing him last year and she remembered that he gave her a candy cane so she was ready to go back when we asked her. We went and it was kind of a gloomy day and admittedly the first weekend in December but there literally was no line. Last year we waited almost an hour.

We walked up and we are greeted by a woman in an elf costume making balloon animals. She asks Chloe what she wants and with no real answer from Chloe she offers to make a snowman. She must have been a psychic elf balloon maker because Chloe has been completely obsessed with the "Frosty The Snowman" animated thing on TV. The other day I was in Target(surprise) and she sang the same verse from "Frosty The Snowman" over and over again for ten minutes. I'm sure you know the song and you're welcome if you are now singing it in your head.

Anyway, we get our snowman and it's time to see Santa. Chloe walks apprehensively (which is unusual for her) and sits on his lap. Santa is talking to Chloe and asks how is she doing and she answers loudly and proudly, "YES!" He continued to ask her questions and really all she would say instead of answering him properly was "YES!" or "YEAH!" I think she was suffering from stage fright but either way, this Santa rocked, I got some photos of what went down and Chloe got a lollipop at the end. In fact, Santa gave her two...one to give to heather because (as he put it) "he gives them out to all the pretty girls". Smooth move, Santa. Smooth. Here are some pics from our visit, hope you have a great weekend. Enjoy~

-B
















and just for fun, all 3 together!

I Love You, Abbey - Dec 7

So you may or may not have heard and it saddens me very much to say that on Tuesday this week we lost our sweet puppy, Abbey. Abbey has had an unbelievable amount of medical issues in the last few years along with a couple of major surgeries and she has always been a very resilient dog. She was also the sweetest, most appreciative and loving dog that anyone could have ever asked for. When Chloe came along we knew that she was going to love Abbey as much as we did and if you know us or have been following this blog, Abbey loved Chloe just as much as we all do. We told ourselves that when Abbey did finally pass that the hardest part would be trying to tell Chloe what happened and why her Abbey is no longer here. It turns out so far that quite the opposite is true. Chloe is much smarter than we give her credit for and she almost without question accepted our explanation that Abbey had to go live in Heaven and that she would no longer get to see her. The hardest part was not trying to tell Chloe. The hardest part so far I think has been coming home to a quiet house and an empty dog bed that we see and wonder, "where is Abbey?" I can barely write this because I can barely see the screen anymore. I(neither of us) can actually believe this day has come. We have grown so accustomed to our daily routine that to suddenly no longer have her here to take care of has been really hard and it's only been a couple of days. I'm sure as time goes on it will get easier or at least that's what everybody is saying but it really is not something we were prepared for.

I take great comfort in knowing that she was able to pass here in her bed with me by her side as I keep telling Heather it was not something we wanted to happen(of course) but I would rather have one of us here and have her go because it was time rather than have to take her to the vet and have them make us "decide" to put her to sleep. While I did not know it would happen so quickly, Chloe did get to say goodbye and the last thing she told her was "I love you, Abbey!" Within 5 minutes of that, we would lose her.

I don't mean to bum anybody out, but instead of posting new pictures this week I will save them until next week and I wanted to re-post some old pictures and a few that I found of Abbey I took one day while Chloe was pulling out Abbey's favorite toys and saying "HERE, ABBEY! PLAY WITH THIS!" We were lucky to have her in our lives and we are extremely sorry to see her go but we have wonderful memories and albums full of pictures and we will always remember our sweet girl, Abbey.

-B