Oh Grace

We were on the way home from a friend's house tonight and Lydia was screaming (she is still in the "I hate my car seat" phase). We were listening to Pete the Cat and Grace started making up her own lyrics to the chorus which made me laugh out loud:

I love my Lydia. I love my Lydia. She's screaming so loud. I can't hear anything.

So funny! :)

Christmastime

We had a busy and fun Christmas! It felt like we were constantly going for about a week so it's been nice to just relax the last few days. Here's a little of what we've been up to:

We did manage to get all the grandchildren together for a picture at my mom and dad's. Unfortunately I didn't get one of all the Hastings grandchildren. Hopefully I'll remember next time.

Grace, Samuel and I had fun making these reindeer, snowmen and Santa cookies to leave for Santa on Christmas Eve.

I wish I would've gotten a better picture but sometimes it just doesn't work out when you are in an audience. Here is Samuel as a sheep at the Christmas program at church.

Again, sitting in an audience doesn't allow for the best pictures! You can see Grace if you look in between the girl in the front and the microphone. She was an angel.

This is Grace's preschool class at their Christmas program. The church was packed in the evening so you could hardly even see her but luckily there was an early program too that wasn't quite as packed so Samuel, Lydia and I got to sneak to the middle aisle to get a few pictures.

Silly Entertainment

Here was our entertainment for the day. :) Hope you enjoy (and hope it works)!

Mmm...peanut butter

I made homemade peanut butter this weekend and it is awesome. I didn't take a picture of mine but here is a picture from the blog I got the recipe from. I left mine a little bit more chunky but only because my food processor is not super high tech and I didn't feel like sitting there manually holding the button down for 4-5 minutes. :) Anyway...this doesn't take long and is so worth it!

Homemade Peanut Butter

3 cups dry roasted salted peanuts
5-6 tablespoons oil
2 tablespoons granulated sugar
2 tablespoons honey

Heat oven to 350 degrees F.

Place peanuts on a cookie sheet and bake 10 minutes, or until lightly toasted.

Combine peanuts, oil, sugar and honey in a food processor; process until finely ground (4-5 minutes). The honey is optional but it adds a great sweetness and then you don't need as much sugar. You really can't mess it up...just keep dumping until you're happy!

Lydia at 2 months old

Lydia is already 2 months old! I'm amazed at how fast time goes. She is starting to smile a lot every day. A week ago she started spitting up a lot and 2 days in a row she pooped about 6 or 7 times. After the 2nd day of this I noticed a little bit of blood in her diaper. The next morning I noticed a little bit of blood again so I called the doctor and took her in. She had an ultrasound of her stomach and an x-ray of her abdomen. She also had some lab work done. I fed her right before we left for the doctor but they couldn't get her in for an ultrasound until 3:30 and I wasn't allowed to feed her until after it was done. It was a looong afternoon for her. Steve left work as soon as he was done with his kids so he could stay at home with Grace and Sam so they wouldn't have to go to the hospital. Once we were done with all of the tests at the hospital we went back to the doctor. Luckily everything came back normal. He believes it is probably viral but I am not convinced. I asked him if it could be an allergy or sensitivity to milk. He said that if she didn't seem better by the end of the week that it could be a possibility. To be on the safe side I have stopped eating anything with milk in it. The last couple of days have been kind of a roller coaster. Today has been totally normal for her. She's been happy and taken good naps. Yesterday you could tell she felt unsettled and she didn't nap well. I'm hoping we're on the right track to figuring out what's going on with her little belly. I haven't had anything with milk for a week so by the end of this week it should hopefully be completely out of my system and out of her system and we'll see how she's doing. Besides this past week when she's had a couple of rough moments she's been a happy girl. She loves her bath time and loves to be talked to. She is getting to the age where she is not a huge fan of her car seat. She will often fall asleep but if I don't get the timing right then she's usually mad instead. :) She is such a sweet girl and in 2 short months I can't remember what our family was like without her!