christmas 2012

quite possibly the best thing about living in california is living close to family, especially so around the holidays where the only travel required is as few hours by car. this year the whole shafer family gathered at john and kristens beautiful new big house in folsom for christmas. it's always fun getting these three rascals together. grandma provided some fun christmas crafts. 

 on christmas eve we visited a fantastic train museum in downtown sacramento.

in the evening we had the traditional ham dinner and program. grandma had lots of surprises, my favorite being the felt santa beards! william would have nothing to do with them, but ben looked handsome as santa.

of course christmas morning was the highlight. we started with a nice fire and checking out the stockings. lucy was there the whole time too, she just doesn't demand as much attention.

then onto presents! and a lot of presents there were. william asked for a fire truck from santa and he got one! along with a fireman hat.

grandpa made chairs for all the boys. it was just what i wanted! everyone was spoiled, it was a great morning. it was a struggle to get william to open all his gifts there were so many new toys to play with. 

 christmas really is more fun with kids. happy christmas!

december events

in addition to celebrating birthdays (mine & williams) we also saw three different santa's. the first official one we visited with our neighbor josie. there was no line so we took our time winding our way through to warm the kids up. 

surprisingly william didn't resist sitting on santa's lap. he asked for a fire truck. lucy was asleep so she'll have to wait until next year to meet santa.

we also received lots of rain in december. one of william's favorite activities is putting on his boots and going puddle jumping. 

 one day we even managed a family photo.

william is 2!

this year williams birthday was on 12/12/12 so of course we had to celebrate! the day started with balloons hanging from the door when he woke up.

he still doesn't quite understand the concept of birthdays or parties so we just invited our church's play group and a few other friends to come over to play in the morning. we ended up having a pretty big group!  

he knows 'happy birthday' and loved singing it. he didn't know what to think of the candle, but cousin madelyn helped blow it out.

he took one bite of the cupcake and was done.

in the evening we sang again and opened presents with ben. he opened one present which happened to be a train and was not interested in opening any others. so ben and i opened the rest!

happy 2nd birthday william! you've made the past two years amazing!

lucy's blessing

as previously mentioned lucy's two month birthday was also her blessing day at church. it was extra special because her cousins charlotte rieben and luke cherrington were blessed the same day. the proud parents and babies.

it was a big day for the forrest family and all our respective inlaws, in total we had over 30 people come celebrate the day.

grandma forrest now has nine grandchildren! william was done with sitting still for photos so this was the closest we could get to getting all the grandkids together.

the night before the blessings everyone gathered at jeffery's hamburgers for dinner. william loved all the attention from his grandparents.

the afternoon after the blessing we had a casual lunch with my parents, john, kristen and jacob. lucy was a dream all day. we are so thrilled to have her a part of our family!

lucy 2 months

lucy's two month birthday was special as it also happened to be her blessing day. what made it extra special was her cousins charlotte rieben and luke cherrington were blessed as well. besides a huge rainstorm making it an adventure getting to church, it was a great day.

lucy even got to wear the same blessing dress i wore over 30 years ago.

lucy continues to be a dream baby and such a welcome addition to our family. she is becoming more interactive and gives us lots of smiles. she's a good sleeper and is even starting to give us longer stretches at night.

she is also growing nicely and at her two month doctor appointment weighed in at 10 lbs 3 ounces and 22 inches. we love our little girl!