Leo, Lilo, Elo, Witto Man...

My little buddy did not take kindly to Santa this year. Can you tell? I love these pics. I didn't really get around to Christmas formal attire for the kids this year due to homelessness but these jammies are their Christmas jammies (Seahawks colors) and they look cute in them. Gotta love the tiara and the cute cupcake hat Alice is wearing. Kind of random. Chris took the kids while I prepped for Ruby's birthday party.

Leo is 18 months old now and so cute and happy and fun. He likes trying to dress himself.

His little ankles are always crossed like this...

can't see the crossed ankles as well here...but...

He's a mess maker.

Yep. Marker all over the bathroom floor. Thhhhhanks.

Leo loves his Alice. He wants her at bedtime sometimes and she loves putting him to bed. Here he is totally sacked out in his sissy's arms.

Leo loves his blankie. He has started taking it out of his crib.

Cuddles at naptime with mommy.

This isn't a happy baby when he discovers his blanket is wet in the dryer.

He really enjoys feeding himself and especially loves nachos.

When he sees my phone he wants to call daddy...can you blame him? Fun! He loves Facetime and especially loves Daddy.

Sometimes he throws mini fits. Not really tantrums, they aren't loud, but he just digs in and is grumpy.

He is always happiest when naked. He loves being naked. He was suck a little performer this particular day.

Playing with daddy is what Leo lives for. He loves his dad so much...just runs to him when he gets home from work, "Dadda!" And then the fun starts. Leo however, doesn't appreciate the vacuum. He HATES loud noises and so that isn't a happy part of the coming home process since Chris lives to vacuum.

Leo devours these squeeze pouches. He eats so many of them, we might go broke because they aren't cheap. I should probably take him off of them but they contain so many veggies and legumes and fruits that would otherwise never be in his diet so I keep buying them. Honestly, he mostly eats puree still for this reason!

We just love our little man. He is starting to show us so many things that are unique to raising boys and we think it is so much fun.

Ruby is TWELVE!

Ruby turned 12! I can't believe my baby is 12! She is such a fun kid. At twelve, she is always making lists of goals she wants to accomplish, and when I find them around the house I really love it when they say things like, "spend thirty minutes playing with Betsey every day". They include things like, "don't be nasty", "read the scriptures daily", etc. I love her good heart full of desires to be her best self. Ruby is a talented swimmer and works out often as much as five times a week, swimming miles each work out. She doesn't love to compete so we don't usually sign up for the meets, but she is competitive with her teammates at practice. She does not like being passed. Ruby works really hard at gymnastics skills as well, and is in the most advanced class offered at the local YMCA. She can do back handsprings, kips, and other things I don't know the names of. She loves her friends from her gym class and especially her coach, who never cares if Ruby is even officially registered for the class. She lets her come pretty much as often as she wants when the new rule is once a week when registered. Teacher's pet. Ruby is a good friend but she would rather be with her one best friend, Kiley, than any group of other friends. She prefers to focus on friends and give them her undivided attention and quality time. She is smart, she loves to write and is very good at creating interesting characters and plots. She a natural speller and is interested in the science and learning about nature, animals and the world around her. Ruby is obsessed with music. She spends lots of time on Spotify tracking down songs she likes and memorizing the lyrics. She is actually a good little rapper and enjoys songs with fast lyrics like that so she can keep up with the artist. Ruby is a dedicated piano player as well as a horse lover...if given the choice between gymnastics, or mucking a horse stall, she'd much the stall just to be close to the horses.

For her birthday, we had her friends over for a makeover party. We had an esthetician come do facials for each girl and while she was working on that we did non-professional hair and nails. It was fun. At the end, the pro did simple makeup on Ruby and taught the girls about good skin and hair care and how to apply makeup. We ended up with a crazy photoshoot.

Kaisa has known Ruby from church for about five years.

Ella Reed was Ruby's first friends when we moved to our current house eight years ago.

We were happy that cousin Sarah could come to the party at the last minute with my mom!

Oh, we had to host the party at the Bushnell house because they were out of town and had so nicely allowed us to use their home while they were gone since our kitchen was all taped and masked off and they were painting with really intensely fumey paints. So we discovered that day that the process wasn't yet done and we ended up asking if we could not only use their kitchen for our family but if we could host a huge birthday party too. They are so good to us!

This is Ruby's "bae". Her best, best friend, Kiley. They have known each other since they were six months old and we just moved into our first house in Puyallup. Reading their Instagram posts about their best friendship is one of the highlights of my adult life. It is so much fun having a girl this age.

The homeschool girls....

The church friends...

Kiley

Reina and Brooklyn being crazy.

Brooklyn moved into our ward like three years ago and is a fun friend for Ru.

Ruby has known this Kiley since she was probably only two or three years old...again, from the old house in Puyallup.

Reina is a fun girl that moved into our ward just like a year ago.

At church when you turn twelve it is a big huge deal because you graduate from primary. Tear. So The next organization of youth is 12-18 called "Young Women" and they came and kidnapped Ruby from primary (I cried, so did Ruby) and it was super emotional and sweet and exciting all at once.

We celebrated Ruby's birthday at my folks' house the day after thanksgiving.

Super cute scarves from Sarah's family.

My mom made her a candy bar card and she bought the supplies and made a nice quilt with Ruby which wasn't quite done yet so we didn't get pics of it yet.

I was so happy that my grandparents could be with us to celebrate, they have been sunbirds for a very long time and we haven't seen them during the month of November in decades.