By the light of the Christmas tree

I got Henry undressed one morning, then ran to get him clothes, when I came back, he wasn't where I left him...

he and William were playing by the Christmas tree, each with an ornament, of coarse.

Then, john woke up and joined the party.

we love Christmas!

The End.

8 months

1 Taste of Home Magazine + 2 8-month olds

=

1 happy crawler + 1 entertained roller

Yes, that is Henry pulling himself up...
...and John now rolls, wherever he wants to go...

I'm guessing this means they are going to enjoy Christmas morning-a lot!


Can't believe they're 8 months old today...

a Taylor Christmas/Thanksgiving

Christmas doesn't normally come before Thanksgiving, but this year, for the Taylors it did, and we enjoyed it!

We started off our week long adventure with Christmas crafts at Aunt Clara's house and we decorated sugar cookies too-yum. The kids love to take them to the neighbors and doorbell ditch-this is of course instigated by Joseph and Nathan. I bet the neighbors wondered why they were getting Christmas cookies on Nov 22!

The kids+adults had a great time playing beatles rockband-it was pretty hilarious.

Sunday, we had our traditional Christmas dinner, followed by the kids and the nativity-the shortest one I've ever seen:)

Then we opened our Christmas jammies and stockings, aren't we all so cute and matching (thanks tricia)

here are a few cousins (william is the one taylor has his hands on) They really love eachother and it was so fun to see William get to play with them.

Grandpa with Henry and John and their cute headbands-thanks Mike and Jess!
William really loves these headbands and wants the twins to wear them all the time.

One day in SLC we went to the zoo-it was freezing, but we had to whole place to ourselves and there were lots of baby animals-an elephant, 2 tiger cubs, orangutan, and giraffe.

William with the peckary

Next, we drove down to bluff, UT where the Hole In the Rock pioneers settled (among them George Hobbs-Dave's great-great-grandpa) Gerald Lund just wrote a book about them.
William on stilts

pushing a handcart

check out Grandpa's site
and this one too (great pics of landmarks and read the book-it's great!)

William and Caleb in the grader.

The Taylors-all of us!
We went to Jacob Lake for the Rich family Thanksgiving-almost everyone was there 80+ relatives-we pretty much maxed out the dining room in the restaurant, but boy was it yummy and fun to see everyone's families.

Here's our best shot-trying to keep William in the picture was the hard part.

Nana and Grandpa with the grandkiddos

What a great week. We love traveling even though it can be challenging with the 3 kids. Mostly through the airport-3 carseats, double stroller, 3 suitcases, and a carryon. Luckily Southwest is awesome and we could check everything, but getting to and from the check in counter was a trick.

The highlight of our traveling was when Dave had Henry in the bjorn and William on his shoulders and we were standing in the family boarding line. Everyone else on our flight was waiting right there with us. We are a spectacle wherever we go as it is (we get the, "wow you have your hands full" all the time) and William was putting on a show and keeping the people entertained-at first doing cute things like singing Twinkle little star and little house in the woods, but them he started to pick his nose, so we said, "William get your finger out of your nose" so what does he do? He wipes it in David's hair-awesome! That got giggles from lots of people!

We hope to make another trip to Utah/Jacob this spring-we are still recovering from this trip because we had so much fun!

Grampa and Nana

We enjoyed a visit from Nana and Grampa last weekend.

We enjoyed swimming, the country mercantile and all the yummies it has to offer, a long drive out in farm country and a view of the hanford reach, lots of stories, singing, and stake conference with Elder Holland.

What a fun weekend. Thanks Nana and Grampa!

William enjoyed all the one-on-one time-he loves attention (imagine that)

He swam with grampa for a long time.

The boys both loved singing songs and getting held all the time by Grampa & Nana (didn't get a pic of john somehow)

AND, they also brought us a VAN

We have happily joined the van brigade and best of all, the kids and I are not apartment-bound anymore (not that I see myself heading out with all three often, it's just nice to have the option)

Revised: Our lives are about to change...

Take a look at what was happening at our house today! Yikes.

Henry has been doing this-yup, that's right-all fours! He won't just sit and play anymore.

Here's John "helping" me with laundry that I already folded. This is all familiar, but happened about 2 years ago.

John always has his tongue hanging out, in anticipation of food coming. He had eaten lime jigglers which turned his tongue a disgusting shade of green.

Henry is really quite good at feeding himself but what a mess!

I just thought this was funny. William cutting onions-he said, "it really hurts like this" and he poked himself in the eyes to explain the pain.

You may ask (as I do myself), "what will I do when they learn to crawl?" The answer is, I have no idea!

Sounds like I will be running three different ways pretty soon...ahhh my life with twins and a toddler. We wouldn't want it any other way!

Williamisms

Just a post to commemorate all of the funny little things William says/does to help me.

He commiserates with the babies. "I knooow, Henry, I knooow"

and soothes them, "Just a minute, John-John, just a minute"

and "Don't worry about it guys"

He greets them when they are all in the car together, "Hey chubby little guys"

Or "my baby brothers"

He sings to them in a super high voice, "I love William, he loves me, we love daddy, yesiree...."

And, just now he said to the babes, "oh, let me tell you a story about a pteranadon who rode the dinosaur train..."

He also runs to tell me, "John's cryin'" or "I go check on Henry"

We are definitely watching what we say around here!

He entertains them by: jumping off the couch, sucking on their binkies, sharing his cars (that is a true act of love), giving them their pacifiers, and today throwing wet wipes at them (he had them giggling like crazy).

I called one of the babies, "sweetie pie" the other day. William said, "no he isn't, I'm you're sweetie pie" We talked about it for awhile, but he still insisted he was my only sweetie pie. Finally a few days later he said, "you have lots of sweetie pies." He counted off William, Henry, John, and Daddy. I said, "hmm, that's what I thought"

This is all in addition, of course, to the frequent messy kisses, exuberant big squeezes, occasional tackles, and the one time he fed Henry a fishy cracker (which he swallowed whole and finally coughed up)!

Aren't they beautiful?

He ran from house to house, and wanted to go into the houses too-apparently we need to teach stranger danger.

Henry sitting up in the bath.

Our cute little John-John

Happy Halloween

from our three little pumpkins!

PS. for those inquiring minds, 6 months numbers...

John
18 lb 59%
26 inches long 33%
Head 45 cm 82%

Henry

17 lb 11 oz 53%
25.8 inches long 26%
Head 43.5 cm 42%

And yes, we do realize that john's head is large-it's just like mine (poor kid)

6 months

6 months
Some of our favorite moments with Henry and John this month...

...when Henry giggled hysterically while trying to grab John's feet mid-kick...

...when John and I went to get Henry out of the crib from a nap and he (John) had the biggest grin ever when he saw Henry...

...when they sit up facing eachother and have a tug-o-war with their toys...

...when they sat up facing one another so long that their foreheads finally meet in the middle...

...when they snuggle up to eachother at night in their crib...

...when they sleep through the other crying at night...

...when one (Henry) sleeps better at night, and one (John) takes better naps...

...when they learned how to wiggle out of their swings, and we found Henry on the floor one morning cooing away (yeah, I know we're awesome parents)...

...when they roll back to front, and are already wiggly when we change their diapers...

...when they grab cups, plates, etc right off the table while we are eating...

...when they squawk because they want another bite of food faster please...

...when they try to nurse on one another-it never gets old...

...when they both giggle uncontrollably at William sucking on one of their binkies...

...when Henry figured out how to blow raspberries and the next week John figured it out too...

...when they smile-which is all the time!