First Snow!

Unfortunately we didn't have a white Christmas in Michigan this year. But we did see snow a couple of days later. So we all dressed up our babies in their snowsuits and headed outside for some fun! Emma & Scotty enjoyed being pulled in the sled in the backyard, while the babies got to experience their first snowflakes. None of them seemed to care that much, but they all looked super cute in their snow gear. :) Here is picture of the Dads with their babies:

Schreurs Family Christmas

Eight adults, 2 kiddos, and 3 babies in one house made for a crazy fun Christmas holiday at the Schreurs' house! You know that scene in the movie Home Alone where its complete chaos with everyone running around the house?... that's exactly how it felt sometimes. But it made for good memories we'll never forget. :) A few highlights...

Merry Christmas! Love her cute pink First Christmas PJs with the reindeer feet (thanks Mom!) and pink Santa hat (thanks Nicole!)

Roughhousing with the Uncles is always fun for the kiddos, but exhausting for the uncles. But they all always have so much fun!!

Emma was so excited to get an American Girl doll from Santa. Scotty was my little buddy for the week. Such great kiddos! It's been fun to watch them grow. Wish we lived closer to one another, we miss our family all the time.

The famous TUR-DUC-HEN that Dad Schreurs made for dinner. Don't know what that is? It's a whole deboned chicken stuffed in a deboned duck, which is then all stuffed into a turkey... so 3 meats cooked as one. I was skeptical about this, but it turned out great.

Schreurs Family Christmas photo. Surprisingly it only took a couple of tries to get a good one :)

Merry Christmas!

As always, we had a pretty hectic holiday schedule. Spent Christmas Eve at Joe's house, Christmas morning at my mom's house, then back to Joe's house for the afternoon, followed by the 26th at my Dad's house. It was a lot of running around, but so nice to spend time with everyone over the holidays. Last year at this time we were hanging out on the beach in Australia by ourselves, so this year was back to "normal" going back and forth between houses trying to see everyone. It took a lot of coordination, and I'm glad it all worked out ok.

Here are a few pictures from Christmas at my mom's house.

Smiling at Grandma Christmas morning. (Thanks for the pink Santa hat Nicole! She looked so cute in it!) :)

Hanging out with her Auntie & Uncle. Elodie loves Danielle, she always gives her lots and lots of smiles. She even laughed for her (her second laugh ever!)

Elodie had soooo many presents - and then she slept through opening all of them! She's such a spoiled girl already! Thank you everyone for all of the wonderful gifts.

Love, love, love this! Michael had this sketch of Elodie done by an artist in Savannah. It turned out AMAZING!!!

Triplets

Both of Joe's sisters also recently had babies. Joe's mom refers to them as "the triplets" since they were all born so close in age. Haley was born a week before Elodie, and Koen is 7 months old. It was fun to meet the other babies, and introduce the cousins to one another. It made the holidays pretty hectic and crazy at times, but very fun and lots of memories.

And what's more fun than dressing up babies and posing them for pictures... :)

Meeting for the first time

Matching Christmas pjs's

Cute fleece vest sets, and nice smiles from the girls!

Santa babies!

Birthday x 2

My brothers and I all have December birthdays. Most of you think that would be awful, especially since they are all around Christmas... but actually it's been great! Growing up my parents always made sure that each of us had out own special day and our own separate birthday party. But now that we're all grown up and live so far away from one another, we decided that it would be fun to celebrate them all together. So we did one combined celebration at my mom's house, and another at my dad's house.

Happy Birthday to Brian who turned 23, Michael who turned 26, and me who turned 28! :)

Birthday Party #1

Birthday Party #2

Elodie's Baptism

We had Elodie baptized at Prince of Peace Lutheran Church as soon as we arrived back in Kalamazoo on Sunday, December 18th. Unfortunately since Christmas and New Years both fell on a Sunday, we were limited on a date that we could choose for her baptism. Because of this many people were not able to be there for the special event. The grandparents stood in for her Godparents, Lori and Lloyd, who had not arrived yet.

She cried when we passed her over to Pastor Dave. She was tired, and didn't enjoy being held cradled "like a baby." She enjoys sitting upright now and being held so that she can see everything. The time change and major jet lag didn't help her mood either. But after they placed the water on her head and dried her off, she did much better. Pastor Dave sang a song and walked up and down the aisles with her, and she was perfect.

Afterwards, we had a little party to celebrate her baptism and give everyone the opportunity to meet her. Thank you Mom & Dad Schreurs for hosting the party. And thank you to my mom for ordering all of the food and cake. The party was a success and she was a very tired baby girl afterwards...

Elodie Meets Grandpa & Great Grandma

So glad Elodie was finally able to meet my Dad and Grandma. The most difficult part about living in Japan is being so far away from family. It makes me so sad that Elodie was already 3 months old by the time she was able to meet our families. Leaving to go back to Japan is going to be difficult...

Play Date

Yumi hosted a play group last week for new moms & babies. Since all of the babies were 9 months and younger, I suppose it was more of a play date for the mommies. ;) We met most of the women in our mom & baby exercise class. It was fun to get the moms together outside of class to mingle and talk about our babies. Hopefully we'll continue to meet a couple of times a month.

Yumi was a wonderful host! She pre-made gingerbread cookie dough, so we were all able to cut out shapes, bake the cookies, and then decorate them. We took turns in the kitchen, while others watches the babies.

Cutely decorated gingerbread cookies! Looking forward to our next play date next year.

Monkey

We bought Elodie a changing pad + toy bar from Babies R Us. Best idea ever!! She LOVES it so much, which makes diaper changes more enjoyable for both of us. She especially loves the monkey. :) She stares at him, talks to him, and gives lots of smiles. Very cute!

3 Months!

I can't believe our baby girl is 3 months old! Time flies! It feels like we just brought her home from the hospital. She continues to grow and change all the time. She has become very observant, and loves to just look around at everything. She has been on the quiet side, but is finally starting to make some soft vocalizations and we're hoping she'll even start to laugh sometime this next month. She's very smiley and happy, and we love to watch her grow.

We weighed her yesterday, and she has now over doubled her birth weight: 13 pounds! We are taking her to a pediatrician in Michigan while we're back over the holidays, so we're curious to see how she compares to other U.S. babies and what percentile she is in.

Also, we're happy to announce that she has slept between 10-12 hours every night this week! We're hoping that this trend continues for a long time!!! It lets Joe and I have some alone time before bed, and still allows us to get a full nights sleep too. It's been wonderful!

Here are a few photos from her 3 month photo shoot! :)

Sayonara Mio & Joe!

Our good friends, Mio & Joe, are ending their 3 year stay in Nagoya and heading back to Seattle. Joe and Joe work together, so have become quite good friends. And Mio was actually my first friend here and the one who introduced me to all of her girlfriends. She is the glue to our group of friends, who is constantly making plans and setting up dates and fun events for us all to participate in. They will both greatly be missed!

We had one final girls night before everyone left for the holidays to say goodbye to Mio. Joe watched Elodie for the night, and hung out with the other Dads and babies. It felt great to have some girl time and get out on my own for a bit. :)

We went to a restaurant downtown known for their amazing atmosphere. It was lit entirely by candles, and had beautiful table clothes, pillows, and drapes. It would be a fun place for a date night, as it had a pretty romantic feel.

I thought the cuisine was supposed to be a variety of Asian foods, but found the entree menu to be all pizza and pasta. There were a variety of appetizers though, and were all fantastic: cheese fondue, salads, crab croquettes, & spring rolls. I ordered a 4-cheese pizza for my main course, and was really disappointed in it. I don't now how it's possible to go wrong with a cheese pizza, but it was terrible. They attempted to put an alfredo sauce on it instead of tomato sauce (which normally I wouldn't care about, but it did not taste good), and the cheese was a little dry and crumbly. I ended up just eating the crust. Everyone else ordered pasta, and all enjoyed their meals - so next time, I'll definitely get the pasta.

Yumi ordered a "Cinderella" drink, and it was served in a glass slipper! Very cute! It even had an ankle bracelet.

A very fun night with great friends! Sayonara Mio & Joe, you will be missed!