Hannah is ONE!

HAPPY 1st BIRTHDAY HANNAH!!!!

Hannah, we are so blessed to have you in our family. We absolutely love you and adore you.

In the last year, there has been so much wonder and amazement that you have brought to us. ~First off, who knew daddy could be such a pushover??? Those big, beautiful, blue eyes of yours we fear will one day get you into trouble, but for today, they are a very powerful tool. Keep up the good work. That's my girl!

~Second, wow. We never knew a baby could be this active or advanced physically. You didn't just pass up the milestones, you were jumping and leaping and dancing past them too. You are so bright and intelligent and you truly love to learn. Thank you for teaching us too.

~Third, most people would call it stubborn, sassy, ornery, feisty, dramatic....you get the point, but since it is your Birthday we thought we would call it determined. We are grateful that you are "determined" because later on we know you'll put it to good use and that makes it perfect.

~Finally, we are officially "in the know" of what all this "princess" talk really is about. We were so scared when we found out you were a girl, but now after a year of dresses and bows and ten painted toes, we're delighted. We are so happy to have our princess, too!

We love you Hannah Claire. Happy Birthday Princess!!!

Christmas Morning from Kari's camera

This picture is supposed to be below the next one and obviously turned right side up...I tried flipping it upward and it ended up turning my picture and smashing it so it looked like I was nearly a midget....not to mention it added 50lbs to me. No thanks! So, here it is sideways.

This bag is a Coach bag and it was with my stocking/Santa stuff. Of coarse we set everything up the night before so I totally got to see the bag....curiousity does kill! Clayton pulled a prank on me though and put 2 denim skirts inside the bag.....PUNK!!!! I really wanted a knee length denim skirt, but man when it was put in a Coach bag it totally lost it's coolness. And, as the good wife that I am, I couldn't be all bummed like I wanted to be. He ended up wrapping the purses as a part of the joke and made sure that they were the last things that I opened. Earning his "good hubby points" back. This picture here is where I am still clueless and haven't opened the bag yet. I look like such a doof, but I think it's funny so I had to share!

Clayton had the kids help him unwrap all of his presents. This is one of my favorite shots! He is opening a 22" Flat Screen Monitor for our computer. I think he likes it!

If pacifiers are in heaven, then Hannah is definately there! In her stocking I think there were 8 new pacifiers. She truly could have died happy! She went from one to the next to the next.....

Kaiden's KISS

I told Kaiden that he got to be the "lucky one" that gets to wear the mistletoe. He was fine with it until I told him that mistletoe was what people kissed under. He started crying because he was afraid that an old lady would come and kiss him. As far as I know this has never happened so I am not sure what he is afraid of...maybe there was an old lady sitting near us?????

As you can see he is looking a little terrified. Anything but a kiss.....anything! Stupid mistletoe!!

Christmas Morning

I know these aren't the best pictures, but I still wanted to post them just to give an image of what our morning was like. It was such a great year for us as parents. Leading up to Christmas, this was the first year that my kids REALLY believed in Santa and the magic of the season. For that reason alone, Christmas was SOOOO fun. My favorite part is when they would start misbehaving I could use the whole "Santa's elves are watching you" line. I remember as a kid myself, that was a true threat...but I wasn't sure if a 5 and a 3 year old would really feel the threat as well as I remember. Oh, YES!!! December overall was a fairly calm month in the Bodkin home! Unfortunately we are back to normal. Fighting over the new toys and trying to save the toys from Hannah's slobber!

Christmas morning was wonderful too. Weston and Kaiden actually came into our room and woke us up first before going downstairs. (Christmas Eve we briefed them on this and made it very clear that that is our rule. No running downstairs to rip open presents without mom and dad and Hannah there.) I wasn't sure if the briefing would work, but they surprized us at 6:00 whispering over and over, "Santa came! We were good boys. Santa came! Santa Came!!" Weston's favorite present was his real bow and arrows. Kaiden's favorite present was his Bulldozer tractor. He calls it a tractor with a (snow) plow. Hannah's favorite present is her stroller with 2 babies.

Brrrrrr COLD!

Well this week for us has been FREEZING!!!!!! It started out at -35 below zero earlier this week, then on New Years Eve it was -46. Today it is -51 degrees....only in the Arctic does it get this cold. Crazy!! Actually I was talking to my dad the other day, it was -40 here and he was mentioning that it was +49 degrees there (for the record, he wasn't complaining, just mentioning it in return:) and then it dawned on me that it is 90 degrees colder here than it is there!! 49 degrees isn't exactly warm, but to me right now, I think I would be in some capris and flip flops! Of coarse -50 degrees is COLD, but really it isn't all that bad. Luckily it is very dry here so there isn't any moisture in the air and there isn't usually any wind. For those reasons alone I think it is actually bareable.

Keeping the boys busy....

It was right at the end of A.L.S. (a school) for Clayton and he had TONS of studying to do. Not really that big of a deal, but the boys REALLY wanted to play with daddy. They played for a hour or so until I found a good way to distract them. Let's make a train!!!! They loved it. And, they did ALL of the decorating them selves. I did not touch a single piece of candy ( I was strictly the frosting monitor!)

Dad's awesome Birthday cake!!! All Aboard!

Clayton can make any food turn into a scene, can you tell? Everyone is surprized to find out that he is the one that make the Birthday cakes, but it really is all him. He is so good at it. This year, he did have a bit of help from my mom in a weird long distance sort of way. She found a cake/jello mold that is in the shape of a train engine, 7 train cars, and a caboose. Perfect for Kaiden's party so Clayton just had to think of the rest. I might be a little biased, but I think it turned out great. Kaiden absolutely LOVED it too. He thought it was "awesome"!!!!