Maloney Visit

Waiting for Grandma Maloney and Aunt Jennifer to get here from the airport for their visit!

Aunt Jennifer gets to hold Rachel first.

Now it's Grandma's turn to hold her namesake for the first time.

All three kids in/on the shopping cart.  :)

Mommy's little Love Bug!

Aunt Jennifer and Grandma made some easy Christmas cookies with Luke so we could still have Christmas goodies even though I wasn't ready to do a lot yet.

We hung up our stockings!  Rachel's wasn't made yet, so our mantle still had just four stockings.

My little sweetie.

She looks so tiny!

Very interested in looking at Jonathan.  :)

Grandma & Luke mixing up some peanut butter blossom cookie dough.

I helped roll them, dip them in sugar & top them with kisses, since that was easy to do sitting down.  Standing activities still wore me out pretty quickly.

Joanna brought us a meal one night.  I think this is the time she told us her news that she was pregnant again with baby number 4!

My dad joined the Maloney visit for a couple days, and enjoyed meeting his newest grandbaby.

During Rachel's first Hughes family dinner, we celebrated Sophia's 6th birthday.

More baby holding - this time with her eyes open.

Modeling the new hat Grandma Maloney made for her to wear when we walk to drop off Luke at school on chilly mornings.

Luke & Jonathan enjoying Grandpa time!

A fierce game of Battleship.

Multi-tasking.

An early "Christmas morning" present opening with my family.

Sleeping through the festivities.

Our family Christmas card picture.

Grandpa & Grandma with all the grandkids.

Aunt Jennifer with her niece & nephews.

The solo picture of Rachel we used on our Christmas card / baby announcement.

Snuggling with Grandpa.  The boys have pictures like this with Grandpa also:

Luke

Jonathan

November 2012

Luke riding his bike during a family trip to the park.

Jonathan getting help climbing on the playground equipment - getting braver!

Swinging buddies!

Celebrating Aunt Tara's birthday.

8 months pregnant.

My sweet boys!

Playing knight & prince in the backyard.  Luke got more into it than Jonathan did.  :P

They got along pretty well these days.  :)

37 weeks pregnant - getting closer!

On Thanksgiving Day, Nathan had the fun idea to have a Turkey Hunt with the boys.  We started by making several turkeys out of hand prints on construction paper.  We filled each one with a few candy corns so when they were successfully "hunted" the boys could eat them.  :)

Ready to go!

We had hid some of them in the house...

and some of them in the backyard.

The boys had to find them with minimal help, then shoot them with their dart guns.  Once they got a hit, they could retrieve it and divvy up the candy corns inside.

It's a Thanksgiving tradition for me to forget to take pictures during our family festivities.  :P  But, here are several of the cousins eating dessert together - the first picture taken with my new-to-me iphone!

Enjoying baby James.

We got pictures of both boys with Great Grandma.

Jonathan lining up his cars around the coffee table.  I remember when Luke used to do this a lot.

Airplane time with the cousins!

Taking a "pregnant pause" with my buddy instead of tackling that pile of laundry in the background!  :P

38 weeks pregnant!  This is how far I got with Jonathan's pregnancy.  I was so thankful to make it at least this far again.  :)

Joanna had come over to take my pregnancy picture for me and insisted on getting a friend shot together.  Little did I know, but she was newly pregnant herself!  She wasn't sharing her news yet, but later I found out that we were both pregnant in this picture!