THREE!!!!

Today my baby girl turned three! 

We celebrated by throwing a princess party with tiaras and jewelry and princess dresses (and a pink castle cake) 

You were so excited that it was FINALLY your birthday

You pretty much smiled all day long. 

Annika you are a treasure. We love you so much and had such a great day celebrating with you today. 

Football

Daddy and his girls are ready to watch some football! Needless to say my bay area boy is just a little excited.

Rain

The rain has finally come, so we're spending our morning hunting for puddles!

One big ole' update

I know Christmas has come and gone and you are all on to New Year's resolutions and such, but we just got our tree down yesterday and have finally returned to some semblance of "normal life" over here and I wanted to get these pictures of Christmas up so this 2011 Christmas season would not be forgotten (how's that for a run on sentence?) . So here is one big monster Christmas post from the Jungs!

We kicked off the holiday season with a SF getaway for me and Eric. It was wonderful. It will be a holiday tradition.

 Gorgeous weather called for a bike ride to Tiburon and a ferry ride back to the city. We came in just as the city was lighting up. It was beautiful.

Our little family Christmas with the girls. Annika was so excited about Jesus' birthday...mainly because it means HERS is next;) But it was fun to be able to really talk to her about what Christmas is all about this year. She has such a tender little heart.

 Annika loved her tree this year. We finally took it down yesterday and she told me..."its ok mommy, it will come home next year."

 All our little Christmas ballerinas.

A big THANK YOU to everyone for all of the presents. We have been busy busy over hear lately playing with all of our new toys! 

 We had such a great time during both Thanksgiving and Christmas seeing so many of our family and friends. Thank you all for special memories!

 This was Christmas morning before church. I had just worked a 12 hour night shift and we messed up the service time so we killed some time at starbucks in the local Safeway...the only thing open on Christmas morning. It is crazy how many frazzled people are at the grocery store on Christmas morning by the way...madness...

Really this Christmas season felt a little funny as we have been blessed with the most unbelievably pleasant Spring-like weather. Spring is, hands down, without a doubt, my favorite time of year so more than anything this year we enjoyed playing outside!

The Nutcracker!

What a fun day we ladies had at the ballet. Annika and Morgan (and my sister and i of course) were so excited to go out on the town for a fancy lunch and to see the dancers. They did amazingly well and we made it through the entire performance. It was so fun to see their eyes light up when they saw the pretty dancers. Thanks mom for a great day!

Pizza night!

We got to spend Thanksgiving this year in the midwest with some of the Van Essen clan. We had to miss the big reunion this past summer so Eric promised me we could take the kids out for the holiday. I want our kids to see what a big, fun, crazy family they have out there and to grow up having memories of spending time with cousins  and more cousins and more cousins just like I did. 

Annika was so excited to go on the airplane she would ask us every morning leading up to the trip if we would be going "arriba y abajo" (Eric's editor's note "up and down") on the airplane today. Finally we woke her up early Thanksgiving morning and headed to SFO. We were greeted with beautiful weather and open arms. Aunt Gloria and Uncle Brian were amazingly hospitable allowing us to use their car, securing two car seats for us and two pack n plays...guess who are itching to be grandparents;) We stayed a couple of days with them and a night with Aunt Marcia and Uncle Ryan and then a couple of nights with Gramma Great. We got to see 4 sets of aunts and uncles, 10 cousins their spouses and many of the greats and of course got to play many fun rounds of cards over many cups of coffee. Hopefully we can make it out for a big reunion soon. Annika will be in heaven with all of those cousins who she affectionately calls her "friends". (Uncle Brian I have to say she talks about you the most. You definitely won her little heart. You and Charlie of course.) 

With all the fun and festivities we were only able to get a few pictures. Here they are:

 Having so much fun at the airport. Annika was a great little traveler. We hadn't taken her on an airplane since she turned 2 so it was fun to see her excitement this time.

 Aunt Marcia, Annika and Tucker. The girls followed poor Tucker around all day.

 Audrey and her babies at Gramma Greats. We have similar pictures of Annika and those bears when she was a baby.

 Audrey and Gramma Great

 The girls did so well. We were not sure how it would go moving from house to house but they were troopers and slept amazingly well. Eric is ready to dig a basement and put our kids down there to sleep. We had to wake them up from their naps so that they would go to bed on time.

 Looking at the airplanes

 Audrey attacking me to get the phone. I can hardly take a picture of her anymore now.

We do have dozens of photos just like these from each leg of our trip. Whatever it takes to keep them occupied right?