jillian on xmas morning.MOV

Christmas 2010

We hope everyone had a very Merry Christmas. It was a good Christmas at the Deibert house and really fun with Jillian being older this year. She started to say Santa a little as we continued to talk about him, but it sounded more like "Sansa". Jillian REALLY liked opening up her presents this year and does a good job ripping it! On Christmas Eve we went to Jason's step-brother's house in the Delafield area to celebrate with them and Jason's dad and step-mom Kathy. It was a nice dinner and fun to play with new toys (and boy did she, they have a FANTASTIC toy room for Hailey!). Grandma and Grandpa got Jillian a fun tunnel that she went right into when we opened it!


Then Christmas morning Jillian woke us up early in excitement of Santa's visit and we opened up our family presents before we headed down to Dekalb to celebrate with my family. Santa left Jillian's gifts un-opened and right in front of the tree. She was very excited to see a Jillian-sized pink polka-dot chair and a pink race car with a talking steering wheel! She jumped right on them!


We opened up the other presents, had our hot chocolate and got ready to head down to Dekalb! Jillian even helped mommy and daddy open their presents!


We got down to my parents house around noon and the other family members started arriving shortly after...there were lots of presents to open and food to eat. It was a long, exciting day for Jillian (all with no afternoon nap). Jillian had a lot of fun playing with all her cousins and chasing the dogs around the house. For not taking a nap, she was a pretty good girl=)




Sunday we woke up and had a big family brunch (Shaun and Misty's family stayed the night as well and Grandma and Grandpa came back from their house) because we were heading to St. Charles to take a family picture at the mall. The pictures went okay, the kids were tired and not wanting to take that many pictures but were able to get a couple good ones. It was fun to be able to get four generations of Murrays in one picture! Jillian did a pretty good job so we rewarded her with a ride on the carousel...which she loved!


We stayed one more night and headed home on Monday morning. My dad left early to head North to snowmobile, but grandma went to work late so she could play a little longer with Jillian.


When we got home daddy went to work on some of Jillian's new toys. Grandma and grandpa gave her a kitchen set and Jillian wanted to play with that first. She just had a blast going through all of her new toys! I think we might have to build an addition to the house with all the stuff we brought home. Jillian does not lack love or family who give to her!



All that building and playing just tuckered Jillian and daddy out...so they took a nap!


We hope you enjoyed your holiday as much as we did! Merry Christmas=)

Urgent Care

We have thankfully had a pretty easy time with Jillian as a baby, no real scares of falling, cuts or ER visits...now that we have entered toddler hood it is a whole new ball game! We had our first visit to urgent care last Wednesday (yes before Christmas and yes before tons of family where going to be seeing her). She found the stairs that go to the upstairs bedroom unblocked and decided to venture up without supervision, and tumbled down! She only fell down like four steps but that was enough to take a good gash out of her left eyebrow and a few other bruises. It of course happened as I was getting cleaned up and ready to take Cole (our 4 year old friend we watch 3 days a week) to school. So I had to quickly get her cleaned up and tears kissed so we could get out the door. She fell asleep in the car and took her afternoon nap like normal, but when she woke up it was still bleeding (oozing out the bandaide). So I called our pediatrician (yes, I was that first time mother and called). The nurse I talked with suggested we go to urgent care to get it checked out because it was still bleeding (they like it to stop within 20 minutes). So I called Jason, he came home and got us and off we went! We did peel the bandaide off before we went (traumatic experience #1) and it was oozing just a little. We got to the urgent care, checked in and waited about 20 minutes. We went back to the triage area and they tried to get Jillian's heart rate with the little finger thing but she wouldn't keep her finger still for it to take a reading. So I had to hold her hand while the nurse squeezed her finger to keep it still (traumatic experience #2) it still wouldn't take a reading so she decided to try a different way with a soft fabric that wrapped around her finger and it still would NOT take a reading. So they took us back to a room and tried on her toe, it took a minute but finally got a reading. Then they had to take her temperature and said that they take them rectally (traumatic experience #3) and boy did she NOT like that. She peed all over as she was taking it and we had to change her diaper, clothes and the bedding of what she was sitting on. They finally left and said the doctor would be right in...yea right, we waited and waited. Meanwhile Jillian decided to explore the room and see what kind of trouble she could get into...


The doctor came in and of course after all that waiting the cut had dried pretty well and didn't look as bad...so we didn't need stitches afterall! He checked out her ears and nose (traumatic experience #4), then seeing Jillian acting "normal" decided that she was fine. He said he'd get our discharge paper work and we'd be on our way...of course that's another 10-15 minutes longer, so daddy entertained Jillian while we waited.

Oh Christmas Tree Oh Christmas Tree..

Jillian decorated her first Christmas tree with mommy and daddy...





...how lovely are thy branches!

My little chef!

Here is my little chef cooking in her "kitchen" with her new apron...

Chalk drawings...

A few months back Jason and I made a chalk board for Jillian in her playroom. Just the other day Jillian was finally interested in it...here is her art work.


Well she started to get a little carried away and drawing on the frame...that was the end of our artistic fun for the day!

Cookie Day Weekend, 2010

Every year my mother's side of the family gets together to bake Christmas cookies. Only the girls...and we have a blast! We make enough cookies for 7 families and we make roughly 8 different kinds of cookies. So its not like we get together and just hang out...we really work hard baking hundreds of cookies. Each year we rent a different house and all travel to the location and stay a night or two. We have been in search of the perfect house for years. When this began 30 or so years ago my mom and her sisters would go to my Grandparents house to do the baking. When we all were old enough (and the moms were ready to share the holiday tradition) the cousins and I joined in. When my grandparents passed away and the house was sold we started going to different rental places (Galena IL, Delavan WI, Lake Geneva WI) but found a place near Burlington, WI that we all really liked. This is a great time to spend with family and get a break from our everyday lives (teaching, working, being mothers or wives) and just have some girly fun! This year we all got there on Friday night and had a Margarita or two. Then we got to work on Saturday and baked all day. We typically go out for a nice dinner on Saturday night (who wants to cook dinner after baking all day?!) but the weather was pretty bad so we stayed in. That might have been the most fun I have had in a long time. We had some yummy vodka cocktails and played dominoes and catch phrase...kicking back and having fun! It truly was one of those nights where we laughed until we cried=) Here are some pictures of my family tradition...we hope you have happy holiday season.

Missing friends...

After the long Thanksgiving break and not having any friends over for a few days (well Nolan or Cole), Jillian was very excited to see Nolan and Cole...


Tuesday when Cole was here it was pretty chilly and icky out, so we had a popcorn movie picnic...

Thanksgiving 2010

This year for Thanksgiving we headed to Portage, WI and celebrated with Jason's dad and Kathy. We had a fantastic "northern" Thanksgiving. Jason's brothers Todd and his wife Meg with their 4 kids (Anna, Leah, Isaac and James), Troy and his wife Dena and their 2 kids (Elsa and Sam) along with Kathy's son Pete and his wife Dawn and their daughter (hailey) were all there to celebrate with us. Jillian just had a fantastic time running around with her cousins. We had a wonderful meal prepared by Kathy and lots of visiting with family. We stayed over to Friday and spent time with Todd, Meg and the kids. Kathy's birthday is on the 28th (Happy Belated Birthday!) and so Meg and I took her to see Burlesque (so good!). A nice girls afternoon=) Then we headed home on Saturday morning. Here are some fun photos of our Gobble Gobble weekend.

Our Little Turkey!



We had a little craft planned for the kids and here is Hailey and Jillian showing theirs off.


Jillian found Grandpa's big boots and decided to try them on!


A little "pajama" cousin love!


Thanks for the fun holiday weekend!