Happy Birthdays!

February 6th is now officially the most exciting day of the year for our household. This year to celebrate the girls' first birthday (and Aaron's 35th), we had a small backyard-cupcake-and-balloon party with family. It was great that so many people were able to join us to celebrate, and we lucked out with fantastic weather which meant we spent most of the afternoon outside in our new backyard.
Cousin Mike fed the girls their lunch off of the red plate. Enjoying some playtime before cake.Lily wasn't super impressed by her cupcake and Penny got spooked by the loud crowd singing Happy Birthday.But they eventually got the hang of it.So many presents!

Aloha!

Schneider family vacation in Hawaii!

Not a single picture of both girls smiling at the camera, but we sure tried!

Happy New Year!

Even with a little bit of snot dripping out of their noses, these little ones are so darn cute! The girls also spent some time on New Years Day out on the lawn with Papa Dave and Nana.

Christmas 2010

We somehow didn't manage to capture much by photo, but here is at least one picture of the girls in their Christmas dresses from Grammie.

Christmas traditions

A childhood tradition that I have carried into my adulthood is how after driving out to the Christmas tree farm and cutting down our tree, we would stop at a Greek deli for take out. Even though Aaron and I simply pulled out our super cheesy fake tree from the garage this year, we took the girls to celebrate with gyros and hummus at a local Greek restaurant.

First Hanukkah

Four generations of Siegels

Four generations of Schneiders.

Daddy love.

Hanukkah pony.

Lily is moving and shaking

It seems like things are different every day.

Penny has learned how to crawl pretty well, but Lily has been struggling a bit with getting herself moving. Today was a big step for them - we spent 45 minutes after dinner tonight playing keep away with a lego block. Penny would smack the block away, and they would both crawl toward it. Penny would pretty much always get to it first, but Lily started to get the hang of it. It was terrifically fun, and not at all a moment that I thought I would be cherishing (yes, I know it happened a few hours ago, but yeah, I'm being sentimental). (We captured some of this on video, so there will eventually be an update for the grandma channel.)

And while we lowered Penny's crib (what seems like) ages ago, Lily just lies down and rolls over to fall asleep. She never gets up or rolls over; she's always on her back. But tonight, I was on the phone, and Julie walks over with Lily and says, "We have a situation." Apparently, she poked her head over the rail to say hi. So we had to lower her crib too. :) She's finally learning some of the tricks from her sister. (Uh oh!)

And because no post is complete without at least one photo, here's an amazingly adorable photo of Lily chewing on a hangar on Thanksgiving Day before we headed over to the Turkey Trot in Long Beach.