Great end to the weekend

We ended the weekend by helping my parents finish cleaning up Christmas stuff and just hanging out. Then we headed home and skyped with Yaya and Papa Joe. Oh, and Rayla now says Mamo! (And she knows who Mamo is).

Goldstein Christmas

The Goldstein side of the family has always been open to celebrating holidays and birthdays at any time of year. Today was the Goldstein Christmas and it was a blast. The girls had a fantastic morning. After sleeping in until 7, they woke up happy and hungry. We had breakfast and played with all of the tupperware we could find. Then the girls took a great 2.5-hour nap. The sun was shining and the weather was unseasonably warm. We headed out to Grandma and Papa's and met everyone there. We are so lucky to be able to have tons of presents for the girls to open. They love the wrapping paper and the toys. They pushed all of the buttons on their new phones, laptop, turtle, they hugged on their new dolls, they looked inquisitively at their new pink horse-drawn carriage, they kicked their colorful learning soccer ball, they and played with everything else. It was a fun mess in that living room. Another good nap and dinner followed the festivities before it was time to head home. Thanks and love to Grandma and Papa, Uncle Todd and Olivia, Aunt Kristi, Uncle Denis, and Niko, Aunt Randi and Aunt Steph, and Paula. Whew, what a great day!

Crossing a threshold

When I work downtown and take the L home, I walk through this courtyard because I love the lines. It feels peaceful. This is where I leave everything from work at work and I begin to focus on homelife. Hardly anyone is ever there so I take a slow stroll through and enjoy the silence. Then I come home to these cute munchkins and life is even better.

Sayings

I try to write meaningful sayings on my board at work. These are the ones I currently have up. With so many things going on at home, work, and just in the world in general, I remind myself to look at my board and take emotional inventory every day.

Splashing around

It was an interesting evening of loud children's voices (ok more like screaming their heads off). But they wanted to play with the faucet and they ended up sitting in the sink splashing themselves and each other. It was fun to watch through their eyes.
There are so many times we are reminded of how lucky we are to have 2 amazing children and tonight was one of them, even through the non-stop crying. Our girls are healthy.

What a day

We've been so careful about giving the girls one food at a time so we could monitor any allergic reactions. We finally made it to strawberries. They had a little bit on Sunday and a little more on Monday. We noticed Rayla's eyes were a bit puffy on Sunday but we thought it was from her crying and her 2 plane rides back from Christmas in Montana. Then on Monday we noticed she had a rash all over the trunk of her body. We linked the two and decided she was allergic to strawberries. Well, after further thought and the help of Dr. Fran (aka Yaya), we now think it isn't an allergic reaction at all, but rather Roseola (a virus). Looking back, she had a fever, she threw up, and was has been highly irritable. Poor baby has been miserable. Guess we will try strawberries again in a few months. Here's hoping the virus bypasses Payton.

365 (or as many as we can remember) days of the Hyems.

Today we found out that our girls love to clean. And they aren't happy with the tiny little broom. Oh no, it has to be the big gigantic one they can poke people (and dogs) with.
Learning to share?