Christmas 2010

I have had a perfect series of four Christmases. Tammy's battle for the Power Wheels Jeep paid off by starting our Christmas off big. G had tons of fun with all of his cousins on both sides. Baby S was held by everyone and was a perfect doll. The family time was excellent. The Food was great throughout, and the gifts were awesome.
I hope everyone else had as wonderful of a holiday season as I have had this year.

So G has been pining for a helicopter, with a button to spin the rotor, for Christmas. Tammy took him to see Santa and he told him he wanted the helicopter. Then when it was time to go he said no, i don't have my helicopter yet! Santa wisely said, "I'll bring it to your house!" G replied, "Oh, and then you can play trains with me!"
So Tammy installed the iPhone Talking Santa app. Tonight when we told G that Santa was coming tonight, he got her phone, launched the Talking Santa app, and told it the following, like he was on the phone with Santa:
"You have my hel'copter? With the button? Okay! See you later!"

Suffice to say, Santa has the helicopter.

Christmas traditions

Some things are special just because...

One of my favorite Christmas memories is putting the lights on a tree my grandma made. She made two of these, one sat on her kitchen table every Christmas and the other she made for a friend of my mom's who loved the tree.

Last year this friend gave me the tree, i had forgotten that she even had it! She had saved it for 30 years for when i had a child.

So this year G took on my tradition and decorated the tree, I have to admit that it actually made me cry. My grandma was such a special person to me and thanks to a special friend I have a piece of my past.




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What a great day!

Since G isn't in school right now, I thought it would be fun to host a Christmas party at our house with all of his friends. The list went from having 5 to having 10. We had so much fun, the kids played so well together and I even got some quality time with my friends.

We painted trains, played in the fake snow and ate yummy food.

I am exhausted tonight, but feel extremely blessed to have such great friends and hopefully their children and ours will be as great of friends as we are!


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blah blah blah

So lately I have felt very grown up, I don't know if it's having two kids or if I am just getting older "gasp".

We have been super busy lately, between being sick, I am back to work, holiday events, introducing baby girl to the world and so forth. I have noticed that as selfish as it sounds that by the time the weekend arrives that I really just want to spend time with just my family. So if you don't hear from us as much don't take it personal we are just busy being parents and loving every moment of it!



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Santa

I have to admit that I have become somewhat of a homebody since having baby girl, for one it takes a lot more time to get both of them ready and out the door and another is that G is not a fond of carts... need I say more.

Well I decided that I was going to be brave and do Santa pictures by myself. Our appointment was at 10:40 and I started getting ready around 8 and good thing I did. G's apparently has grown about two inches since I bought his Christmas outfit so after trying on three different outfits I was finally pleased with his outfit. He on the other hand was not. Baby girl was easy it only took me changing her outfit twice.

The whole way there I kept pumping up Santa. I told G that he was so lucky that he was going to be able to see Santa and that we had a very special visit planned. The moment we walked in he was all smiles, he walked straight up to him and jumped on his lap. We managed to get several really good pictures. One thing I forgot to mention is that the past month every time we have been in the store and G has wanted something we have told him that we would tell Santa and that he would maybe get it for him at Christmas...back to the pictures. Once we where done with the pictures I told G that it was time to tell Santa goodbye and to get down off his lap and his response was he hasn't given me my helicopter yet. Santa being the great Santa he was responded that he was going to bring it to our house on Christmas. G's response was "Yes, you can play choo choos with me"... I love being a mom.

So much to blog, but so little time

The past couple months have flown by so quickly and I am very aware that my blogging has slowed down. Life has been busy, but wonderful. Sylvie is growing so fast, smiles constantly and is so loved by her big brother. I was unsure and nervous about how he would adjust and he has done wonderfully especially for only being two.

We spent Thanksgiving at home this year due to us all being sick, didn't want to risk getting Dandy & GranDawn sick and truthfully didn't have the energy to make the trip. I will blog more later about the day. It turned out to be a really special day for us.

We our in full force getting ready for Christmas. Josh and I are like two kids when it comes to shopping for Gid and Sylvie, I think we truthfully are a little out of control :-) The benefits of having two incomes and only two kids. Going tomorrow to do Santa pictures which I am sure will be interesting.

Just wanted to take a moment and post some updated pictures.

She is a keeper!

Wouldn't you agree!
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Shutterfly - My hobby

So I have to say that a lot of my friends are extremely talented. One of my best friends from Cali can sing like an angel and has started painting, I have to admit she is totally awesome at it. I have another friend that can sew anything, a friend that can crochet, another friend that makes gorgeous cakes, and the list goes on... I on the other hand am not artsy. I have tried - taken classes and so on. I was whining, I mean talking to J the other night about this and he said that my talent is Shutterfly. I started laughing and my reply was that it doesnt take talent to use Shutterfly, just determination to set aside the time. I have to admit I love all their products from their birth announcements http://www.shutterfly.com/cards-stationery/birth-announcements to how easy it is to upload pictures to http://www.shutterfly.com/upload-pictures/. I am excited this year to start working on our Christmas cards that will of course come from them. I counted and I have done over 50 photobooks. 34 are just of our family.

Tonight I was spending some time with G and I grabbed one of the books to have him look at it with me and his response was No- Mommy I want the train one. This being one of the books I did for him this summer of our trip to the Museum of Transportation. This melted my heart that he remembered that book.

I always considered it an addiction, not a hobby, but I think I have changed my mind. My favorite memory growing up was looking through all the photo albums my grandma had and I hope some day that my grandchildren will enjoy looking through these as much as I enjoyed making them.

Fall festivities

So we went apple picking Saturday, at the Eckert's Millstadt Family Fun Farm, with Tammy's parents and some of G's cousins. We had a great time and saw several friends unexpectedly. We started the day off right at IHoP with the new cinni-stax for us, a giant chocolate chip whipped cream smily pancake for G, and S had some milk and slept through breakfast :).



There were horse rides which G rode 3 times: (see cousin A on the horse behind him)




Plus G and I rode a camel! I kept thinking of the bit in the Seuss book Go Dog Go with the seven hump wump that belongs to Mr. Gump. Pictures of this will have to be added from the real camera.
Then we rode the carnival rides with the cousins, who screamed mightily inside the spinning apple ride (like the teacups, but enclosed). We had it spinning faster than anyone else riding. Honestly I was slowing them down to make sure everyone's lunch stayed down :)
Then we rode the swings, and the airplane swings, and drove the plywood tractor model (big win).


Then we went and picked some apples, while family friends Kay and Charles watched (spoiled probably) baby S.
Tammy has the good pics of that so look back later for them.

Sunday we started the day off right with homemade cinnamon apple swirls, that Tammy and G made with some apples from Saturday! Then went to the pumpkin patch and had even more fall fun with Cara, Eric, and Davin.

Naturally we rode a horse right away :)



Then Davin took G on the four wheeler barrel train, followed by a hay ride for all of us!



Here's a great picture of my beautiful wife with Baby S too. Check out that awesome hat Amanda made for her!




Anyway, we had a great time taking our kids out to enjoy the Fall weather and hang out with family and friends! Look for some extra pictures here once we get those pics off the real cameras :)

-Josh