Santa Visit

I didn't want to be in the picture with Santa this year but it didn't go that way. Reese didn't want to be near him at all! She actually ran away twice. Sam was fine in my lap next to Santa but when he thought I was about to get up he cried. He calmed down but Reese still was having nothing to do with any of it. Funny memories for sure!


- Posted from my iPhone

Birthday Weekend

Lance and I have not had any one on one time in quite a while.  We had an anniversary dinner last February and have the occasional alone car ride to and from small group.  Since Lance’s birthday is tomorrow and Sam is no longer dependant solely on me we planned a night out.

We checked-in to our hotel in Midtown around 4:00 or so yesterday afternoon.  After we got to our room, Lance asked what we should do.  I suggested we sit down, enjoy the quiet, enjoy not having any kids climb on us, enjoy watching what we wanted to watch on TV, and just be.  We went to dinner at Oceanaire.  Lance had the yellow tail tuna and I had stuffed shrimp.  It was pretty good and we totally enjoyed being able to have a conversation.  And to be honest we really didn’t even talk about the kids much. 

After dinner we went back to the hotel and changed clothes so that we could meet up with our friends Donnie and Carrie.  We met them at a bar in Midtown to watch the GA v. GT game.  Because of the holiday weekend the bar was totally empty.  We had the entire upstairs with a gigantic big screen all to ourselves.  We had such a wonderful time cheering on our teams and hanging out with our sweet friends! 

This morning we slept in as long as we could.  I think Lance was up at 8:00 and I got up at 9:00 (our room was a suite so he was up and didn’t even bother me).  After Lance was ready he ran out to get us breakfast while I got moving.

My godson, Owen, was being baptized today so we headed to church with them.  After church we went back to their house for lunch.  The kids met us there and were so happy to see us (and we were super excited to see them too).  We had a great time visiting and celebrating the cute little man!!

We did not take a camera with us anywhere this weekend so hopefully our friends will share all of their pictures with us!

I am glad we were able to have some quality time together!  What a wonderful weekend!

Shutterfly Christmas Cards

I love Shutterfly!  Each year for my kids birthdays I create a photobook through Shutterfly to keep track of their year of memories.   I have also given my MIL and husband a calendar for Christmas that I really loved.

Shutterfly is doing a promo for bloggers where if you write a blog post about the Shutterfly Christmas cards you get 50 for free!!  Woohoo!  Sign me up!  Here goes…

I have a problem.  As I look through the Christmas cards I catch myself focusing on the cute little kids faces that are on the cards instead of the actual design.  I will choose a card and then realize I chose it for the sweet little face and then realize that I really love the card too.

And how could you not?  Look at this sweet face and those blonde locks.

Or this purely happy and contagious smile.

This one just makes me giggle!

It is so hard for me to choose my favorites because, well, there are so many favorites.  I can’t wait to see how our Christmas cards will turn out!!  I know that no matter what I choose they will be so cute and great memories.

Happy Thanksgiving

We spent all day for Thanksgiving with Lance’s family. It was his parents, sister, nephews, an aunt and a few cousins.  Dinner was of course yummy.  Reese and Sam had so much fun with their cousins.  Brody was extra sweet with them today. 

Brody and Reese had lunch together at the kids table.

And Reese was attached to him most of the day.

Sam even got in on the attention from Brody.

At one point Lance was holding Sam and a couple of people asked Sam if they could hold him.  He would turn away from them to say no.  Then Brody asked him if he could hold him and Sam leaned out for Brody to take him.  It was sooooo sweet!!

Dalton and Reese decided to dig holes in their Pop’s yard.  Not sure he was too thrilled about that but they had some messy fun.

  

Yesterday we were out running some errands and Lance wanted to go get a baseball glove so he could throw the ball with Brody.

They threw the ball for a long time.  I am pretty sure Lance will be sore tomorrow.

Sam had fun crawling around in the grass.  He didn’t get in one nap and was such a good little guy all day.  He is always so good but I was extra surprised at how well he did with no naps.

 

Reese was a little bummed that she didn’t get to throw and hit the ball with Lance and Brody.  So she just ran around outside.

We were not even out of the neighborhood on our way home and Sam fell asleep.  He was so pooped.

And then we just had fun watching Kung Fu Panda when we got home.

Happy Thanksgiving to all.  We are so thankful and blessed!

Christmas Decorations

Lance came home from Jax on Monday so we used Monday as a time to decorate for Christmas.  Reese was so excited and couldn’t wait. 

We got a lot of the inside decorations up.  I was using my garden gloves to set the tree up because I hate how sharp the needles are.  I always end up with tons of scratches on my hands.  Reese thought it was funny so she went upstairs and got her winter gloves too.

She was such a big helper.  We ended up have a lot of ornaments on the bottom part of our tree.  ;-)

We also set the small tree up in Reese’s room.  She loves having it in there.  I had visions on her falling asleep with the soft glow of her little tree creating sweet Christmas dreams.  But I went upstairs shortly after she went to bed and she was sitting up in her bed reading books so I had to turn the tree off.  I should have known!

I still have all of the outside decorations to do.  We didn’t do any of those last year because I just didn’t have the energy or will with a little Sammy so I really want to do those this year!  Hopefully we can get those up at some point this week!  Hint, hint Honey!

A Singing Room

This past weekend Lance went to Jacksonville to pick up his grandmother’s piano.  Reese loves to play the piano at my parents house so she was SO excited to be getting one of her own.  She calls the parlor at my parents house “the singing room” because that is where the piano is to play and sing with.  Now she has her very own singing room.  

She could not wait to get her hands on the piano.

While Reese played on the big piano Sam was left with the little one.

And he was so excited he wasn’t having to compete with Reese to get his hands on this piano.

First Steps

Sam took his first steps today.  We were so proud of him!! And he was super excited too!  I didn’t get a video until the end of the day right before bedtime so he wasn’t really interested in showing off his new trick.

Helping Hands

Sam wants to walk so bad.  He is really trying.  He loves for us to help him walk and cruises around all of the furniture.  You can even see his little brain trying to figure out how to make his feet move when he is standing alone.  Lance and I will put him in between us and try to get him to walk to the other person.  He just reaches for our hands.  It is too funny.  Lately Reese has wanted to help him walk so she will grab his hands and walk around with him.  He has the biggest grin on his face when they are walking together.  What a big helper Reese can be!

 

Thanksgiving Feast

Yesterday Reese had her Thanksgiving Feast at school.  The parents were invited to come and celebrate with them.  A few weeks ago her teacher sent home a t-shirt that had strips cut around the sleeves and the bottom so that beads could be added to it.  I let Reese help me pick out the beads to put on her shirt.  Actually putting them on was too hard for her.  Then at school they stamped it.  Yesterday they got to wear them for the feast.  The first thing they did when we arrived was sing a song for us.  We have been hearing this song around the house for a couple of weeks.  It was super cute to see them all sing it together.

Reese singing it alone at home last week.

Ready to sing

My little “Princess Reese”

Sam loves watching the big kids.

Feast time

Craft time

Sam wanted to help with the crafts.

Such a fun time!!

Videos

I just uploaded some pictures and videos from our point and shoot camera.  There are some cute ones that I wanted to share on here.

The day of Sam’s birthday I took some cupcakes out of the freezer that I made back in the summer for Reese’s birthday.  I let Reese decorate her own cupcake.

And she loved it.

Sammy loved his too.

Reese was my little photographer but we could not get Sam to look at the camera.  I wanted a picture with the birthday boy.

The next day we went to my friend Amy’s house.  She made these cute biter bar type cookies for Sam.  They were yummy!

Lance brought home Reese some t-shirts from San Francisco and she loved the Minnie Mouse one.  It was super cute!

We have been working on Reese saying her L’s.  If she is not thinking about it she says W’s for L’s.  Here we were practicing L words.

She cracks me up!

He Caught Up

Since Sam has been so small in comparison to Reese at each well visit I decided to go back and look at her stats from her 12 month visit. 

To remind you, here are Sam’s one year stats:
*Weight – 21 lbs, 7 oz
*Height – 30.25”
*Head – 18.25”

And now Reese’s one year stats:
*Weight – 21 lbs, 15 oz
*Height – 29”
*Head – 18.25”

I can’t believe they are so similar!!  Between Reese’s 12 month and 15 month visit she grew three inches so we will see how Sam does over the next three months.

Celebrating Sammy

Yesterday we had Sam’s birthday party.  It was a beautiful day to celebrate our little man!  We had family and friends over at our house and just visited.  It was a great time.

I am a cheap-o (ok, frugal might be a better word) (thanks, Dad) so I send out Evites when we have a large group of people invited.  I found a super cute train invitation and went with that theme.  I sent the image from the Evite to Bill Rhodes Bakery and they created the cake from it.  It was even better than I thought it would be!!  So cute!

And they threw in a smash cake for free.

 

I bought Sam some Osh Kosh overalls so he could look like a train engineer to go along with our theme.

We sang happy birthday to him and he just looked around at everyone.

And then he dove in to his cake.

And enjoyed every bit of it!!

He received tons of wonderful birthday presents.  And now officially needs his own playroom for all of his boy toys.  He won’t have to play with Barbies, Princesses, or dress up clothes any more.

Thank you to everyone who helped us celebrate our sweet little man!  He is so blessed to have so many people in his life who love him.

image from Evite