Catching Up

It has been crazy busy around here. I don’t know how I let a week slip by with out an update though. So here is a quick catch-up of what we have been doing. However, I don’t have many pictures for much of an update.

Last Thursday Reese had her Thanksgiving Feast at school. Sam and I were able to join her but she kept acting like she didn’t want me talking to her. At one point I leaned down to ask her a question and she said, “Mommy, I am trying to push you away.” WHAT? Are you a teenager already??

After their feast the kids fell right in to their normal routine while the mommies chatted. This is Reese and her BFF singing “Jesus, You’re My Super Hero”. They were so silly!

Friday Reese did crafts before ballet. She saw a cute little frame idea in her High Five magazine that she wanted to do. She did fingerprints along the frame and then I connected them with a green marker to make it look like a string of lights. It turned out really cute!

Saturday evening we went to some friends house to eat dinner and make s’mores. It was a beautiful evening.

Reese had a lot of fun hanging out with Maddie.

Cute little Joci!

And, of course, Sam eating his s’mores.

Sunday was church and then Reese and Lance had a lunch date. They also went Christmas shopping for me. Reese promptly told me what they bought the second she got home. Ha! So much for surprises. Lance took out all of the Christmas decorations and we started decorating. While he was in the attic he grabbed our wedding video because Reese has been begging to watch it.

Monday she finally got to watch it. She was enamored. She loved every minute and had lots of questions. Her favorite part was seeing her cute ten year old cousin as our ring bearer when he was only 3.5 years old. He really was precious!

Tuesday we had a playdate with our friends and had a great time visiting.

Today we got several errands taken care of, Reese had a friend over, and I got a lot of things done around the house.

We are looking forward to Thanksgiving tomorrow and the exciting week we have coming up.

Sam’s Two Year Well Visit

Tuesday I took Sam to the doctor for his two year well visit. He has definitely done some growing since his 18 months visit. They said he is 35” tall which means he grew three inches in six months. His head was 19” around. He weighed 28.2 pounds which means he gained around three pounds. I didn’t get percentages because the nurse forgot to bring them back to me and I didn’t feel like waiting around to ask her again. He also received one vaccine. No fun! And he passed the hearing test.

Currently, Sam’s favorite thing to say to me is “Be nice, Mommy!” Hmmm…he must hear that a lot. Whenever we are in the car and stopped behind another car he will yell out, “Move car!” or “’Mon car!”. He must hear that a lot too! He is doing a lot more talking. It is so cute to hear! He will repeat pretty much anything we say. He also can say through D in the ABC’s and then can fill in other letters as we go through the whole song. One of his favorite things to do in the car is count the buses that pass us on our way to the gym. He always says two and five.

He plays completely independently. Very rarely does he ask us to play with him. If he does ask, it is usually by pulling Lance by the hand towards the trains and saying, “’Mon Daddy, train”. He and Reese play very well together which leads to the occasional fight. He likes to do whatever his big sister is doing and likes to have what she has. He is very much so a boy…he likes to sword fight, play with cars, trains, balls, and loves to run, wrestle, and tackle. His kisses are sweet and seeing him pray is even sweeter!

He has all of his teeth. The last of the two-year molars are about half way grown. Thank goodness for not having to cut anymore teeth for a while. He is going through a small bit of separation anxiety again. I never known when he is going to cry when I leave. It seems to be just random right now. Some Sundays he cries going in to his class, some times he cries when we leave him with the babysitter, and other times he is happy as can be. I am definitely not worried about any of it!

I really can’t believe our little man is already two! Time seems to be going at warp speed right now and we are just along for this fun and exciting ride!

Our Fave Girls

A couple of weekends ago we got to have Reese’s favorite girls over to spend a couple of nights with us. Reese was so excited! Thursday night the big girls had a good bit of homework to do so they sat at the table to get started on their homework. Since it was Thursday that meant Reese had homework too so she joined them at the table. She thought she was such a big girl!

Both kids just loved on Olivia, aka Bug, while she was here. She didn’t have nearly as much homework as Sarah so she got to play with the kids more…and I got a ton of things done around the house! She was so sweet with them. Sam loved the attention he was getting from her. When they sat down to watch Tangled, Sam would look up at her with a grin on his face, pat her cheek, and say, “Buggy, Buggy, Buggy”. I think he had a crush!

Friday night they spent the night and Reese was so excited to have them sleep in her room. She told Sarah she could have her bed, Olivia could have the trundle bed, and we used Reese’s cot from the beach for her to sleep on. Well, that didn’t work out too well. Reese wanted her own bed but Sarah definitely was too big for the cot so Reese had an added bonus of getting to sleep in our bed for the night.

Saturday morning there was tons of playing, drawing with chalk outside, and then the big kids went to see “Puss in Boots”. Sam and I dropped Lance and the girls off at the movies and headed out to go shopping. Sam was so upset! He did not want them all to leave. He cried and cried the whole drive.

We just love these sweet girls! I can’t wait until they are old enough to babysit!!

Christmas Pictures

While at my parents house for Sam’s birthday we took the opportunity to get some Christmas card pictures made. My parents were making lunch so Leah, Susan, and Becca went with us to snap some pictures. We had great success! I am going to keep the pictures we got for our Christmas cards a secret for now but here are some of the other ones we got.

Scouting out a location…

Posing with Aunt Becky

Daddy and his mini-me

Sweet boy!

Sisters…I LOVE this pictures!

What was actually happening “backstage” while the camera was close up.

They are so silly together.

And she is just silly too!

Thanks girls for all your help in getting some great pictures today!

Wrapping Up Birthday Week

Today we wrapped up Sam’s birthday week at my parents house. Sam has been celebrated to the max!

Last Saturday we celebrated Sam with Lance’s family. They came over with a Chick-fil-A nugget tray and cupcakes…some of Sam’s favorite things!

He received a baseball tee that he has loved playing with.

Sam’s superstar baseball playing cousin showed him a few tips.

Sam also received a Dinosaur Train train set. The train is battery operated so it drives on its own.

Both kids love playing with this train and watching it go around and around and around.

On Sam’s actual birthday we celebrated with our friends that morning and as a family again that evening. Since Lance and I had given Sam the train table for his birthday we let Reese give him a few gifts too. She gave him a James train (From Thomas), a police car that can go on the train tracks, and a Mickey Mouse place setting.

This morning we headed out to my parents house for Sam’s last birthday party. He opened presents pretty soon after arriving at their house.

Sam loves when Reese dresses up so my parents gave Sam his own dress up clothes. Reese wanted to wear them too! He got a pirates costume and fire fighter jacket and hat.

Leah just happened to have her gear in her car so they both dressed as fire fighters.

Reese is a goofball!

We cooked out for lunch and then had birthday cake.

Sam is so loved and we are so grateful.

Pajama Party

Today we celebrated Sam’s birthday with a pajama party and several of our friends. All the kids came over in their pajamas and I served breakfast. It was so fun to start the day this way and the kids just played and played.

Reese was very excited about the fact that everyone was going to still be in their pajamas and was very curious about what their pajamas would look like. Sam was just excited!

Of course we had cupcakes to celebrate the little man too. How fun to eat cupcakes at 10:45 in the morning!

He was so cute all day long. Every time some one called to wish him a happy birthday he was very gracious on the phone and chatted with each person.

Reese was so sweet with him all day and was happy to celebrate her little bubba. Even during a pajama party she had to bust out the dress-up clothes.

All the pajama clad monkeys seemed to enjoy themselves and the cupcakes!

And Sam enjoyed opening his presents. He looked like such a big kid wearing this precious Thomas back pack. Slow down little man, Mommy is not ready for your back pack days!

Happy birthday to the sweetest and cutest little guy I know!! We love you so much!

Sam's Second Birthday

- Posted from my iPhone

Minute to Win it

Tonight we were playing Bingo. Lance always sticks one of the blue chips on his forehead without Reese seeing so when she finally notices she giggles at him. Lance and I decided to see how many of the blue chips we could stick on our own faces in one minute..."minute to win it". I won with ten chips. The next round was to see who could stick the most chips to one of the kids faces. I had Reese and Lance had Sam. I won again. No chips would stick to Sam at all. It really was SO funny. We were laughing the whole time!



- Posted from my iPhone

Writing Letters

The other day I saw a link on Pinterest where you could write a letter to a Princess or character at Disney and they will send you back a personalized autographed picture. When I told Reese about it, she was so excited!

I asked her what she wanted her letter to say and I wrote it down as she spoke (I adlibbed a little). Then I gave her the letter to copy on to her own paper in her own writing. The biggest problem we had was that she kept losing her place and we would have to start over. So I eventually just told her each letter to write. That was much less stressful!

I wrote a letter to Mickey from Sam. I can’t wait to see how excited they are when we receive a letter back.

Happy Halloween 2011

What a fun night!! Last night our little bride and monkey had a blast trick-or-treating! We did our annual tradition of pizza with our neighbor and Reese’s friend, Emma, and then headed out for some candy.

Reese loves anything to do with brides. She will watch “Say Yes to the Dress” with me and asks about our wedding. So it was a given that when she saw a picture of a Cinderella wedding gown on the Disney site she would be a bride for Halloween. She was so excited!!

Sam wanted to be Elmo when we saw the costume at Target but when we attempted to try it on him he refused! Our next idea was for him to be Mickey Mouse but when we finally got around to getting to the Disney Store to buy it they were out. While at the mall we headed over to Crazy 8 to see what they had and they had the cutest monkey costume. We were sold!

Ready for some CANDY!!

Emma dressed up as Ariel and her cute little brother was Tigger. We left our bowl of candy by the front door and were on our way.

Sam was so excited to trick-or-treat with the big girls. He would walk up to the houses with them, say “Trick-or-Treat”, and then say “thank you” once he got the candy. He loved it!

Reese was so excited to see her BFF Sydney who was dressed up as Harry Potter.

We walked around for a while and then drove back over to Emma’s house to see a couple of their neighbors but most of their lights were off so we were out of luck.

Our precious little princesses. They are just too cute!

Here are links to them from the last three years: 2008, 2009, and 2010. Oh I can’t believe how big they are! And they both have sweet little brothers now.