Christmas at my parent's house

Just made this photo collage from Christmas at my parent's house. They just moved this summer to a new house, so I wanted to take pics of the new rooms all decorated for Christmas.
I think my mom did I really nice job, didn't she?

Ethan said some funny things during Christmas. I love how he totally believes in Santa. At T's parents when he was opening up a gift from Uncle D, he was so surprised by it. He said, "How did you know I wanted this?" We just said he must have talked to Santa. HE said the same things to my mom and my sister, too! Just amazed that Santa must have been to their house for him!

I'll be missing using "Santa's watching" line when he starts acting up. He would get really upset when we would say you aren't being nice and Santa might not bring you what you asked for. I even told him the hall light was a Santa cam and he is watching your behavior.

Ethan had told us a week before Christmas that we have to sing "Happy Birthday" to Jesus on Christmas. How sweet! I'm assuming he was told that at preschool. Well, we started opening stockings and realized we did not sing it yet. I can't remember if I remembered or Ethan. Well, I let him hold the baby Jesus from our nativity set and we sang Happy Birthday. He was so happy, which made me so happy. So nice that a 4 yr old would pause in the middle of opening gifts to sing to Jesus. Amazing. He is such a blessing to me.

Here he is opening stockings...

Christmas Eve at T's parents...

At my parent's house on Christmas, amazed that he got the LightSketcher...

Christmas Tour

I decided to be included in BooMama's Christmas Tour. It has been so fun to see everyone's decorations. Here is our holiday house...

Our Gold & Silver tree...I love it so much. I added 2 sets of twinkling lights this year, so just a few lights blink, at various speeds. T calls it a disco tree now.Some of my fav ornaments. I have the silver mirrored bell spinning on one of those rotating hangers. Love that!

My nativity set is Fontanini, a gift from my inlaws over a couple of years. I love it so much. It is the perfect size and I love the creche.

We had to get new stockings this year due to the old ones smelling too musty from the leak in our downstairs.My snowmen collection display...

Nothing says Christmas like an animated Santa & Mrs. Claus...I love them. Mrs. Claus doesn't move as fluidly as Santa now though...Our small kitchen doesn't have a lot of decorations...basically the window areaLooking downstairs...

Downstairs bathroom with my collection of Santa mugs...odd place to display them, but I like it.

I added a 4 ft tree downstairs this year. I just made it really colorful and fun.

Our dog, Ashton by tree.

E has 2 Rudolph's now. This was the first one, he had to have. It doesn't play the song or light up anymore. His grandparents got him the one from Build A Bear, too. He named it Reindeer Reindeer.

I still have to take pics of upstairs bath that is purple/green/gold, plus E's room and our entertainment center area.

Thanks for all the awesome links to everyone's decorations, BooMama!

Merry Christmas from our house to yours!

Big snowfall Sunday, Dec. 16

I think we go about 10 inches at least. T plowed our driveway out early Sunday, then did 3 more driveways.
The snow was really coming down at 1am, when I was going to bed. It was really blowing alot. We even got snow on our covered front porch. Doesn't it look nice on my lit fake topiary tree?

Santa E

He did this on his own in the tub last week. He actually said "Who am I, Mommy?"
I added the hat & had to take a pic.
The more I look at it, it looks like a real beard and kind of creeps me out.

Snow Angels

We had our first real snowfall on Saturday. Ethan wanted to put on his boots and go outside immediately. I told him he didn't need his boots, it was just little flurries. I was going to help T with lights outside.
Well, E just spontaneously decides to make snow angels in our driveway. So cute and I'm glad I got it on video.


It got pretty icy out later, too. You can hear the snow/ice falling.
T put up the lights and it was snowing the whole time!
We tried to rake up leaves some on Sunday. Then it suddenly downpoured on us!

TODAY IS MY BIRTHDAY!

None of my fam even knows about my blog, so I doubt I'll get any comments. My mom bookmarked my blog, though...will you leave me a comment?
I feel old for this birthday, too! I went out to lunch with the girls from work. We went to Fridays, and they sang to me. I got free ice cream, but only had a couple of bites. I got my fav Jack Daniel's chicken & shrimp and have leftovers for tomorrow.
We have cake & cards later, as usual, at work.

Starting to walk 3 yrs ago

Just uploaded another video. This one is from the week E started to walk on his own. Our dog makes an appearance, too! I forgot he used to jump up to look outside like that at our old house.

Apples & Cherries

I thought I would upload another video to YouTube. This one is of E as a baby, trying apples & cherries for the first time. T was feeding him while I was at work and thought it was hilarious so had to record him to show me.
It is pretty grainy, don't know how to fix that.

Funny comic

This comic strip reminds me of my dad, to a degree. I think he would have cut it out and put it up on his bulletin board...back in the day.
I wonder if he saw it in today's paper, I'll have to email it to him.

Ethan's first time bowling

We decided to go bowling today. It was Ethan's first time so he got a lane to himself with the bumpers. The bumpers really helped, too! T & I were in the next lane. It was a nice & casual Saturday afternoon. We all had a really fun time. It has been so long since we went bowling though. We each played 2 games and we spent $28! T forgot about a coupon and we could have saved like $9! Oh well, we will remember next time. Ethan really liked it once he got the hang of it all. He asked why there was a fan blowing by the ball return and Trent said it was to dry your hands off. So without fail, E made sure to put his hands there every time before grabbing his ball!

Happy Halloween!

From past Halloweens...

Most of my work is done

So I made the cookies for E's school party and for daycare..and for work.

Witch's hats....

and the super easy punch out orange pumpkins...

Ethan was helpful with unwrapping the kisses and keeping count on how many more I needed to make. It was hard to make the bows on all of them, my orange icing wasn't the right consistency.

I made up these little tags for the baggies for daycare...

I wrapped up Amanda's birthday presents, so we are all set for her party tomorrow. She is getting High School Musical themed stuff....the music cd, the actual movie (I taped it from the tv onto dvd), Gabrielle & Troy dollset from HSM2, then from Target clearance rack-a purple shirt, a cute pink striped sweater, red & black plaid jumper. I also found 5 books from Goodwill that look brand new for her. She loves to read and is really advanced for her age.

Trick or treating is 5-7pm here tomorrow. Kinda sucks that I have to leave early from work, though. I think I will be able to get my stuff done early. I made up our treat bowl so it ready to go. Hopefully dh will pass out candy so I can take E around neighborhood. This is what we are passing out at our house...

Fall Y'all Giveaways

I'm having so much fun checking out all of these giveaways! There are over 400 now! Wow, so much fun! People are so giving! Go check it out!

Tonight I have set the tivo for Charlie Brown's Halloween,

which E is so excited to see again! He saw the commercial for it last night and got so animated about it! He rewatched that show so many times last year. I even recorded it on to a dvd for him. So, yes, he could watch it whenever.

He knows how to find 'his' shows on the tivo list. Somehow now he even knows how to set it to 'green' so they don't get deleted! We had about 10 episodes of Hi-5 and we had to delete some of those for room for our shows! Hi-5 is his current fav show. He is such a singer & dancer.

Found this adorable little vintage postcard on Ebay. Thought I would post this cute Halloween greeting...

Halloween time

I was going to be better at posting and somehow it has been 9 days.

E went to dentist for his first cleaning and did so great! I had T take him since our appts were same time. I could hear him talking from my room, so funny. Somedays he gets so talkative now. I guess I'm happy he is a friendly kid. So relieved he wasn't scared one bit. He did cleaning and flossing and fluoride foam stuff wonderfully! He passed and dr said he has good spacing, which I guess is good at this age. T & I didn't need braces, so hopefully he won't either.

I need to note some funny quotes made by E in the last couple of weeks. Basically, so I won't forget them!

Oct. 17 on morning drive to preschool:

Me: E do you know I do for a living?
E: (silence)
Me: I know you know where I work, but do you know what I do there?
E: (said excitedly) You make movies!!

Me: (laughing) what? No? I make the ads in the newspaper and posters and marquee sign...which to you looks like a movie!!

Oh, I seriously love that he thought that, so funny to me.

Oct. 28 morning:

E: Mama, can I have some of that bread casserole?

Me: what is bread casserole?

E: that stuff you were just eating...the casserole.
Me: oh, a cinnamon roll

Ethan has already worn his costume this year twice!

He will wear it to school on Wed for party and then that night for trick or treating a little.

We went downtown on Sat. around to the stores, which is fun for him and his cousins. We meet at Ga's store and she loves it. She likes to be surprised about his costume still, so there is always the big reveal to her on that day. She totally loved E as a pirate. I think she loved this costume more than other years...and that is saying a lot because he has always been adorable every year!

We went to pumpkin patch last week 10/20 and met cousins there. I love going there. It just makes the fall season alive. The kids loved feeding the animals. The big teepee was fun for them, too. I already had some pumpkins on the porch, but bought a little pie pumpkin and a white cinderella pumpkin. It was a nice day weather wise, too. I put E in shorts and his jackolantern shirt from last year. Well, it was windy there and I felt bad about putting him in the shorts!

Later that night we went to church for the Halloween party and E got to spend more time with his cousins. They had dinner, went trunk or treating in parking lot-Had to say "Jesus loves you", then made a pumpkin craft. They handed out cute little halloween prizes that E loved. T had games that day, so I took him and stayed.

He already has gotten so much candy, I mean T & I had to help him eat it. He knows he can't have all that sugar.

E is getting good at calling me on eating too much sugar now! Even today when I was just eating chips & salsa...for my lunch...he said chips have sugar in them, mama. I think I told him that once.

I need to make 2 sets of cookies by Wed. Well, more like compile, not really make from scratch. I'm going to make these witch hat cookies from a recipe card thing I got at Target. It is just Keebler choc. striped cookies and a hershey kiss with orange icing around for brim. Pretty easy and cute! Also, I bought the new orange pumpkin cutout cookies that you just bake and they're done! I'll make up a plate of those for his school party, some to take to work and make some baggies for Mrs. F daycare kids. We weren't told we have to take anything to school party, just give them $2, maybe they don't want any more sugar than needed there. I know they will be trick or treating through the offices.

My mom is watching E on Wed., kinda bummed Mrs. F won't see his costume. I'll probably leave work early if I can on Wed. so I can get E ready. I hope T is home somewhat early, at least by 6. He said he could, well, now that football is done. So surprised that they lost on Friday. I didn't get to go to any of the games this year. E went to one, lasted until halftime and made grandparents leave early.

This should be a fun week. We have Amanda's birthday party on Wed. at 7pm, so we have to get trick or treating done quick.