Merry Christmas!

Hope your stockings had more than toddler feet in them!

Haul out the Holly

Our Christmas tree came out late this year - TWO days after Thanksgiving, unfortunately. Of course, we didn't actually have a tree until then. However late it was, we had fun putting it up!

This may have been the best day in Tyler's memory. He was SO excited about putting the star on the top of the tree. It looked great, but only after we messed around with it for twenty minutes. (How do normal people keep the star on the tree? We had to tie it up with yarn and nail the other end of the yarn into the ceiling.)

The rest of our decorations are coming, but Christmas is being overshadowed by the potty training hoopla over here. More to come on that when it actually starts to move forward.

Thanksgiving!

Yes, we all actually sat down for Thanksgiving this year!

The Hinckley shrimp tradition was alive and well.
The fried turkey made an appearance.


As did a French Silk Pie,

And an Apple Pie.

Happy Thanksgiving!

(pre-dinner Grandpa wressle)

Our Odd Children

Did any of your babies like to be upside down?

Did they throw a fit when you bring them right side up?

Ours does.

Jamers

Can you believe Jamie is FIVE months old? I can't.

Her newest accomplishment: mastery of rice cereal.

She was so excited, she had a hard time waiting for each spoonful.

In fact, she couldn't keep her hands off the spoon.

Or out of her mouth to play with this new yummy stuff.

She eventually just took the spoon from me, and tried to feed herself, with mixed results.

She is so cute, I couldn't bring myself to ruin her fun. What pretty little girl you are, Miss Jamerson.

This is Why I Yard Sale:

Anyone who has been in a Joann's knows how pricey home decor fabric can be.

Whole box: $5

Most of it is red and gold, so I see Christmas decorations galore!

Our Fireplace

Miss October:

And Miss November:

(Just the fireplace, not Tyler)

I think I'll keep this up year round and just change the leaves/embellishments depending on the month. I'll have to do it during Tyler nap, though. He kept rescuing the bats and the raven from the trash can when I threw them away at the beginning of November.

First Hand Me Downs

We likes our boys to be boyish, and we like our girls to be girly, so there's not much overlap between Tyler and Jamie's wardrobes.

Except for these boots.

Of course, I can't find a picture of Tyler in them when he was little. But let's just celebrate the fact that it is now cold enough to wear boots and jackets and hats.

Goodbye, Summer! Don't let the door hit your on you way out!

Update: I found it, but I still wanted to publically celebrate the beginning of our six month break from humidity. Woo!

Tyler's Car Party!

So, I think the lesson here is to never, ever have a birthday party on a Saturday morning, because if you do, everyone you invite will have a soccer game, a play group, or a babysitting job to be at. Thank goodness for cousins and grandmas, or we would have had a very empty park!

Even so, we had a really fun morning:

We had cars from Cars:

A Pinata:

And so much FOOD:

Jamie was such a good sport and stayed in her Car seat the whole time:

Well, we had a lot fun anyway.

And we all got like five cupcakes a piece, so not a bad day.

Free Holiday Cards!

Have any if you heard about this offer from Shutterfly? Fifty FREE holiday cards! All you have
to do is write up a blog post about your favorites from their website, and why you like them (thus, this post) and you're golden!

The only problem is that there are about 500 different designs to choose from, and envelopes too. Normally I'll just go for the cheapest (but still cute) one available, but now I have to actually decide!

I think I like this one the best. It has enough photo spaces for each member of our family:

But these are the runner-ups. I love the multiple pictures again, and the Santa belt is so cute.

Hanukkah

Decisions, decisions.

The funny thing is, they also have cards for Thanksgiving, which is a holiday that normally doesn't earn a card send-off, but if they're free, hey, why not? They've also got Hanukkah cards fr my Uncle Freddy and Aunt Joy.

Go check it out here!

This is Halloween

This is Halloween!

Halloween!

Halloween!

Halloween!

Halloween!

La, la, la, la-la-la, la, la......

California Trip #3: Disneyland!

Our last trip to Disneyland was just past Tyler's 2nd birthday, and it was spectacular!

This trip at 3 years old....

We still had fun. We just had to find out what Tyler wanted to do.

For example, Tyler did NOT want to:

Ride the rides.

Or get too close to Buzz or any other large characters.

However, we found he DID want to:

Chase this boy's bubble gun bubbles.

WATCH the rides. For an hour.

Run around in this water play area in California Adventure. We were here for 90 minutes!

Miss Annie Skyy loved it too, but just watching her crazy cousin get soaked.

I think Tyler's favorite part of the day was spending time with Grandpa Eatough. They watched the Pixar parade together, went on rides together (that he refused to go on with me, by the way) and ate lots and lots-

-and LOTS of kettle corn. Grandpa made sure Tyler was actually able to fall asleep clutching the remains. What a pair.

Oh, well. We are now experts on navigating Disneyland with three-year-olds.