Our Christmas in blurry Iphone pics

Christmas Eve

 

 

 

Christmas Morning

 

 

Exhausted already!!

 

Christmas at Nana and Papa's House

 

 

 

So that's it, our Christmas in blurry red eye pictures!!!

 

It was sort of crazy and chaotic with a one year old, but still really fun!

 

Hope everyone had an awesome Christmas and here's to a Happy New Year!!!

 

 

Bowling Night

If we learn anything from the tragedy in Connecticut, it should be that we don't know when our time or our loved ones time could be up.  God could call any of us home at any time. 

I want to take an initiative to make every moment count, or at least give it my best shot.  I know I'll still have bad moments of frustration, stress, or laziness, but I'd like to be more positive and focus more on making the type of memories that last. 

Hence, this weekends bowling night!!

Day of Silence

Sad

It just makes my stomach hurt thinking about what happened to those poor babies in Connecticut.  I absolutely hate this for those families, that town, and our country. 

As a teacher myself, I can't help but picture my school, principals, teachers, and students when I hear the story of what happened. 

Friday afternoon in the hallways of our school the other teachers and myself were asking ourselves hard questions.  What would we do if that happened here? Would we sacrifice our lives for our students?

Obviously, we can't really know exactly what we would do in such horrific situation, but all our answers were overwhelmingly YES!  Absolutely Yes!!

 It's a sad world where teachers have to ask themselves this. 

I know, because of my faith and trust in my heavenly Father, that something good will come through this.  Hearts will be touched and changed.  I can already see it through some of the parents of these victims.  Amazingly, they are speaking out about how they are forgiving the shooter and pray for his family.  That takes God's Grace!!!!

I just hope and pray that people will focus on the victims and hero's in this tragedy and not glorify and make famous the killer.

Spread the word about the blogger day of silence on Tuesday, December 18th.

 I found this button at Kelly's Korner.  

Jack Jack 16 months

Jackson turned 16 months on December 10th. 

Since I haven't been keeping up with his baby book, I figured I better do an updated post on how he's coming along.

Jackson is trouble, but the good kind!!

This was after I'd given him some leftover chocolate chips to eat.
I would say he thoroughly enjoyed them.

Sleeping 

His sleeping was a little sporadic the past couple of weeks because he had the flu.  He's starting to even out again.  We put  him to bed between 7:30 and 8:00 and he will usually sleep through the night.  Sometimes he will wake up around 4 or 5 am for a bottle or just to play, which is why we've been keeping him up till 8ish lately.

We don't have to rock him or anything, we just lay him down with a bottle, his blanket, and a musical glowing sea horse and goes right to sleep.

Eating

Unfortunately, yes he is still having a bottle three times a day.  He has one in the morning, one for nap and one for bedtime.  If he's really cranky we will give him an extra one.  He  doesn't take a pacifier so I think the bottle his soothing technique.

He's my last baby, so I'm not in a huge rush to break him of his bottle just yet.

He is a great solid food eater too.  He will eat just about anything you give him.  He would rather feed himself than be fed, which is fine with me, except for things like oatmeal or soup.

Some of his favorites lately:
popcorn (he has a bunch of teeth)
cheese
ravioli
yogurt
oatmeal
hash browns (he ate a whole order of hash brown bites from Burger King)
chicken nuggets
cooked carrots
green beans
the list goes on and on

He is also into dipping things lately.  I showed him how to dip carrots in ranch.  Then he noticed me dipping my hash browns in ketchup and so he dipped everyone of his hash browns too.  He barely gets any on it, but he seems to enjoy it.

Talking
He is saying a bunch of words.
Mamma
Dadda
Nana
Papa
Babba-Abigail (we call her Abba)
Jack-Jack
Baa-Bath
juice
bota---bottle
ba---ball
na---nose
eye
Maddie (my parents dog, he loves her)
Ke--- Kelsie
flower- I haven't heard this, but mom has.
boo---book

He communicates really well without words as well, by pointing and pulling us places to show us what he wants.

Extras/Funnies

Usually when I say bath time, Jackson will take off toward the bathroom saying baa, baa.  But the other day he ran into the bathroom, looked around and then ran out babbling something that sounded like complaining. My first thought was that he was starting to dislike his bath and it was fixing to turn into a fight, but then I found him in the living room tell Austin, baa!  baa!

Then Austin headed toward the bathroom and Jack followed.

He went to find Austin to take a bath with him.  Austin almost always takes a bath with Jackson, so I guess Jack figured he needed to go find him.  It was the cutest thing ever!!



Jackson loves to play outside.  He will get downright cranky if we keep him inside all day.

I was raking up leaves the other day and before Abigail and Austin even came out to show him, Jackson already knew what to do to my leaf pile.  He ran and jumped in and laughed.  He thought it was hilarious!

Jack loves my parents dog Maddie.  Maddie is mostly an outside dog, but she gets to come in the house almost everyday because Jack demands it.  He will watch Maddie out the window and bark at her.  She is old and very gentle with him, considering he pets/hits him and lays on him.

He worries about Maddie too, if we can't find her or she wanders off.  It's so funny!

Jackson loves looking at books.  He will bring me his book and say boo!  boo! and sit in my lap and we will look at that book and point at all the pictures.  This blows me away because I distinctly remember trying to get my other two kids to look at books with me at this age and they would have nothing to do with it.


Jackson can identify a few body parts
nose
eye
mouth
teeth
head
belly
toes

We are working on ear and he almost has it.

He still loves to listen to music and dance.  No matter how grumpy or tired he is, if he hears music he will at least bob his head to the beat.


Jackson and his cousin Audrie have been spending more time together and are starting to recognize and get excited when they see eachother.  Audrie is 5 months younger than Jackson, but pretty soon we won't be able  to tell the age difference.  She is catching up fast and I have a feeling they will be great pals!!

His favorite person is still his Nana.  He stays with my mom everyday while I work.  

They have a good time!

He is generally just a happy, fun loving, silly, stubborn, messy, destructive boy and we love him soooo much!!!

Merry Christmas Card

This is a picture of our 2012 Christmas Card.  

I didn't have a digital copy so I took a picture of a picture, which is a major no no, but I had to share it.

Front

Back

I'm soooo happy with our Christmas card this year!!!

Thanks Grey Area Photography!!!!

Funfilled Christmas Weekend

Austin went on his first field trip this past Friday.  He was really mostly excited about riding a bus.  

He's always wanted to ride a bus.

They went to the mall take a picture with Santa and to make Pretzels at Aunt Annie's Pretzels.

He is such an awesome fake smiler!!

They took a group class picture.

Then he got his turn!  He asked Santa for Iron Man Lego set.  

Did you know that the Iron Man Lego set is sold out at all of our local Walmarts, Target, and Toys R Us?  And it is also sold out online at all of those places???  

Thank goodness that Santa checked Amazon because they happened to have 3 left!!  

Making a pretzel

He said he was making a snake.

And twist it like so....

Tadaaaa!!  

The most beautifully symmetrical pretzel ever!!!

Saturday morning my mom picked up the big kids and took them back to the mall to buy Christmas gifts for the Angel Tree.  They each chose a child and helped my mom pick out stuff they would like to donate.  

Of course they each got a little something too thanks to a Nana who likes to spoil them!

After the donations and lunch they saw the movie Rise of the Guardians in 3D.  

They loved it!!

Then to round out the fun weekend, Abigail was invited to a birthday party at an indoor swim arena.  Her BFF Elizabeth was there too and they had a blast!!

I love weekends like this, except for how fast they fly by!!