Christmas toys

So, Christmas day we drove to Springfield to spend several days with Jeremy's family. We had alot of fun just relaxing and watching the boys. Tyler has two cousins, Caedman (6) and Keagan (2.5). All of them together is crazy. Monday we went to a bounce house and everyone had a ball. I'll post pictures of that as soon as I get them from Jeremy's dad. Here's a picture of the boys playing with pieces from a game called Tube-A-Ruba from the '80s. Look it up, it was a crazy '80s dance party game. The videos on youtube are pretty funny.


So, after a couple days of crazy, we jumped in the car and headed to Columbia to spend time with my family. Here's some shots from opening presents. Tyler finally got into it. I think the box was big enough he could really go to town ripping the paper.
Once we took the toy out of the box, he already knew what to do and sat down on the seat, even though it wasn't attached to anything. After he went to bed we tacked the instructions and got everything put together...now we just have to fit it in our car to go home.
The next morning he ran straight to it and likes to put his milk in the back cup holders.
My dad also got out a toy that my sister and I used to play with. I remember playing with this alot so we thought Tyler might like to play with it.So here I am showing him how it works.

It's a Christmas Miracle!

Our son doing calculus!Santa also brought a guitar for Tyler!Merry Christmas everyone! We hope the new year brings you much joy and happiness!
(don't you love our roaring fire on Christmas morning!)

Crafty

Tyler goes to a Mom's Day Out Program one day a week which gives me time to run errands, relax or sometimes take a nap.:) He really seems to enjoy it and always comes home with a craft. Below are some pictures of what he's made this year. The bottom left one is one he just made Tuesday. It's a hand towel with a Christmas Tree on it made out of his hand prints. We are so proud. :)

It's always the simple things

Last week we had another visit from our Parents as Teachers rep and she always has these homemade toys made out of things she finds at the dollar store. Most of them are for the kids to play with while being supervised and sometimes I take her suggestions. Here is one I thought was great and he loved playing with her's. So here's my version. I took an old plastic container (that used to have salsa in it) and cut small slits in the lid. Then I pulled out some short popsicle sticks I already had in my craft supplies. Put the lid on the container and Tyler puts the sticks through the slits to help develop his fine motor skills. He loves it! And actually sat still for 10 minutes playing with this. Once he puts all the sticks in he hands me the whole thing so I can dump them out and he can start over.

Kitchen update

After a couple days of painting and a couple days of crown moulding, here's what our kitchen looks like now. We wish we would've done this years ago. We think it looks so much nicer with fresh paint and really think the crown moulding adds alot. Yeah, we usually get carried away when we remodel and always add extra projects. Or, as Jeremy will say, I add extra projects that usually require more work from him. Well, we were able to borrow a finish nailer from our friends, which made that project ALOT easier. So, what do you think? Yep, that's red and we love it!


Tyler helped by plugging in the nailer to the compressor. :)Now we just have some new decorations to put up, stay tuned for more pictures on that. And we're still working on wall #2 in the living room. 3 days until our party...and the decorating deadline.

Santa

I don't know if many of you remember, but when you came to Tyler's birthday party you passed an old log cabin that's in old town St. Peters. Well, the city called the elfs and had Santa make a special visit for a couple hours so Tyler and other kids could meet Santa. Here's how the meeting went.
He was much happier with just the candy cane (in the wrapper) on the way back home.

Hugs, Kisses, and Cars

We've started playing with a lot of new toys this week. We're finally big enough to sit at the table and "color".We also like to drink our milk at the table and play with our baby.This is our baby. It's actually a dog that helps him learn body parts. This past week he started carrying him around and giving him hugs and "kisses". (Which is an open mouthed kiss, very cute!)
And his legs are long enough now to reach both sides of his car so he can now move around the house...the turning radius isn't great, so he runs into alot of things, but still has a ball!


We took these a couple weeks ago when it wasn't quite so cold. Tyler loves playing outside and exploring everything in the backyard.

The Tree

Our little santa!
Tyler was a big help this year putting the Christmas tree up. He liked trying to put he branches on, untangling the lights with daddy and playing with the bead garland. We've had the tree up for several weeks now and between the cat and Tyler, all the ornaments are covering the top half only.

Crazy cousins

We went to see Jeremy's family for Thanksgiving and Tyler had a ball (literally) playing with his older cousins and being a "big boy". Our nephews are 2 and 6 and at first Tyler's not quite sure what to think of them when they are running around and playing, but after awhile he joins right in.
Good thing Grandma had enough balls to go around. For about 15 minutes they all just played in the living room throwing all the different balls around, it was complete chaos.
Then they moved onto raiding Grandma's kitchen of all her pots and pans. Thanks to Tyler opening all the cabinets, because of course, there are not child proof locks and how cool is that!And of course, here's our future drummer being taught by the master himself. Cousin Keagan got these for his birthday and Tyler loves them! Guess we know what he's getting when he turns 2!Our lovely hosts for Thanksgiving dinner! Thanks for all the great food.Here's my cake pop tree! I made pumpkin spice cake pops for one of our many desserts! There were yummy

Decorating update

Wall #1 has some decorations! What do you think of my wall hangings?
Before

After
Close up
Made the trip to Home Depot tonight and picked out some paint colors for the kitchen. So, I'd say we are moving along. Hopefully we'll get the kitchen painted this weekend. I've got what I need to decorate wall #2 in the living room, just need to get some pictures printed. Check back for more updates this weekend!

Decorating attempt: living room and thoughts on the kitchen...

So, we are having a Christmas party December 12th so I'm on a mad dash to make some decorations for our living room at the least. We have cathedral (I think that's what you call it) ceilings so we have these huge wall spaces that are weird shaped and we've never known what to put there. Well I think I've finally come up with some ideas so this week, I will be working on one of the big walls...we'll see if I can get it complete before we leave for Springfield on Wednesday. Here are the two walls I am dealing with.



I also have lofty goals of painting and decorating the kitchen as well....if I could only have a paint color that would match our ugly backsplash (which is tan and cream tiles) and medium brown cabinets. At first I was thinking tan, but then decided it would probably clash with the tan tiles in the backsplash and I wasn't too fond of a tan color to begin with because I don't think it would go well with our wood cabinets. Any ideas? Here are some picures of our kitchen currently (original paint and no decorations) :( As you can tell we need some help.

Holiday cards

Holiday Window Christmas Card

Get custom photo Christmas cards online at Shutterfly.com.

View the entire collection of cards.

Videos!

There are so many videos I keep forgetting to put on here. Below are some of our favorites.

Fake sneezing in the tub. When Tyler was little I would fake sneeze (aaaaaahhhhh - chooo) and it would always make him laugh. So when he was about 11 months old he started doing it himself after anyone sneezed or even himself or if I said God Bless You. Jeremy caught him doing it while I was giving him a bath one night.

This is how we dance. A couple days ago we turned on some music and asked Tyler to dance and he just started spinning. Now we can spin or just ask him to spin and he just starts spinning in a circle.

Halloween

As you saw a couple weeks ago we went and picked pumpkins at a local farm so this past weekend, it was time to carve. We found some cool designs and Jeremy did a great job carving all the pumpkins. Tyler was Tigger for Halloween and we got some great shots with him and pumpkins.