Christmas card outtakes

Have you ever tried to get a nice picture of two toddlers (basically)? It's damn near impossible! Dave and I had a heck of a time getting both kids to look at me while I was trying to get a Christmas card photo. And smiling at the same time? Forget it! That's why I love the Santa photo so much. They're both looking and smiling at the same time! It's like a Christmas miracle!

Here are the few we used:

Anyway, if you didn't get a card from us this year it's probably because I didn't have your address and I'm too lazy to call/email and I'm terribly sorry.... but here is what we went through to get the one picture with both of them looking (keep in mind that none of these have been edited and the white balance is off on all of them!):

And my personal favorite:

Christmas with a little girl

There are only so many Christmas-y things for little boys... but oh the plethora of little girl outfits for this time of year! Here are photos of Allie in her various Christmas outfits. I have purchased only one of these. The rest were gifts from friends and family.

This cute little Santa dress was given to Allie by her Great Aunt Earlene last year. It's still a little big on her (it's the right size for this time of year, Allie's just small for her age) but still cute as can be! She wore the hat for a long time...

... then decided to carry it around in her mouth for a little while!

This one was given to Allie by my friend Liz. I think the striped pants are too cute!

I know I already posted the Santa pic but it's the only pic I have of Allie in this dress (besides, the Santa pic is cute enough to post twice, right?). I bought this one....I couldn't resist.

I bought this too... on clearance last year when Allie was just a few weeks old!

This was also given to me by my friend Liz...She hasn't worn this one much, though because she can't crawl in a dress very well!

I haven't yet decided which one she'll wear on Christmas Eve....maybe we'll have a wardrobe change throughout the evening! And, of course, she has her very special First Christmas dress that she'll wear on Christmas day. Oh! I almost forgot the Christmas jammies! That will be the next post, though..

See what I mean? So many options! The really sad part, though, is that I already have Christmas dresses hanging in her closet in 3T and 4T that were given to her!

2 1/2

Happy "half birthday" to my little man!  Today JD is officially 2 1/2 years old and boy is it obvious! To put it nicely, he can be a little hard to handle these days. Time out seems to do nothing for his habits of hitting, kicking, pushing and biting Allie and myself. Some days I feel like I spend the entire day putting him in time out. I'm hoping it's just a phase and he'll grow out of it soon. He now likes shoes and walking around in grown up shoes is lots of fun for him. He also LOVES to "wash his hands" which pretty much means he wants to play in the kitchen or bathroom sink until the entire room is soaked. Lately he's shown an interest in helping me make dinner so he'll push a chair up to the end of the counter (well away from the stove) and I'll give him stuff to stir or mash or pour.

He does have some kind moments, though. This morning, for example, he spent probably a half hour driving Allie around in the house on his battery powered 4-wheeler. She absolutely LOVES to do this and giggled the whole time. Here are a couple pictures I caught of them with my phone while they were playing in the living room.

I tell Dave it's a good thing he's funny because that gets him out of trouble sometimes. The kid somehow makes me crack up when I'm trying to be stern and discipline him... even when he's not in trouble, he's hilarious! I was in the kitchen making a bottle for Allie. When I walked back in to the living room he was standing there watching TV and wearing a Santa hat that has been lying around. When I spoke to him he turned around and I realized he was wearing his funny fake glasses too:

Then yesterday, we were on the way home from the mall and he was pretty quiet in the backseat. When we were almost home he said "Uh oh, mommy. I can't see!" I turned around to see this:

Santa gave out stickers this year and JD put them to very good use.... speaking of Santa, the kids did great! JD practically dragged me over to Santa as soon as he saw him. He was so excited to sit on Santa's lap. He told Santa that he wanted race cars and firetrucks and he told Santa that Allie wants baby dolls. Allie didn't much care either way but she didn't scream! Here is what I consider to be pretty much the most perfect Santa picture ever!

Moving along, JD is doing great at school. He loves his teacher Miss Mary and talks about her all the time. He knows the routine. He says to me in the morning "Go to post office, Daddy drop me off, take nap, eat, mommy come get me!" Dave takes him in the morning and on the way they stop at the post office to get Wild Wing's mail. JD knows which box is theirs and helps Dave carry the mail out. He no longer cries at drop off and is starting to not cry when he sees me walk into the room. He has his first school friend and I have befriended his mom. Luckily they live near us and we'll be going to their house on Thursday for a play date! And here are JD's very first school pictures. They turned out just beautiful!

And finally, just because I love these pictures too much not to share, here is JD in the bathtub last night with crazy hair. Finally, hair washing is beginning to be not as much as a battle!

***Disclaimer: I apologize for the horrible quality of these pictures. All but the Santa pic were taken with my iPhone. They're great for a phone pic but not near as clear as pics taken with my D90. And some are very yellow (one of JD's school pics above - yes, I took a pic of a pic so I'd have a digital copy) (and the bathtub pics were so yellow I just converted them to b&w so you wouldn't be able to tell!)

11 Months old!

Ack! Only one more month until Allie turns ONE! My tiny little baby is doing more and more stuff these days....

She now has 9 teeth, has taken her first steps (though is still far from actually walking), uttered her first word, can climb into the toy box all by herself and makes herself known if she wants something. In fact, if you're eating and not sharing she'll stand at your knee and yell at you until you give her some! She's absolutely hilarious these days. She now has a habit of crawling around with things in her mouth like she's a dog and she loves to put things on her head. The other day she pulled a dish towel out of my clean laundry basket, put it on her head (completely covering her face) and started crawling around my bedroom, not even being able to see where she was going. She points at absolutely everything (especially the Christmas tree) and talks to everything too. I love this age of discovery. She wants to know what everything is and is so cute touching everything with her one tiny little index finger.... ever so gently until she knows what it is... then it goes straight into her mouth!

She waves bye-bye, still likes to make kissy sounds, flaps her arms when she's excited and is adorable when she claps her little hands together! She is also starting to understand the concept of a "high five". She loves for me to crawl on the floor and "chase" her around. Sometimes we just go around and around in circles until she gets worn out. She also still adores JD and squeals in delight when she sees him in the morning.

She's still my little peanut, weighing in at 18 pounds (14th percentile) and is 28 inches long (41st percentile). She's still wearing 9 month onesies/shirts/jammies and is currently outgrowing her 6 months pants.... the legs are too short but they still fit in the waist. I guess we'll have to switch her to 9 month pants for length and just keep pulling them up!

Just because I think they're funny.... here is the progression of our photoshoot this morning....

When she decided she was done being photographed she tore the paper off of the chair and threw the bear onto the floor.....

... then she made her great escape, over the arm of the chair, and crawled away!

Big day for Allison

Allie took her first three steps today! Right in the living room. The look on her face immediately after was hilarious...kind of like she was trying to figure out what just happened. She'll be 11 months tomorrow which is right around the time JD took his first steps. If she follows in her brother's footsteps (pun intended), she'll be full on walking right around her birthday... heaven help me!

Later this afternoon I noticed that she was chewing on her bottle nipples so I stuck my finger in her mouth and discovered yet another new tooth. This time it's a molar on her right side and it's just barely cut through the gum... so the poor girl has 3 teeth coming in right now!

Stay tuned for tomorrow's "bear in the chair" pic!

Adventures in Home Building

Man are we in the thick of it now! I'm sure I'll say that 100 times before this process is over but it feels like we're moving full steam ahead!

Over the past two weeks we've completely cleared the lot of all the trees we wanted down and burned a 10+ foot burn pile.

Our insanely large firewood pile

This beautiful live oak is just on the other side of our back property line. I'm so glad it worked out where we could clear our entire back yard to have an outstanding view of this tree from our back porch!

Ta-da! Here it is! Our house will sit where the burn pile is located

And the 10+ foot tall burn pile. My mom, standing in front at the base of it, is 5'4" to give you an idea of its height.

The fire....

Allie watching the bonfire from afar

This is the view looking up. Hard to believe that two months ago all you could see when you looked up was branches and leaves. Now I can see these beautiful clouds!

 This morning we met with our builder. We thought it would just be the three of us talking about finishes and stuff so he could get us a total estimate, but no grass grows under our builder's feet. He had the guy there that will supply our lumber, doors, windows, trim, columns, etc as well as the cabinet and counter top guy!

Of course as all these people show up, the guy driving the 18-wheeler to pick up the loader also shows up. He was supposed to be taking the loader to Conway to fix the drive shaft but that plan kind of crapped out on us. Since the drive shaft was broken Dave couldn't drive the loader out to the main road. And because the road leading to our house is so narrow and winding he couldn't drive the big truck out to our lot. So Dave tried to tow the loader out and that didn't work. The guy from the repair place ended up using the backhoe to kind of push the loader along. Well, just as he got started down the road the strain on the hydraulic system was too much and all 20 gallons of hydraulic fluid dumped out onto the ground! To make it worse, this happened as the backhoe bucket was dug into the ground ready to push the loader forward so now it can't even be towed out of the road! Why does that matter? Well, because we were supposed to have a guy coming out tomorrow with a big truck to pick up the pine trees that we are selling! So now we have to get a guy from the repair shop to repair the loader just enough in the field to drive it to the main road so it can be loaded onto the 18-wheeler and hauled to Conway for major repairs!

All of that put Dave in a foul mood, of course, but we were still able to have a productive meeting with our builder who gave me lots of "homework". I now have a huge stack of brochures to look through so I can pick out windows, doors, columns, cabinets, counter tops, siding, etc., etc. Not only that but Dave and I get to go through the blueprints and draw on each floor where we want our outlets and lighting fixtures so the electrician can give us a quote. We anticipate pouring the foundation slab in late January!

Allie's first Thanksgiving (and what we've been doing for the past 2 weeks)

Thanksgiving this year was low key and wonderful! We went to stay at my parents house on Tuesday night. JD promptly fell into the brick steps and cut his chin open. I thought I was going to have to take him for a stitch or two but we were finally able to pin him down long enough to get some steristrips on it to hold the cut closed. I believe this will probably produce his first scar...

you can see the "band-aid" on his chin in this picture...

All last week we had the guys clearing the lot and it looks wonderful! We were left with a 10 foot burn pile but Dave took care of that this past weekend...More on the house progress in the next post. 

Wednesday we pretty much just hung out and started making casseroles for the feast.

Thursday we finished cooking and headed to the Log Inn for Thanksgiving lunch with my Aunt Avis, Uncle Hutch and cousin Meghan and her husband Andrew. Kent, Sarah, Grandma and Papa were there too, of course. Lunch was delicious and we got the most wonderful news. Meghan and Andrew are now expecting their first child! I can't tell you how excited I am for them! We had a great time hanging out, talking and playing with Meghan and Andrew's puppy but we definitely missed Rachel, Jim, Jeremy, Hayley, Mary Grey, Emma and Harry!

This wonderful picture was taken by my Aunt Avis...

This wonderful picture was also taken by Aunt Avis... thanks Aunt Avis!

 JD's "Indian headband" that he made at school. He was so proud of it!

This isn't the best picture but it cracks me up for a couple of reasons. #1 because you can see how filthy she is from crawling around outside (look at her knees and feet) and #2 because her dress is tucked in to her bloomers so she could crawl... it's just funny!

Thursday evening mom and I headed back up to Myrtle Beach. Mom stayed up here because we got up at 3:00 AM for Black Friday. Yes, you read that right. I was one of those nutty people this year. This is the first time I've ever gotten up insanely early to get a deal but this is the year to upgrade our televisions and I wanted to be sure I didn't miss out on such a big ticket item. You see, Dave and I still have archaic picture tube televisions in the house. You know the ones....the gigantic and very heavy ones that you can't hang on the wall? Yep, we still have those. So you see, we are largely overdue for an upgrade. Apparently I did pretty well because, as I was shopping in my no makeup, coffee stain on my t-shirt, glasses wearing glory(at 5:00 AM, no less), the reporter for the local news decided to interview me. But not only did he interview me, he followed me around the store and even through the parking lot! I didn't see it on TV that night because I had the network wrong (can you say "half asleep"?) but I read the article online (click the link and you can read it too) and they dubbed me the "Black Friday Biggest Saver"... isn't that hilarious?? I still haven't seen the video and I'm not 100% sure if I want to.....

The rest of the weekend we were supposed to be putting Christmas decorations up. I got the tree decorated. Well, half decorated as JD and Allie about pulled the whole tree over trying to get ornaments (plastic ones, of course) off of the tree. So now everything is on the top half. A few Santa things inside the house and half of the lights up on the outside.... we're still working on getting the other half up!

Monday and Tuesday were uneventful. JD went to school, Allie and I did our normal grocery store, dishes, laundry deal. Tuesday night however was a different story. JD refused to sleep. He went to bed around 7:30 PM and woke FIVE times between then and midnight. He finally got a couple of hours of sleep in only to wake at 2:45 AM and stay up the rest of the night. I tried everything I could think of to get him to go  back to bed but he just wouldn't! I was highly annoyed. Well, I felt badly about being so annoyed when he started running a fever at 6:30 that morning. I was only about 101.6 but he just looked kind of puny so I kept him home from school, of course and took him to the doctor. Before the doctor I gave him some Motrin and he took a semi-decent nap. He also slept in the car on the way there. When I was gettingg him out of the car he started saying "owie... my ear"...not good. So I sat in the waiting room at the doctor's office for an hour with a squirmy Allie on my right knee and a crying, fussing JD on my left knee. Thank goodness I brought Goldfish crackers with me because that's the only way I could keep Allie sitting on my lap. She was DYING to get down and crawl around (yuck!).  Anyway, turned out JD had a double ear infection. He said the right one didn't look too bad but the left one was really bad. He prescribed some Ammoxicillin and sent us home. When we got there JD's temp was up to 103.5 so I gave him more Motrin and his antibiotics and he actually asked me to go night night. He slept for 2 hours and woke up a little better. He was all better by Friday and was able to return to school. In the middle of all this, Allie decided to cut not one but two incisors so she was grumpy and on Motrin too!

So now we're up to  Friday,  which brings us back  to another weekend in Pawleys! I picked JD up from school and headed right down. Saturday Dave lit the burn pile and tended it all day. Sunday was pretty much the same. Mom and I decided that the kids needed to get out of the house on Sunday afternoon so we took them to the tiny mall in Murrells Inlet. JD sat with Santa but he was wearing a Spongebob t-shirt so I didn't have pictures taken. I'll take them both back to see Santa this weekend for pictures. After that we went in to the Toys-R-Us Express store and JD had a ball playing with all the toys in their boxes. Today we met with lots of people regarding the house. After those meetings I put JD down for his nap which brings us to the crowning moment of the weekend....

About 30 minutes after I put him down I was sitting in the living room downstairs checking email on my phone... totally thinking JD was taking a nice little nap. Boy was I wrong. Turns out he was very, very busy up there! The little monster came down the stairs and showed up in the living room BUTT NAKED! In total disbelief I asked him who got him out of this crib (he sleeps in a pack-n-play at their house) and he just shrugged and said "all by myself"! So now I'm thinking great, just great! Not only is he now into stripping (something he's never really done) but he's also learned to climb out of the pack-n-play (something that he's surprisingly never done...ever!). So I marched him back upstairs to get him dressed and try to get him to take a nap in my bed. Well, to my even greater surprise, we walked in to my old bedroom and he had pooped on the floor! I cleaned that up and asked him how he got out of his crib, at which point he climbed back into the pack-n-play, pointed at his sheet and said "pee pee, mommy. See?"..... his sheet was soaked. So while I thought he was asleep for a half hour, he stripped down, peed in his bed, climbed out of his bed, pooped on the floor, went down the stairs and appeared in the living room.... very proud of himself the whole way, I'm sure! This was all too much for me to take so I scrapped the nap plan, packed our stuff and headed home....still in shock!

As you can tell, I'm sure from this very, very long post, we've been busy as usual.... but that's no excuse. I'll try not to let 2 whole weeks pass before I post again, I promise!