Christmas 2009

We had an amazing Christmas Eve night and Christmas morning at our house, just the four of usthis year. It was a pretty traditional (or at least traditional for us) Eve. We put London to bed a bit earlier than I planned (and if you read the last post, fill free to chuckle at me), so she didn't partake in quite everything, which is really OK because she wouldn't have really cared eitherway. But Dylan REALLY enjoyed every tradition this year.

The night was started off with a new thing for us,we had an ardors dinner, just a bunch of finger foods and dips. We let the kids sit in the living room around our coffee table with tree all lit up. It was so laid back and easy. We love it and Daniel and I plan for this to be a "forever tradition".

Then I read The Night Before Christmas to the kids. I always get a little choked up when I hear or read the first few lines of that story... it really does get me every time! After that, we put London Lou in the bed and continued the night with Dylan.

He and I made cookies for Santa, then laid on our bellies under the tree to write Santa a letter. I had to show him how to write a few of the letters, but he did "Dear Santa", "I 'heart' (with the heart shape) U", and signed his name. He interpreted the rest to me to write out for him. He also drew Santa a picture. I think the picture was of Dylan being Iron Man, or Zelda (I wish I would have written that down!). The text that he had asked me to write said "I want lots of toys. I have been good every year. That will be all." I had to giggle!Part of me wanted to prompt him to say a little more, but then the letter wouldn't have been straight from Dyl, so I let it be!

By then our cookies were ready, so we put them on there special plate and laid them by the chimney. This is when panic set in for me that we had used that last bit of milk already! It was snowing out (and we don't drive well in snow down here in the south!!) and everything was closed early due to Christmas Eve. So, I sent Daniel next door to our SWEET neighbors house to borrow a glass. Our neighbor just chuckled when Daniel asked for glass of milk for Santa and sweetly let us have. Whew. Crises averted. London was going to need a milk sippy first thing in the morning... so Santa saved the milk for her! haha.

With Milk and Cookies laid out, we curled up onto the couch and listened to Daniel tell the Christmas Story. It was nice to share the Birth of Jesus with Dylan and let him know why we, as Christians, celebrate the season. Then, it was bedy by time for him!

Daniel and I stayed up and put together a play kitchen for the two of them from "Santa", fixed up the stockings, and placed the presents under the tree. I was so excited to see the kids faces in the morning, that I was the last to bed and first awake!

Christmas morning was pretty much perfect, complete with it being a WHITE ONE (the first white Christmas I have EVER had!). I couldn't have asked for anything more. I just kept thinking the whole time how happy my heart was, watching my two sweet babies experiencing Christmas joy. The kids loved all of their presents. Dylan ripped into all of his, stopping only for a second to admire what it was that he had gotten. London wasn't too into the unwrapping process. She would get excited to see a baby doll or pony, she just didn't want to open it herself.

We let the kids play for a few hours (and mommy snuck in a nap), had lunch, and then packed up and headed out to Mississippi for 5 days of time with our family. We so enjoyed our trip! I'll come back and tell more about it in the next few days. We are so glad to be home again and have spent the evening just relaxing. The morning will be all about getting things into order again.

Hope everyone had as an amazing holiday as we did!

*On a side note, this post is getting too long... so I will post pictures of Christmas morning tomorrow! :)

Christmas Eve 2009 -Unplanned.

Anyone who knows me well, knows that I am a planner. Its in my blood. I am maybe a little overyly obsesive about planning. But those who know me well, mostly all love me anyways. :)

So, I had all my plans laid out for today, Christmas Eve, weeks ago. Sure, there were a few loose ends that had to be tied up in the past week or so, but for the most part it was all neatly orchestrated in my head. Sometimes though, no matter how well you plan, even if its down to the tiniest detail, things happen... life happens... and your plans get blown away in the wind.

Today was one of those days, that plans just didn't really matter. I had planned to have my brother and his family over, as well as my mom (who has already been staying at our house since having her big surgery) for a nice Christmas Eve dinner tonight. The plan was to serve a good 'ole Cajun Christmas, just like the ones I grew up with my MamMaw making (whom I miss more than I ever thought I would), with some serious Gumbo and Muffalettas. What I did not plan was for my week to be so crazy and busy that I wouldn't be able to find time to go to the store until the last minute. Once I realized it would be, however, I did plan to go to the store when I got off work last night. Only I didn't plan to be so exhausted I could barely keep my eyes open. So, my new plan was wake up first thing this morning with London Paisley and head out to the store. This wasn't too big of a deal, seeing as how it was already in the plans to go into town to take the kids to see the Jolly Old Man.

Sounds easy enough, right? Christmas Eve, wake up super early, run around and gets erronds done, be home by 10(ish), start the gumbo, have relaxful time with the family until lunch, have light lunch, get the family ready and head out to our church's candle light service, be home by 3:30 and finish getting ready for the dinner tonight, and finally have our big Christmas chindig. Yep. Easy enough. As of last night, that was the plan that was completely mapped out (down to what the kids were wearing all through out the day (yes... with three outfit changes each.. I know, I know).

What I did not plan, I could not have. It snowed. A lot. A whole, whole lot. And messed up ALL of my plans.

My day went more like this (hold onto your seat, its a lot to follow!):

Got up at 6:30 with London this morning, acording to plan.

Had some unplanned, but much loved, girl time with my mom in her bed, snuggling up with London. This is when I found out about the snow.

Panic sets in at about 6:45 when I realize that my brother may not even be able to make it to our shindig tonight, and we can't change our plans to tomorrow, because we already plan to make our trip to Mississippi at about noon.

We go round and round about how we can work it out.

I finally decide at about 7:30 just go get done what has to get done, and leave the grocery shopping for last, that way we can see if the plan works out or not... also known as this strange thing some people do, "playing it by ear"-I for one, am NOT a fan of this method.

Get the whole family dressed and finally get out the door a little before 8.

The next couple hours, take a little longer, but do not involve any snow, and go quite smoothly... almost like they were going according to plan.

Then, wile we are still out, it starts to snow a little. And my brother watches the weather channel to find out that it is going to actually be snowing a lot.

We decide to move the get together up to "12pm to 1pm"- depending on traffic, due the pesky, beautiful snow.

Panic set in because its already 10:30(ish) and I still have quite a bit to get done. And gumbo is out of the question because there is not enough time to cook it. And I don't really have plan b. I don't really do those.

I gather myself and decide we will do some fanastic finger foods. We decide on WingStop. I decide that we need a little something extra, because thats just not enough food, and decide to go to Walmart. Plus, the baby really needs diapers.

11:00am, I have two hours (or one... depending on traffic) to get to Walmart and Wingstop, which should not be a problem because they are ony about 15 min away.

Really LONG (because, really... this is already a long enough story) and EXHAUSTING story short, It takes me much, much, much longer than I had planned to be done with my "quick run out" and I get home about 15 min after my brother's family has arived. And I bring cold wings and fries with me. And some very yummy dips.

Brother has to leave in a bit of a hurry because he has to drive back in the weather, which is only getting worse at this point. So, my nice sit down dinner party (with gifts to follow) tunrs into an "eat quickly and open presents fast" thing.

Once they leave, we hang out for a bit and play in our unplanned for snow and get ready to go to the later candle light service. Once we are all dressed, and walk out the front door, we realize that this crazy storm has blown in a TON of snow in the past half hour, and we can not (or did not) drive in it to church.

So we scrap that plan, and the rest of them too, and just hang out and play in the snow and with our new toys.

*Sigh*

Nothing went as planned. Really, pretty much nothing.

But you know, after the initial craziness of my plans getting blown away in the... snow... Today was one of the best Christmas Eves that I have ever had.

I had planned to have a little time to relax with the family this morning. But instead I had a ton of time to relax with them tonight. My kids got to really play with their things and enjoy them, and each other.

I surely didn't plan the snow, but would have cancelled every plan from now until the New Year to get to see the looks on my kids faces when they walked outside into our Winter Wonderland. They sounds of their giggles were worth more than all the money in the world to me.

I was a bit sad that we didn't get to have much of a Christmas gathering as a whole family, but I am glad my brother and family were able to get home before the weather was too bad.

Lesson learned this Christmas Eve; While going with out a plan is not something that I am usually very comfortable with, it is not always the worst thing in the world. In fact, "going with the flow" can actually turn out to be quite delightful. Very delightful, in fact.

Christmas Crafts

Its Christmas week! I wanted to do a craft each day leading up to Christmas with Dylan starting on Monday. We do crafts pretty often as is, but I just thought it would be fun and festive to make a big deal out of doing "Today's Christmas Craft!". He gets pretty excited to look at the options in my craft corner and pick what he is going to do that day. Yesterday was so stinkin busy for us, that we hardly had time to turn around, much less craft. So today, I told him we would do two crafts to make up for it.

After MUCH debate, he settled on doing this wooden Christmas tree. I though it would be a cute keepsake that I will put out on a table or somewhere every Christmas. I can't think of decoration I would like more than those that my kids make! I decided I would paint a little sign that said "Believe". He really took his time and tried to cover the whole tree green (like most kids, he usually slops the color on there really quickly and has lots of spaces). He dotted a little yellow at the top for the star. I told him that we needed to wait for the tree to dry before he painted any decorations onto it. I offered for him to help me finish my craft, but he decline and went about his way playing make believe. I couldn't get him to be interested in it again after that. So, here is our plane green tree. I may have him decorate it tomorrow. Or I may not. I kind of like it plane, just the way that it is. It very much characteristic of him at this age.


Dylan decided that he really wanted to wait for his Daddy to come home so that he could help us when we made our gingerbread house. I'm glad that we did. Not only was it nice to do something all together, but that thing was SO messy, and I really needed that extra pair of hands! London was already asleep when we started making it. I'm glad because my poor girly would have been so miserable not being able to eat everything and be in everything with her hands. She just thinks she is a big girl, bless her sweet heart! I can't wait until she is old enough to really join us! Dylan had trouble not eating everything on the table as well! haha! He loved the icing.

This was our first attempt at one of these things together as a family. It was so so messy and I think we added too much water to the icing, it was just every where! We had a lot of fun and giggles making it though, and its something we will definitely do next year and every year after. Next year, maybe London Paisley will be old enough to "help" out some! I bet so!

Our house is not perfect, but it does have a lot of charm!

I even set the self timer on my little camera and got a pic of the three of us. Please excuse my no make up face! haha!

Here is a pic of all of our little Christmas Crafts from today. Ahhh. I love this time of the year!

Ready. Set. GO!!!

Is anyone else's head spinning from the business that is Christmas week. I don't think I am going to have one single day between now and the New Year that doesn't have something pretty large planned. I love this time of the year, but the week leading up to Christmas always stresses me out. Not only do I have event and such to partake in this week, I have to GET READY for Christmas. I still have to wrap ALL of my presents. I still have a few small presents to pick up. and I need my carpets cleaned. Oh. And we are in the middle of (try to) redecorating our living room. Oh. And. I'm hosting Christmas Eve at my house and have not bought groceries. Fun Times.

At least I have these beauties to look at while I'm a busy bee:

Hope y'all are having a Happy Monday!

Baby, Its COLD Outside!

This isn't a long post because, well... I'm popped. Just plain 'ole TIRED.

My mom had spinal surgery yesterday. It went well, but was such a looooong day. The surgery took 5 hours!! Yikes! I was lonely and ready to see my mom/kids/hubby. I didn't even get to see her until 9:30 last night (after being at the hospital since 11:30 am!). I got home at midnight and crashed!

Today was a whirlwind. School for Dylan while London and I ran some errands, first time attempting nap without binkie, more errands, dinner with the family at Wendy's (because thats all we had time for), hospital to see my mom, visit with her a my brother, come home, fill out some paper work for very exciting adventure ahead, give baths, send kids to bed (well, London was already asleep from the car ride home), and now about to go cuddle in bed with the hubby and have some meaningful pillow talkimpose upon him with my chatter even though he is falling asleep! Whew.

By the way, its finally feeling like a real Winter down here in the Dallas area! I LOVE it. And I love this little hat. I also love the adorable little girl in the hat. And her brother. And father.

25 Days of Christmas!

I meant to write this post on Dec 1, but better late than never, no?

I have decided that this year I am going to do something each day from December first through December 25 to celebrate Christmas. It doesn't have to be anything big, just something fun and special. Its our way to countdown to Christmas! Dylan is very excited about the hollidays this year. The older he gets, the more fun it is to celebrate as a family. London, well she is just loving our Christmas lights this year. I know she will be much more into the festivities next year.

So to play a little catch up on our countdown, this is what we've done so far:

1st Day of Christmas (Dec 1): We decorated the tree! Started our advent calender. I took some Christmasy photos of the little ones and as a extra special treat, sugar free candy canes!

2nd Day of Christmas: We sang lots of Christmas carols and Dylan got an extra special video from Santa!!! (from this web site...http://portablenorthpole.tv/home).

3rd Day of Christmas: We went to our first Christmas party of the year. Dylan got to watch Charlie Brown Christmas!

Let it Snow, Let it Snow, Let is SNOW!!

We usually see snow down here in Dallas, Texas about once a year. Maybe. Sometimes, not at all (I'm pretty sure it didn't snow last year?) So yesterday, when to forecaster said that we had a chance of snow, I said "yeh right!" So, imagine my surprise when, 1)London didn't wake up until am!! (that's like sleeping until noon for her!) and then 2)looking out the window at 2 am to see SNOW!! You guys in the north will probably chuckle to see the "snow" that we get so excited about. It was only about an inch and a half, but it was enough to get a little gitty about! I ran to

Dylan's room and woke him up immediately! You should have seen his little eyes when I told him it was snowing! He jumped straight up out of bed and into some clothes. This was his first reaction to the snow:

London took a little while to warm up to the snow. She only wanted to be held by Daniel for the first few minutes. Which was A-OK by him!

The kids were much to intrigued with the snow to stop for a picture, but mean mommy made them anyways. This is as good as it got:

And Little Bit did eventually agree to get down in the snow. She tried to stomp around in it for a bit, but gave up promptly after falling down once. She and I have decided that we are not snow bunnies. Its only nice to look at.

Before London's meltdown about falling in the snow/mommy being sick of being wet and cold, and all of us heading back inside, there was even a snow ball fight!

*Please excuse the fact that her hat does NOT match her coat. Since its normally not even very cold here yet, I still have not bought he hat and mittens! Oh, and Daniel couldn't find his gloves, so he is wearing mine. And also, he is in his pj sweat shirt! lol! What do you want, we were in HURRY to get to that snow! hahaha!*

Cyber Monday!

Genius. Is what this is! Don't even worry about leaving at 4:30 am on Black Friday (which I did) anymore! Just stay home, sit in your pjs, and enjoy a cup of hot tea (or whatever morning beverage you enjoy) and shop till you your fingers drop! I know I will be hitting up several stores today! Happy shopping, y'all!

Not much to report on the weekend. It kinda stunk. I spent most of it at my "part time" job. I am working a this little retail shop for the discount and got stuck with tons of hours this past week. Poo. The discount is sooo nice though. :)

Today I plan to finish doing the Christmas decor, catch up on laundry, do a Christmas craft with Dylan and maybe squeeze in a nap. Sounds like fun, huh? :) Hope y'all have a good week!

Thanksgiving Day Recap

Nothing overly intresting to report on. It was just a good 'ole traditional Thanksgiving again this year, praise the Lord! :)

When we woke up, I made monkey bread and shoved it in the oven. Then we watched (well, more like watched at) the Macey's Thanksgiving Day Parade and the kids played with their toys like any other morning. It was nice to have Daniel home from work, so that made it a special morning! He even sat down and watched ll of about 1 minute a little bit of the parade with me before he declared that he would have to scratch his eyeballs out if forced to watch more beingdone with it.Then we all sat down together with our warm, gooey monkey bread and chocolate milk (don't worry, this is a very special treat... we really are healthy(ish) people!) It was just a very leisurely morning of hanging out together and slowly getting ready.

Every year we spend Thanksgiving at my big brother's house for a late lunch. This year was no different and every bit as enjoyable as it usually is! We had more food than we knew what to do with. In fact there were more dishes of food than there were people to eat them. Not small dishes either, big casserole, Texas sized dishes. I'm not even kidding. There were five sinfully delicious deserts. I ate. until. I. could. NOT. breathe. I'm not exaggerating. Okay, maybe I am a little. I COULD breath, but not well. And we all needed a serious nap afterwards.

The boys had a little extra room for all the yummy food, because of the football game they enjoyed earlier while the woman slaved away worked in the kitchen

.

The nap had to wait though, because the next part of our traditional Thanksgiving is maybe my favorite. We pull out the 100lb newspaper and get out 98lbs of glorious sales adds! Really

though, I think they were a good two inches thick! No,

we don't actually hit up all of those stores. I don't think you physically could. Well, maybe if you were Santa. But since we are not Santa, we do not go to every single store. In fact we always go to the same three stores, Walmart, Target, and Toys R Us. And, we don't ever go to all three. There just isn't enough red bull to go around for that. But we usually hit up one or two of those three stores, my mom and I. Its like the shopping Olympics, we love it! Anways, we still look through all the papers just for kicks. What can I say, we both have serious shopping issues. haha!

While the girls are browsing the papers, all of the boys indulge in some video games. Its very cute to see the big boys (aka men) playing with the little boys. London Paisley roamed around between all of us and just had a big ole time, I think she even fit in a little karaoke. Then, after a little more visiting we all head home. We have to get to bed early so we can be up bright and early for those sales!

Hope all of you had a fun thanksgiving too!

Thankfulness

Happy Thanksgiving, Y'all!!

This is going to be one of those post that wont be extremely interesting to many people. Its going to more for me and my memories. I love that I can treat my blog as a journal of our life!

This year, I have had so so much to be Thankful for. But, these are the things that top are the

three people in this photo with me (This picture isn't perfect, and neither are we... But like are family its full of funny stories (I'll tell y'all about London's shirt later) and lots of love. Its what we got when trying for perfect family photo! haha!):

Always number on in my heart, my handsome and sweet husband, Daniel. I love this man more than I'll ever be able to put into words. If there are such things as soul mates, he is mine. He is my best friend, my companion, my protector, my partner, my strength... Baby, "those are just a few of the millions of reasons I love you!"

Also the most important people in my life, are my two beautiful babies.

Dylan, you are not a baby and more. Your not even a toddler. You are a handsom, smart, super funny little boy. No matter how big you get, you will always be MY baby though. I love when you come and give me one of those extra special hugs of yours for no reason other than you love me. I love watching you pretend in your imaginary world and I love watching you learn new things everyday! You have really bloomed in the past year. Daddy and I are amazed at how quickly you are growing and how you are such a smart kid! You are the best cuddle buddy ever and I will always love watching movies and cartoons with you, just to get in as much cuddle time as I can.

London, my princess! You are everything I ever drempt having a little girl would be! You are as girly as they come, my love... and Mommy would not have it any other way! I can not believe that last thanksgiving, you were only one month old, and this Thanksgiving you are a 13 month old toddler, walking and talking! You are such a smart little girl! Daddy and I love watching you explore every new thing you come into contact with. Daddy says your his little scientist! This is such a fun age with you! I love that you have recently become more and more cuddly and that you give kisses just to sweet. I think maybe the cutest thing your doing at the moment is dancing! It makes me smile every single time.

Tomorrow Can't Come Fast Enough!

On Saturday we dropped Dylan off in Shreveport, LA to let him spend 4 nights in Mississippi with Daniel's parents. I thought that I was going to not get nervous, but I did. haha! I know that he is in very very good hands, but I am that overly protective extreme Type A kind of Mommy. Its just who I am, thankfully my family loves me anyways! :)

I overcame my anxiety though and after a quick cup of coffee and a little chit chat, I buckled him into Memom and Umpa's car, and waved until he couldn't see me anymore. I surprised myself (and Daniel) and did not cry. I know that he is being well taken care of. I trust them completely. Its just hard to not be there with him 24/7.

He is only five, but I could probably list out every single time that he has ever spent the night away from me, because its not a long list at all. Rather than leaving him overnight with my mom (she lives very close by) for a date night with Daniel, I almost always would rather just go pick him up. London is almost 14 months and has never spent the night away from home. What can I say?I just love having my babies near me. Not that there is ANYTHING wrong with sending them to someone that you love and trust house for alone time, its just not MY favorite thing. :)

So, tomorrow is the day that my little man comes back home to me (and his Daddy and sister...)!!! I'm like a kid the night before Christmas. I just can't wait. I'm thinking that I will go to bed early9ish) tonight just to get the time her faster!

But in the mean time, I'm so glad that he was able to get to go down for this time with his Grandparents. Its is so important to Daniel and I that he (and London too one day) gets to spend as much time as he can with them. He loves them soooo much and loves to be at their house. I've talked to him several times daily and he is just having a blast!

He called me when he got to their house Saturday and was already in hog heaven playing video games with Memom and Umpa. Sunday he got to play all the instruments at the church that his Umpa pastors. He really loves the drums, so I know that just made his day. When I talked to him on Monday he could hardly contain his excitement that his cousin Lexy was coming over! Memom had a whole Thanksgiving dinner and invited over Daniel's little sister and her family as well as his Grandparents. So, Dylan got to see his Grandma and Grandpa AND Lexy in the same night. THAT makes for one happy little boy. Today, I bet was Dylan's favorite because not only did he spend the day with Lexy, they went to ride some horses! Dylan pretended to be his favorite super hero, Link (from Legends of Zelda) while he rode, complete with his costume! I wish I could have been there to see his face, because I just not his smile was a mile wide!

I talked to him just a bit ago, and he was having dinner at Umpa's church. I asked him if he was ready to come home tomorrow and he said he was having lots of fun but missed us, so YES! he is ready! Yay!!! Me too. Tomorrow can not come fast enough!

Hello. Once More.

Apparently, I am not great at keeping this thing up while staying extremely busy. haha! To my deference, my lap top crashed a couple weeks ago and is being shipped off to get fixed. Sure, I have the desktop, but who has time to come sit down at the desk for time at the computer!? Not me, or at least not very often. :)

So, In latest happening (I actually had reopen my Blog right now to see what my last post was, it has been THAT long!! yikes!) ...

My mom is STILL having trouble with her back and finding a solution that is going to help her. BUT we are much closer to finding that solution and things are looking up in that area! Thank the Lord!

Miss London Paisley is now a full on toddler at 13 months old! She got in FOUR more teeth, and is just a few shy of having a FULL mouth full! Wow! I can't believe my baby is getting so big.

I have decided to go back to school full time. Probably in January (more on that later though)!

Dylan is going on a big adventure with his Mommy, Daddy, or Sister and will be staying in Mississippi for 4 nights with his grandparents! He is more than excited, and I am more than nervous! haha! He is in great hands though.

My lap top is dead. I know, I already mentioned that, but at only 6 months old it shouldn't be... and I am quite irritated by this!

I can't believe it, but the Holidays are upon us with Thanksgiving next week and then the Christmas season! I have barely gotten anything ready, but will be kicking in full gear with that soon.

We are getting new living room furniture. This is very exciting, but extremely stressful. Too many options gives me such a headache. Plus, we are going to repaint, which gives me an even BIGGER head ache.

My kids had Swine Flue this past week. Yep. But it really wasn't very bad (Thank You, Jesus!) and they bounced back very quickly. We are all better now (Thank You, again!)

I'm sure there is much much more, but that's a pretty good run down for now. Hope everyone has been doing well! I am back. For real this time. Promise! :)

Busy

Life is so busy at the moment. The weekend flew by much to quickly. I didn't have as much time as I would have like to have at home and then it was Monday. Ick.

Monday I had to take my poor Mom to get ANOTHER spinal injection. She is just not feeling well, say a prayer fo her if you will. It was nice to get to spend the day with her though. The kids sure do love their Grammy.

Today, Dylan had preschool in the morning and London and I did some running around. I'm trying to redo their bathroom, so we were out trying to pick up stuff for that. It was not successful though. I'm not sure what I am looking for really, but whatever it is, I can't find it. Then, we had lunch with Daniel, which is always a great treat. After all of that it was time to pick Dylan up. The kids played around the house for a bit, then I put them down for a nap. I thought they would sleep for an hour or so, but they both slept THREE HOURS! We shall see how tonight goes. Hopefully, better than expected! haha!

Bosses Day and Birthdays.

Today is apparently Bosses Day, which I have thoughtfully been planning out for weeks now didn't think about until last night. I didn't have time to run to the store last night though, so I decided I would go gather a few goodies this morning and drop them off to Daniel over his lunch hour.

I didn't want anything over the top, because his office and two bosses are extremely laid back. Both bosses are avid coffee drinkers, so Starbucks sounded like the most logical gift. I didn't want to just send gift cards though, because I hate giving gift cards. I know a lot of people like them, they do make life easier, and I am probably one of the few people (other than your sweet old Grandma) that refuses to buy them as presents, but it just is what it is. So, I opted to do a little "Starbucks Basket." I got them each a bag of coffee grinds, a box of the new VIA instant coffee to try, some nice chocolates, and a travel mug. I thought our little packages turned out quite cute. I meant to snap a picture, bud didn't get to because I was doing everything last minute and running around like a chicken with my head cut off.

For the hubby's lunch break, we took our good friend and Danie's co-worker, Rob, out to lunch for his 30th birthday. We love Rob to pieces (although that probably not how Daniel would word it) and I was delighted to be able to spend his birthday with him. A bunch of our other friends/co-workers joined us and we had quite the lunch celebration!

Daniel isn't going to get off until 7 tonight, so that gives me a little more than 3 hours to bum around and not do much get a little house work done. Hope ya'll have a great weekend, and GEAUX TIGERS!!!

Face Lifts, Cleaning Up, Live and Learn

In the spirit of Fall and all the festivities that come with it, I gave my little blog a bit of a face lift. I think the warmer colors feel much more appropriate for the season. What do you think? I'm still not extremely happy with the banner, but I'll fix it soon(ish).

My poor car needed some attention pretty desperately also. Lets just say that my car wasn't even looking like its original color any more. Yikes! Not at all good. So, I had the bright idea of just running through this local car wash. Its great because before you go through the automatic washer, there are four guys that hand wash the car. It takes like five minutes to have a sparkly car. Great idea, huh? Apparently not where London is concerned. She was so freaked out by the whole thing and cried for most of it. I felt horrible, but there wasn't much I could do. I just reached back and held her little hand and sang her songs, which did help, but she was still so upset.

Live and learn. I now know that I can not take London with me when going through the car wash.

Here is a picture of my princess when she is NOT upset. :)

Pumpkin Patch 2009 (Trip 1)

Oh, Pumpkin Patch, how I love you so!!!

Every year I look forward to the pumpkin patch. We have gone to the same one every year since we have lived in the Dallas area. Even since moving further out from the city, we make the 45 min drive just to go to THIS pumpkin patch, even though there are quite a few to choose from closer to home. I think its part my sappy spot for tradition that does not allow us to move to a closer patch, but its also a large part that this is simply the best one, ever.

Entry is free and so are all of the many of activities they have for kids. There is so much to do! You can have your kids face painted, let them run through a huge hay maze, have them enjoy 5 huge inflatables, play on the play ground, and of course, enjoy all of the many beautiful pumpkins that have. There are also vendors at the top of the hill that sell all sorts of cute stuff. And lets not forget about the yummy food that is delightfully festive, such as kettle corn and hot coco. The owners make their money from selling their pumpkins, haystacks, and corn stalks. Sure, the pumpkins cost a good bit more than you would pay for them at Walmart, but it is so worth it. Even if they didn't have all of the fun activities for free, I think the magic of going into the field to pick YOUR pumpkin is worth the extra money all by itself. We take the kids several times during the month of October and buy at least a small pumpkin everytime. We wait to get our big pumpkin until closer to Halloween.

I took a ton of pictures while we were there, but didn't THE shot that I was hoping for. I desperately wanted a picture of the two kids sitting together in the field of pumpkins to frame. It did not happen. I may have to try again, but I promised Dylan that the next time we go, I will not take pictures the entire time, "You can have a couple of pictures, Mommy", is what he told me! I did get a couple of cute ones of them individually though. Here we go...

Dylan and London in the "Pumkin House"

Dylan so enjoyed the huge slides and jumpy houses!

My little pumpkin in the wagon. I dreamt about how wonderful this would be last year! And it was every bit as magical as I had hoped for!

My other little pumpkin. I adore how excited he is about Holidays and festivities this year. It makes it so much more special. This is also something I have been waiting for since he was a baby!

This picture just makes my heart happy. Daniel is the most amazing Daddy! Our kids adore him as much as I do.
This hay stack was pretty huge. I din't know Dylan was going to jump until it was to late. Daniel was taking the picture, so he saw the jump coming and it didn't faze him. haha! He is really the cool one. I do love these two pictures.This is the closet I got to a good shot of the two of them. They were just done. We were past nap time for London and Dylan was ready to get back to playing. I guess it isn't an awful one. And I just love the two pumpkins in it to pieces and pieces!



*Just say y'all know, I have always called Dylan "Pumpkin" and London too. Its not just in theme of this post that I refer to them as that! :D