Our Family Christmas-2008

We had another wonderful Christmas with family. We spent Christmas Eve at our house and had a dinner for the my side of the family, woke up Christmas morning to see what Santa had brought and left to go to Rockwood to see the Thompsons. Connor is so overwhelmed by the amount of toys and new things that he has to play with. Over the next few weeks, I have some major organizing to do! I hope you all had a great holiday and were able to reflect on the real reason that we celebrate this blessed holiday!

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Merry Christmas! Happy Birthday Jesus!

I hope everyone has a wonderful Christmas holiday! I will be taking a blogging break until after Christmas as I know most of you will as well. Enjoy the magic and take time to reflect on the true meaning of this holiday! Here are some pictures of my lil' Santa!

Chuck E Cheese's

I promise this is the last slideshow from Connor's birthday! Ha! These are the pictures from Connor's actual birthday when we took him to Chuck E Cheese. We had a great time just playing the games and letting Connor have all of the fun. Of course as you will see in the pictures, we had fun too! Enjoy!

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Connor turns 2!

tomorrow at 7:49 p.m! I cant believe that it is time for his second birthday! If the rest of his childhood is like this, I cant wait because every month gets better and better! Dont get me wrong, we are dealing with the usual terrible twos stuff but all of the fun stuff overshadows that completely. When I used to hear people talk about their toddlers at this age, most of the time it didnt sound like much fun. Maybe my child is just better behaved than most, but it really hasnt been that bad. Do I sound like a proud Mom or what?! I guess everyone wants to brag on their child. But Connor is really such a sweetheart and will tell me he loves me just because. His manners are exceptional for a 2 year old. He says, "please", "thank you", "sorry", and even started saying "your welcome" the other day. I use my manners whenever he I talk to him and I guess it caught on! Now of course he has the days when he says, "its mine", or "stop it Mommy" and even though it makes me cringe sometimes, it is so darn cute! Yesterday in Target he was saying that he wanted "chocolate milk" and of course I told him that I didnt have any, well we turned the corner and as we stopped in front of a lady he said, "Its MY CHOCOLATE MILK!" and pointed his finger at her. I was mortified! I of course made him apologize, but the lady thought it was hysterical. Me- not so much. Actually as we turned the corner I did smile a bit wondering where he comes up with this stuff. His vocabulary is growing more and more every day. He is now saying 4 and 5 word sentences. The other day Connor said, "Can I watch Pipey in a minute, Dada?" Actually that is way more than 5 words! He amazes me sometimes with his memory too. He did go upstairs last night and look for the gingerbread cookie! He opened up the jewelry box and say, "Where did the cookie go?" It was hysterical! Brad said he is just like a dog, hiding his bone. Ha!

Connor is such a skinny little boy and is still wearing 18 months pants. I bought him some more pants the other day from Target and the waist was falling down so bad I had to take them back. He is just not an eater at all. Dont you wish you didnt have the urge to eat, I know I do! Ha! Being so active, I guess it makes sense that he would be a little guy. He is pretty tall though and Brad and I are hoping that he will not take after us in this department!

Since tomorrow is the actual "birth" day and we have already had a party, we are planning on taking him to Chuck E Cheese's tomorrow after work. We did this last year and had a great time! I am sure I will have some pics to share! Here is a look back on the last year with our Mr. Connor...

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Check this out!

Check this out!... This is Connor's friend Rylee (Mrs. Betty's daughter) singing with Carrie Underwood at her concert! Click here to go to Betty's blog and hear the video live. I tried to download it but didnt have any luck- sorry! Way to Rylee, you did great! You are a superstar!

Baseball Tee, Connor thinks differently!

Despite everything that my Dad has done to get Connor more interested in baseball, Connor still goes back to his golf game. Check out these pictures of Connor playing with his new baseball tee and transforming into his new golf tee! Brad and I were cracking up the other night when he did this but couldnt get a picture. This morning this is what I found him doing after breakfast. I of course corrected him by giving him the bat and baseball, but I am pretty sure that he will probably be back at it again soon. Sorry Dad, I think this is an uphill battle!

Poor Gingerbread Man!

Last night I gave Connor one of the Gingerbread men that Mom had made and he immediately started licking on the cinnamon candy buttons. He disappeared for a minute and I wasnt sure where he went, he soon reappeared back in the living room so I didnt think much of it. However, when he returned it didnt dawn on me that the cookie was not with him. When I went to bed last night this is what I found...

The Gingerbread man was upstairs in my bedroom, beheaded, in my jewelry box. I guess this was a makeshift coffin of sorts! (Notice the little hand in the picture) I think Connor was paying his respects. Ha!

Who has the best husband ever?

I guess that would be ME! Whose husband gives his wife diamonds on HIS birthday? I guess that would be mine! The story goes that we sold some of our gold (you know that 80's coin panda bear ring, and the big rope chains- ha!). When we were in the jewelry store, I of course was eyeing all of the beautiful rings in the case and saw a ruby ring that I loved! Brad gave me a ruby and diamond ring when we were dating and I dont wear it because for reason number one- it is too small, and reason two it is yellow gold and I dont wear it at all now. It had an oval stone and it was exactly the same size as mine except it had a white gold (antique like setting). She said that I could remove the stone and diamonds, sell the gold, and have it put in the new setting. Anyways, I told Brad that it looked like a great Christmas present! He said that he had already gotten my present, and he wanted to give it to me early in case I wanted to return it and get this ring made instead. I REALLY didnt want to open them since I LOVE surprises, especially when it is on Christmas morning! He kept telling me this for a couple of weeks until finally on his birthday I thought well maybe he is right- so I took his advice and this is what I got....

Not only did he get me the beautiful diamond ring, but he also got me 1 carat diamond stud earrings! Did he do good or what?

NOTE: I just noticed that the best husband in the world added this picture and the comment above last night when I wasnt looking! He said that he couldnt see the earrings from the picture and wanted to make sure that everyone got an up close and personal picture of them!

Here is a close up of the ring (and my crooked pinky), since the other picture doesnt do it justice. So I ask, who has the best husband in the world? I think I do!!! Sure I wont have anything to open on Christmas day, but now I can show off my gifts at all of those Christmas parties! Oh yeah, we arent going to any Christmas parties. Ha! Thanks sweetie, you know I LOVE YOU!

Thanks Brad- he also added the little snip it about my crooked pinky! For all of you Rockwood folks, I have Dr.Evans to thank for this. I broke my pinky trying to field a line drive at 3rd base and it never healed quite right. I kept telling them it had to be broke...

Tea with Mrs. Clause

Today I spent the day helping my Mom working at the tea house. They had reservations for little girls ages 5-10 for a tea with Mrs. Clause. It was so cute seeing all of the little girls in their cute Christmas dresses and sipping tea (well really hot chocolate, and apple juice cider!) They got to spend their time talking to Mrs. Clause about Santa, what they wanted for Christmas, and all of the Christmas chores that Mrs. Clause has to tend to. She was very tired and needed her rest from doing all of the laundry,cooking, and cleaning for the elves and Santa too! The girls had a really good time and I took their pictures individually having tea with her at the end. Too bad, I didnt get any of me, or Hillary. We were so pooped after the tea and from cleaning up that I didnt feel like posing. Ha! I will have to say that doing this made me want a little girl all the more. Maybe someday...

Our new friend, Piper!

So most of you have probably heard of "Elf on the Shelf". If not, let me explain... It is a elf that you can buy and I am pretty sure that it comes with a book, anyway he moves from place to place in the house and keeps watch on the kiddos to make sure that they stay on Santa's "good" list! I had heard of this and thought it was a great idea. Today when I went to Mom's tea room, I saw this little guy and thought he was just so cute! Mom agreed that he would make the perfect addition to our family around the holidays so ... I brought him home and named him "Piper". I explained this to Connor and how he had better be a good boy so Santa would bring him lots of goodies because Piper would be watching to give Santa a full report! He pointed to him and now calls him "Diaper". Ha! Oh well, it is pretty close. I am pretty sure that this will be something to laugh out for years to come. Brad thinks that Piper is a bit scary and is not too sure about the concept, but I love it! I think this will be a great tradition to start! Here he is on the entry way table...

Then he moved to the mantle, since Connor usually spends most of his time in here. Doesnt he look so real?!

Winter Wonderland!

It has been another whirlwind of a week! Yesterday we had our annual office Open House and our Christmas party was last night. The weather didnt seem to cooperate very well. It has been raining for two straight days and yesterday morning there was a horrible wreck with one fatality, and a few others along the day on interstate 65 that had the interstate shut down for some time. There were a few people who were stuck in it for over 4 hours. Needless to say we had only about a third of the people we expected to show up for our Open House. I was watching the weather all day to make sure that all was clear last night. We had planned on leaving work, picking up Connor, driving to Lebanon to drop C off at my parents, head downtown for dinner, back to Lebanon and back home again. For those of you who dont live here, that is quite a trek. About an hour out of the way, one way. Let me just say that the weather men missed this one big time! We left work about 4 to get on the road and when I got to our subdivision so I could change clothes, the ground was getting covered. As we are driving to pick up Connor the roads were turning white. Then after we picked him up and got back on the road to head to Lebanon we hear that there are wrecks on the bypass so we head another way and traffic was slowing to 20 miles per hour so it wasnt looking good. I know that everyone makes fun of the way that we handle snow in the South, but it really was coming down. It was most people would call a "white out". You could hardly see right in front of you. We called one guy in our office to ask what he thought about it and he didnt even know it was snowing. This is how fast it all hit. By the time we got to the interstate we probably had about 2 or more inches of snow on the ground. We had to make a split decision and decide whether or not to chance being super late to the party because going to Mom and Dad's was going to take a while OR take him to the "adult only" Christmas party OR just go home. After talking to the boss and several other people we decide to just take him with us and make the best of it. I was afraid it was going to be a disaster because we werent prepared, I had one juice box, no snacks, no toys, etc. Connor ended up being the best behaved little boy and everyone was very impressed! I was so proud! We had a great time and despite the weather there were only two people from the office who didnt come. The funny thing was that Nashville didnt get ANY snow and when we were telling the people who lived north of town they almost didnt believe us when we told them. It was a little tricky getting home. SR 840 was icy, so I was a little worried. We made it fine but saw several people who werent so lucky. Everything was so beautiful! It was a very wet snow which stuck to the trees and made it very pretty! I tried taking many pics from the car of all of the trees and pretty landscape but they didnt turn out because the flash wouldnt go that far. I took some when we got home and you could tell that the kids had already been out as there were several snowmen. We let Connor enjoy it for a few minutes before going to bed. This morning we got up and headed straight out because I saw the sun peaking through and you know what that means. The clock was ticking... We had a great time playing with the neighbors. I think that Brads old snowsuit fit Connor much better this year! Almost perfect!! Enjoy the pictures from our day!

This is what it was doing when we left our house on our way to the party.

I thought the neighbors snowman was great, so I had to take a pic.Daddy measuring to see how much we got!Connor was very curious to see the white stuff.

Meeting Mr. Clause and "the others"

Last Saturday the Spring Hill Chamber of Commerce had Santa and his friends held up at a local bank so that all of the kids come and visit and get a picture for only $5! It was really great because they emailed it to us and we can use it how we wish. Much better than the rip off at the mall where you get a picture, a grumpy Santa and have to buy a package of pictures for $20 that are really worth about $3! We did have one little issue... the photographer emailed all of the pictures out on Monday, unless you had gotten a CD and when mine arrived it was of another family! I was kind of worried that I might not ever get the right one, but he was very nice and got it straightened out in a few days. I was pretty excited because I read in the paper that a Snowman, Gingerbread man and Mrs. Claus was going to be there. Connor loves snowmen, you know the blow up ones that everyone has outside. Well, much to my surprise this was not the cute and cuddly Frosty that we are all used to. I was getting Connor out of the car to go inside and Brad said, "Oh My, there is the snowman." Well I turned around and literally jumped! He scared ME to death. Needless to say, Connor spent the whole time while we were in line clinched to my coat with his head down because the snowman was right behind us the whole time. He kept saying, "I dont like the snoman, Mommy!" Even as we pulled into the driveway at home he wanted to make sure that we knew he DID NOT like the snowman. Ha! We tried to get a picture with him, but Connor started screaming so we decided this might not be a good idea since the only pic we really wanted was with Santa. I thought this might actually make it easier to get a picture with Santa since he wasnt nearly as scary but he didnt really care for him either. That is why I am also in the picture. Brad had dressed for us to get a family photo but we felt so rushed and the photographer got only Connor and I. He told us to come back later and he would spend more time with us when it wasnt so busy. Ummm, apparently he hasnt had kids in a while because getting Connor back out and standing in line again with a 2 year old didnt seem like such a great idea to me! Ha! The picture isnt that great, but isnt that what Santa pictures are all about... Looking back at them and remembering how your kids were scared silly. LOL Enjoy!

The Gingerbread Man had either been in the oven too long, or maybe not long enough! He was kind of sad. Connor is keeping a watch out for the abominable snowman!

and here HE IS! Told ya he was scary.

Connor enjoying his candy cane in the backseat and making his "funny faces" for his Daddy.

Here is the other one that Connor and Mommy like to make together!

Connor's 2nd Birthday Party!

I cant believe that Connor will be two next week! It seems impossible to believe. I am sorry I am late posting these, but I was up till midnight addressing Christmas cards last night and figured those were a bigger priority to get out right now. We had a wonderful celebration for Connor this year- of course it was a Mickey party! Connor is still hooked on the mouse and it is all he talks about. Handy Manny comes in a strong second as he loves him too. We had quite the crew for his party and Brad and I are already talking about having his party at another location next year! That is the bad thing about having a winter birthday, there arent a whole lot of options. Chuck E Cheese or Pump It Up are calling my name next year! Thank you to all who came to spend your day to help us celebrate! Connor had a great time and got many great gifts. My house looks like a train wreck at the moment as he has pulled them all out. Probably his most favorite toy is the Craftsman tool bench that An Am and Uncle Pete got him. He loves the drill! Me- not so much. It has a dental office vibe if you know what I mean!! I already told Brad to tell Amanda that payback is coming as soon as I have a niece or nephew. Ha! My favorite toy is probably the toy box that Mom got him. Now I finally have a place for all of these toys and it helps to make my living room a little more tidy. The chair he got from Aunt Janice and Monroe is also exceptionally nice and means a lot since it came from their own sweat and hard work! Those gifts are always the best! Thanks to everyone- Connor really does love everything he got. Here are some pictures of the party and sorry there are so many. I didnt feel like being choosy so I just included them all. I cant believe that my baby is turning 2!!! I continue to love this age, he is becoming quite comical with his growing vocabulary! I have to tell this funny story, to start Connor has been talking about his Pipey party for a while. Pipey is what he calls Mickey, in case you didnt already know. Well, the other day Connor was in his bath and I was in the closet getting a towel when I looked at him he was looking down at you know what. I said, Connor are you pee-peeing and he looked up at me, smiled and said and I quote, "I'm having a Pee Pee party!" I of course died laughing! The things they come up with...

My first attempt at a Mickey birthday cake. I saw this online and was like, I can do that. No special cake pans, just a round 9" and two small round pans for ears. It took 3 hours but it was worth it to see Connor's sweet face when he saw it!
His first birthday gift from Rebecca that Brad and I work with. It was so sweet of her to think of him!

He loves his new tractor!

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Here is a video of Connor "working"! You will understand after watching this.

Christmas Rush!

To say that the past three months have been some of the busiest for me would be a huge understatement! I feel like I have been going 150 miles per hour since before Halloween. I guess that is why I STILL cant believe that Christmas is here. I am sitting down tonight to blog and it is so good to not have anything to do at the present moment. The past two weeks have been a blur, planning for Connors party, parties at work, putting up Christmas decor (my own and other houses) and the other stuff that comes with the Christmas rush... you know shopping, baking, etc. I would love to have time to just invite some friends over for hot cocoa and just catch up- in my dreams! I love the season and everything that comes with it, but I would be lying if I said that I didnt wish that it could all be without the hectic holiday chores! My mother continues to remind me that I brought this on myself by having a child born exactly a week before Christmas Day! She told me that Brad and I need to stay away from each other during the month of March so this NEVER happens again! Ha! I cant believe how many November and December birthdays we have in our family! I didnt really realize it until this year. November- Amanda and my Dads birthday... December- Brad's birthday, Betty's birthday (like family!!), my Grandmothers birthday, Connor's birthday, my Aunt Janice's birthday, Hillary's birthday, Brad's cousin Matthews birthday and dont forget the most important- JESUS's birthday!!! Wow!

So last week in the middle of my planning for Connors party I got a phone call from a sweet lady and relative, Anneal. Funny story is that I decorated her tree about 3 years ago and in the spring while at a family reunion realized that I was actually related to her! AnNEAL... she was named that because her mothers maiden name was Neal! Who would have thought... She was my Pawpaw's first cousin, which would make her my 3rd cousin I guess. She is the sweetest, kindest lady. I just fell in love with her even before I knew we were kin folk! She just recently had leg surgery and is not able to be on her feet much so decorating her tree was not possible. She asked me if I would be willing to do it and I told her that I couldnt get to it until today. I had such a good time catching up with her and spending time at her beautiful home. She has amazing taste and the decorating in her home is just beautiful. I think her tree turned out pretty good. It was so much fun to do! Here are some pics of her house and a few of mine as well... ( it isnt hard to tell the difference between my tree and hers- mine is significantly smaller!)

Anneal's tree

I loved her tree topper!

She thought that her tree looked sparse and was going to get a new one for next year and I told her that the ribbon would make a huge difference. Her husband told me that I just saved him a whole bunch of money! LOL

Her mantle...

Ok, so this is where my house starts, as if you cant already tell (actually I just noticed that we have exactly the same mantle! Ha!...

I added ribbon to my tree this year and think it adds lots of color to it.

These are my two Christmas displays in memory of Aunt Susie. Both of the sleighs were hers and I loved adding them to my Christmas decor this year!

Happy Birthday DaDa!

Happy Birthday to a wonderful Husband.......

AND Father!!!!!!!!

DaDa is 32 today! (December 5th- I realize that at the top of the post it is dated yesterday but that is because I started the post last night) We love you and thank you for all that you do for us! You are the best husband and father that anyone could ask for and deserve the best birthday ever! We love you!

Love, Tara