During our Christmas vacation, Tennyson got to meet his great-grammy for the first time. We met at Newick’s (a delicious lobster restaurant) to have dinner with the family.

Tennyson looked at the menu…

But decided the table looked more delicious…

  

However, he did eat some rolls.

While we were there, Grammy showed us her driver’s license. She is so proud of it because the date of birth reads 03/04/1916 and the expiration reads 03/04/2016.

After dinner, we went back to Grammy’s to get some pictures.

 

Tennyson loves his great-grammy!

You’ve already seen a few videos from Christmas in our last post, but I thought I’d share a few pictures of our activities as well.

On Christmas Eve, Tennyson opened his pajamas. It is a tradition in our family that the kids all get pajamas from their grandparents. So my parents shipped us out some pajamas and we brought them for him to open up.

 

On Christmas morning, Tennyson got to open presents. Or, as you saw in the videos, he got to sit there and watch us open his presents for him. It was still a lot of fun and he has a ton of great new toys to play with.

And, as per usual, I made some delicious cupcakes for all of us to enjoy. They are nutcracker themed because when Mike was younger, they would typically see a production of Nutcracker around the Christmas holiday.

We'll upload more about our Christmas festivities later, but here is a little bit of the fun we had today. Tennyson opened his first stocking (which we do on the bed for tradition's sake) and after a morning nap, he opened some presents. He didn't really understand the opening presents part, but he sure enjoys all the toys he got. It has been a great day so far!

Stocking:


Presents:


We hope everyone is enjoying their celebrations!

I know, I know, this post is a little late. I’m sure you’ve all been on the edge of your seats just dying to know what we did over the Thanksgiving holiday. Well, the wait is over!

Mike had the entire week off of school, which was fantastic. We are so used to only getting Wed-Fri off from BYU that this was a much welcomed week off. We spend Monday and Tuesday here in Lansing because I had to tutor, but as soon as I was done on Tuesday, we loaded up the car and headed down to Chicago.

Right when we got there, we enjoyed some cupcakes I had made.

But since we got there pretty late at night, we didn’t do much more.

The next day, we took family pictures and we lounged around the house. We also went out grocery shopping to prepare ourselves for the feast!

 

It was freezing outside!

And on Thursday, we feasted.

Tennyson got all dressed up for the occasion.

And he feasted with us. We gave him some mashed potatoes and he went to town.

 

At midnight that night, we went to Walmart for Black Friday sales. We got out with a bunch of movies at great deals, went home, went to bed, and got up the next morning to do it all again! We spent almost all of Friday shopping. It was a lot of fun! In fact, Black Friday shopping is where we got our tree and my family got a tree as well. So that night we spent some time decorating the tree!

    

As usual, we also spent a lot of time just lounging around. We watched A Christmas Carol and played Killer Bunnies and just enjoyed being with family.

 

It was a great trip!

Our place is all decorated for Christmas! Actually, it has been for a while, but I’ve been lazy and haven’t put up any pictures. The thing we are most proud of is our new tree! In our last place, a regular sized tree would have taken up just about half of our living room, so we had a smaller one. If you can remember, here is our tree from years past…

  

See it? It is that little microscopic thing sitting on top of one of the chairs from our kitchen table.

And now… our tree this year!!

Quite an improvement, don’cha think? You can see the arm of our couch in the corner of the picture. Just to put things into perspective a little more, here is the angel from the top of our old tree…

It makes a lovely ornament now.

Also, I was crafty this year and made an ornament for Tennyson’s first Christmas. It isn’t quite done yet because I think I want to paint the year and his name on the outside. But truth be told, I may never get around to it.

It is filled with leftover birth announcements we had. It really turned out nice.

Anywho… that is enough rambling about our tree… Merry Christmas everyone!

Today Tennyson is seven months old!

 

He is getting to be so big. He is almost 20 pounds and 26 inches long. That means he is still short and fat. It has been fun in the past month or so watching his personality really come shining through. Here is what Tennyson has been up to lately:

-Trying to scoot and crawl around (and only able to go backwards so far)

-Still trying to pull up on our furniture to stand

-Also still talking up a storm and making more coherent noises (that almost sound like English some of the time)

-Rejecting all pureed food and eating only table foods

-Using his two teeth to chomp all his toys

-Banging on anything that will make a loud sound

-Watching and loving Baby Einstein videos (and giving mommy and daddy some time to get chores done)

-Cuddling more and learning to give hugs

More blog posts will come soon with some of our recent activities and holiday fun… and plenty more pictures of the cutest baby in the world.

This Halloween, my grandma and grandpa went to Chicago for a visit and we went down to see them. We were only down there for a day, but, in the Cawley tradition, we packed in as much as we could. Prepare for a lengthy blog post with plenty of pictures and even some video footage.

When we first arrived, we pulled out the trick or treat cupcakes I made. We had to display them before anyone could even think about eating one.

They were filled with all sorts of treats (peanut butter, frosting, marshmallow) and they were also filled with some tricks (jellybeans) and there were two pranks (toothpaste).

My sister Ashley and Mike found the pranks!

The next day we woke up bright and early to head to…

THE AQUARIUM!!!

Tennyson loved looking at the fish. If you listen closely, you can even hear him say “hi, fishes!” You really have to listen close though, because the aquarium was pretty loud.

We spent some time looking at the dock and Lake Michigan too.

Tennyson spent so much time talking to and playing with the fishes that he exhausted himself (which pleased his mom and dad).

And for all those trying to figure it out, the t-shirt Tennyson is wearing says “I chew on everything.” We found it very fitting.

Then we had to rush back. We turned on the MSU/Iowa game for about a minute, but when we saw the score very much not in our favor, we turned it off. We had to get ready for trunk or treat anyway.

Mike and Tennyson looked super in their costumes! (I forgot the most important half of mine at my parent’s house, so I looked rather pathetic.)

Although he may look cute, the truth is he didn’t really like this costume much. He much preferred his second outfit of the evening.

As if we hadn’t already done enough that day, we topped it all off with pumpkin carving!

We also spent some time at home playing around on the Harley…

and being tickled by grandpa.

What a trip!!