We had a wonderful Christmas morning! The kids woke up to Santa gifts - Nathan's razor set and mini teddy bears were met with GREAT enthusiasm, Sarah's baby doll and ball drop, ho-hum! Santa's cookies and milk got mostly eaten, but Nathan wondered why they weren't all gone. I think I told him something about how Santa had to save room for treats at other kids' houses. We ate breakfast to the sound track of "Is it time to open presents NOW?" Then, finally, it was time. Brian recorded the whole thing on video so I (aka "the paparazzi") just enjoyed myself and didn't take pictures, but here were some that I got later on in the day.

Daddy and Nathan racing on his new hotwheels track, with the wonderful Christmas clutter all around...


Nathan displaying his Santa gifts for me.  And now, almost a week later, he is still carrying around his razor and his white teddy bear (now not-so-white) as his special toys!

Post-Christmas dinner (note Nathan's razor and can of shaving cream).

Nathan shaved in the shower with Daddy on Christmas morning and then again at bath time.  He LOVES this thing!  (This time the paparazzi ruined the video that Daddy was trying to take!)




And one of Sarah's favorite new toys was her rocking horse.  She loves that she can do it all by herself!

The kids both got tons more gifts not pictured here, so thanks to everyone who made all of our Christmas's extra special this year!

We had a fun filled Christmas Eve yesterday hanging out with Nana and Granddad.  Sarah expanded her hat wardrobe by wearing my Santa hat!

Then Nathan wanted a turn, of course!

Uncle David (aka Santa's Special Helper) drove in for a quick visit and to bring some forgotten Christmas presents.  Sarah is teething, so this expression pretty much sums up how she's been feeling and acting the past few days. 

The kids has lots of fun playing with the ribbons on the presents, stacking and unstacking them, sitting on them and moving them around.  Almost as fun as opening them Christmas morning!

After dinner the kids opened their new monkey pajamas. Nathan was thrilled because his other monkey jommies weren't warm enough for me to let him wear them when he wanted to match Sarah's monkey jommies. Then we continued our family tradition of reading The Night Before Christmas before bed (you can see how much that thrilled the kids... I'll be happy when the kids will be old enough to enjoy/pay attention!). 



Then it was time to prepare a plate of goodies to leave for Santa.  Nathan selected which of our abundent choices of goodies Santa might like best (fruit cake cookies, peppermint bark, 7-layer cookies)...

... then he poured Santa a glass of milk to go along with it.  We also left the reindeer some food and a carrot on the bumper of the car in the carport (it was raining outside so Nathan decided to leave it somewhere dry). 
Then off to bed with the kiddos while the grown-ups watched National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation (first time for me, amazingly!). And then it was time for us to turn in as well, since Christmas morning was fast approaching!

Happy Christmas to all and to all a good night!

I got an iPhone for Christmas!!  My first smartphone - I have finally caught up with the times!  Really, what sealed the deal for me is that we are moving to Boston and I really wanted to have it to help me get around the city, dealing with public transpo, and all the other ways it will make life slightly easier up there. But in the meantime, it works great for PICTURES! (on the other hand, this means more pictures that I have to manage and organize and try to post to the blog and so forth...)

Sarah always feeds herself these days and she ESPECIALLY loves it when I give her food with a bowl and spoon.  Or fork - you know, for the added challenge.  But of course this ends up with HUGE messes, all over her face, clothes, hands, arms, shirt, pants, tray, chair, sides of the chair, bib...  But to hear her giggle with excitement when I put the bowl on her tray - worth it every time!  Unfortunately she really enjoys pulling her bib off and throwing it on her chair and/or the floor, which means she can really mess up her clothes!  This day her excitement was over the sweet potato casserole I served for dinner! 


We've been spending afternoons with our buddy about once a week lately.  These boys play together really well, except for the fact that Nathan always wants to play with whatever C is playing with...  In this case, the "blankets" they were using while they were "sleeping" on the toy chest.  But they always have a great time playing with each other!

Santa visited our church about two weeks ago, and Brian and I took the kids for cookies and a photo op.

This picture?  This is the reason that Nathan was three before I ever took him to visit Santa!  (It was Brian's idea to take Sarah, though in his defense, I didn't really put up a fight.)  (Possible other reasons I never took Nathan before was I didn't want to stand in line by myself at the mall to pay for the privilege of a picture such as this one.)


And even at three years old, Nathan thought I was crazy to ask him to sit on some stranger's lap for a photo - even if that "stranger" was Santa!  But Santa was an old pro and let me sit with Nathan so he would cooperate.  After the photo, he walked back around and was able to get Nathan to talk to him.  Nathan's request for Santa?  "A razor, like Daddy's!"  And his second request?  "A present for Sarah!" What a sweet brother - and he wasn't even coached on that response! 

We went back to Old Salem this year to take photos with Jennie. Last time we went there I was pregnant with Nathan! But I thought it would be a good place since this is our last year here. Unfortunately, I underestimated how difficult it would be to take pictures with two kiddos - we should at least have brought some squeeky-type toys to help get Sarah to look at the camera. Live and learn! But here were some of the best pics that didn't make it onto the Christmas card (although this first one was arguably the best family shot)!





And what other photographer would have made the blog with us? Jennie, we are flying you up for a visit and photo shoot next year!

Well, it has taken me a few days to recover from the reformatting of my computer. Add to that, Christmas preparations, and I once again am a month behind on the blog. But here are two pictures as a *token* post! 
 
Nathan was super proud of this scarecrow that he made at preschool at the end of October.  Its so big that I know I won't be keeping this art project, but thought I'd record it somehow before it made the journey from the fridge to the recycle!

Gran took this family picture for us at the beginning of last month.  It was going to be our back-up Christmas photo if our shoot with Jennie didn't go well.  But the shoot DID go well and I'll share the outtakes in another post!

Finally I'm getting around to posting the last of these pictures from our trip to visit Gran and Pawpaw (in the middle of October - oops!). But some of these were just too great not to share.

Best one of all - Nathan and Pawpaw.

Ever since Nathan was a baby, Pawpaw was the grandparent that he was most standoff-ish with.  In the past year Nathan has been warming up more, but I'm pretty sure that this trip was the best time these guys had spent together!  Pawpaw had gotten a child-size putter (the real kind) for Nathan, and he carried it around all week, although for part of the time he decided it was a weed-eater rather then a golf club.


The favorite place for these kids to play in the house was on the huge staircase.  Sarah, in particular, loved trying to climb up and down, really honing her skills while almost giving Gran and me multiple heart attacks. 


Nathan's other big breakthrough on this trip was his new-found love for band-aids.  I think I had gotten a blister on my foot the day before we left for a trip, and I put on one of the character band-aids from Nathan's untouched stash.  From that day forward, multiple times a day, every day, Nathan has asked for a band-aid.  During the trip, I think he wanted it wrapped around his fingers for his "boo-boo", but lately he just likes to hold it (completely unwrapped) in his hands and/or stick it on random toys/furniture. So if you come to the house and find a random band-aid somewhere, its almost certainly clean!


One of the other fun things we did on the base was go see / climb on the artillery display.  Sarah decided she would use one tank as a slide...


... while Nathan was more concerned with pumping gas into his tank.  But let me back up to give a little more perspective...


This was the best tank for climbing and playing on and Nathan certainly loved it.  Since we were right across the way from the post headquarters, we stuck around for a little while so that Nathan could hear the cannon that goes off during retreat when they take the flag down for the day.  It went so well that the next afternoon we were right there at the headquarters for the ceremony.  I was sure that one of the kids would start crying from the super loud canon shot, but both of them were just fine!

If you're interested, here's the video of the ceremony.  Always brings me back to my childhood and gives me a warm feeling inside!  Unfortunately my camera hand was very unsteady with all the panning and zooming - sorry!


That wraps up memories from our trip.  And, of course, I hit all the highlights, not choosing to focus on how defiant and disobedient Nathan was almost the whole trip (honestly I almost cut the trip short because I couldn't handle his behavior), how poorly Sarah slept during the nights and that she decided to go on a nursing strike the whole time.  But I did want to briefly mention it in an effort to keep it real and help my future self remember both the joys and trials of the kids at this age!

This is the "prayer" that Nathan has been saying at meals lately.  This morning I found out that its actually the first verse (with minor modifications) of the "Johnny Appleseed" song that I assume he's learned at preschool (since he won't tell us ANYTHING that goes on at school). 

Brian was scheduled to work the night shift on Thanksgiving, so we had a pretty normal day hanging out at the house. The weather was beautiful so Brian took the kids outside while I worked in the kitchen.  When I peeked out the window to see Sarah riding around on Nathan's four wheeler!  So I grabbed the camera and ran out to get it on video!


We realize this isn't very safe for Sarah to be riding the hopped-up four wheeler, especially since she doesn't know how to steer yet. In fact, she pushes the throttle button with one hand and hangs on for dear life with the other! But we do turn off the turbo when she rides and Brian has plans to modify the four wheeler to make it safer (slower). In the meantime, I got some great exercise yesterday as I ran around with my hand on her back to make sure she didn't fall off!

When Brian went off to work, the kids and I loaded up and went over to some friends' house for Thanksgiving dinner, of which Brian had the leftovers the next day. So even though the day felt very un-Thanksgiving-like, we still got to have a special meal with good playgroup friends!

After Brian worked a few night shifts, he had some post-call days off, so we headed to Knoxville for a short visit. Nathan was trying to be a great helper by packing his suitcase all by himself!  Now we just have to work on his clothing selections....
(I'm learning a new video editing software, so unfortunately the aspect ratio is off on this video. Sorry!)

Sarah's personality has really blossomed in the last two months. It started with her wanting to read the same books over and over during the trip to Gran and Pawpaw's (somewhat appropriately "Old McDonald had a Farm"), and has accelerated as she is now walking and signing more.

She always, always loves to sit with me in the rocking chair and read. I'm pretty sure that every time we've sat down to read, I've been the one to lose interest first (or felt my "to do" list calling). Honestly, I've challenged myself to sit with her and read for as long as she wants to, and 15 or 20 minutes later we are still going and I'm ready for a new activity!

 Sarah loves to play with balls. And, apparently, loves stickers too! Nathan was putting stickers on his hands and after he was done with the sticker sheet, Sarah picked it up and was trying to peel them off to put on her hands too. So I helped her put stickers on the back of both hands and she kept them on ALL DAY LONG!


This one brings back memories of Nathan's early love for the broom.

And I guess we are starting to play dress up already? Sarah loves for me to put this toy on her head and Daddy always laughs at her "skull cap"! And once again I'm amazed that she will keep it on her head and wants help putting it back on when it falls off.


I was reading some random blog posts about signing with babies about two weeks ago and it inspired me to try harder with signs for Sarah. So I did and within a few days Sarah learned "more", "read a book", "eat", and sometimes "milk". She's also gotten more consistent with "all done" and this week she added "swing" to her vocabulary as well. As far as verbalization, she is certainly babbling more and sometimes I hear things that really sound like words (like "hi" or "hello" or "me") but she doesn't use them consistently enough for me to tell for sure.

... and here it is from Nathan's!




...and then it was my turn.

Nathan then took a series of the grass off one side of the boardwalk, which didn't make the cut for the blog - sorry kiddo!

Finally we made it to the end of the boardwalk.





But with no time to waste, Nathan decided to sprint back toward the tower we had seen earlier.


We were only able to tear Nathan away from the tower the first time with the promise of a "picnic" on top of the tower on our way back.


What kind of picnic?  An M&M picnic of course!




A fun afternoon at a cool park on a beautiful day.  And to top it off, the park ranger found the sunglasses that Gran and I almost left behind, and then we picked up fresh caught shrimp to boil for dinner.  It doesn't get much better then that!