Christmas

I hope everyone enjoyed the holidays. We had a busy Christmas and now that it's over I'm happy to have some time to hang out at home. I have a week to be a stay at home mom and I'm looking forward to it. Even though this was Miles' second Christmas it really felt like his first. He was old enough this time to unwrap gifts and get excited. Plus, he was old enough to interact with all the family. He seemed to enjoy all the activity and of course everyone went overboard on his gifts so he got lots of loot.


Opening gifts Christmas Eve with Casey's family.


Miles enjoyed opening gifts so much that when he was finished with his stack he went around stealing bows and offering unwrapping assistance to those who still had packages.


Santa's toys Christmas morning at home.


Just the three of us in our PJs on Christmas morning.


My favorite gift. Casy's sister gave me this baby themed shadow box and I filled it with some of Miles' keepsakes. Thanks Heather & Bridgette!

Family

Saturday we had an early Christmas with my family. It was lots of fun seeing all the kids together. Miles and Macy were especially cute together. We got them to hug and Miles couldn't get enough. He was following poor Macy around ready for more hugging.


The kids got tired as the night wore on and by the time we decided to get them together for a picture this was the best we could get. The night went downhill fast. There was lots of fussing, squabbling, and even a black eye. Luckily Miles had no part in the black eye. Whew! This was the 1st year that Miles and Macy were old enough to open gifts and all three enjoyed that part. They would get so excited about one gift that it was hard to get them to move on to the next gift. It's definitely more fun to celebrate Christmas with kids.

Santa

We have been trying to decide if we were going to do the Santa thing with Miles. It dawned on me that Santa's toys do not need to be wrapped and can be play ready under the tree on Christmas morning. That sounds awfully appealing so I guess Santa will be coming to our house after all. Today we headed to the mall for Miles' first Santa picture. He was a little nervous, but we managed to get one not so bad shot. He also said santa "danta" for the first time today which was pretty cute. For some reason he always says it in a whisper voice. Of course he has said it about 10 times today for me, but when I try to get him to say it for other people he just looks at me with a blank stare.



It's winter in Oklahoma! It's been really cold lately and the freezing wind is brutal so we have been bundling Miles when we take him out. He looks so darn cute! He can barely move and it reminds me of the little brother on A Christmas Story. With the winter weather came the cold and flu season. I spent the last week recovering from a horrible cold. One evening I spent a couple of hours disenfecting everything hoping that Miles wouldn't get sick and that same night I caught him using my tooth brush when I wasn't paying attention. I thought for sure we were doomed, but luckily nobody caught my germs and I'm back to normal now.

Miles got one of his gifts early- his big boy bed. It's so small and cute! He can climb in and out all on his own. He really likes to stand at the headboard and bounce on the bed. We are still co-sleeping at night, but hopefully he will start napping in the toddler bed. The cats are already enjoying the new bed. They had pretty much claimed the unused crib as their own so it's a transition for them too.




We have had the most ridiculous ordeal with our outdoor lights this year, but I am happy to report that we are finally done! We've struggled through broken clips, burnt out lights, bad fuses, tangled strands, wind, rain, and a faulty strand that we had to replace. It's like we are cursed. Casey fell off the ladder once and he managed to step on strands of lights breaking some of the bulbs on two different occasions. We have seriously been working on our outdoor lights since Thanksgiving. I would have just given up had we not already invested so much time. Casey and I both decided that it is time for new lights next year so hopefully I can find some good end of season deals after Christmas.

Trees

This week we had a couple of trees planted out back, one Shantung Maple, and one Oklahoma Redbud. We picked the trees out in September, but the nursery recommended that we wait until they were dormant to plant. I can't wait to see how they look in the spring when they bloom. I took a picture the day after they were planted. I have a similar picture of me and my dad standing next to a maple they planted at our 1st house in Shawnee. I was probably 3 and the maple tree was more like a maple stick. Now the tree is gigantic and there's no way I would belive it started as a stick just 26 years ago unless we had the photographic proof. The trees I picked aren't supposed to get huge, but hopefully it will still be fun for Miles to look back when he's older and see how they started.


Miles really enjoys redocorating our Christmas tree. I think it's my fault because I let him play with a few ornamnets when I was taking the pictures for our Christmas cards last week. Now he has decided that playing with the ornaments is pretty fun. Luckily he is not at all interested in the packages. We really have a pretty safe tree, no glass and the plug for the lights is enclosed in an outlet cover, so I've decided that as long as I'm there to make sure the tree doesn't tip, he can redecorate all he wants. Christmas is supposed to be fun, right?