A Royal Party

Princess Callista and Prince Carver both have birthdays in January so Annie and Chase had a combined birthday party for them.  It was obvious it would have to be a princess theme for Princess Callista (she turned 3), but how to work that into something for a 1 year old boy... "The Princess and the Frog" ! 

Royal Attire was required (when else would I ever get a chance to wear my wedding dress again!?)

Mommy and her Prince Charming(s)

(Hudson was VERY embarassed about wearing a PINK bow tie.  But I finally convinced him it was for Callista so he got over it.  All the cake and candy helped...)

My contribution to the party....frog blowers!

The beautiful (dancing) princess cake Annie made, along with cute frog cupcakes. Callista was very concerned as to what her slippers looked like and when Annie cut into the cake she was disappointed to find she wasn't wearing any!

The birthday girl blowing out her birthday candles. (After she recovered from the fright of us singing the "scary" birthday song to her.  For some reason, she's been scared of the Happy Birthday song since her first birthday...hasn't grown out of it yet!)

Carver had no problem digging into his cake...

He must have learned it from watching his big sister!

Hudson had his first ever candy necklace.  He thought it was the greatest thing ever.  I'm not sure if he did anything else till he had ate ALL the candy first.

And the kids played a cute game of "pin the kiss on the frog".

Callista took it literally!

Happy birthday Callista and Carver!

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My Christmas Present

Without further ado, I'll show you a little bit of what Jamie and I have been working on lately...

We've always had this empty space between the fridge and pantry that drove me nuts.  Just wasted space.  I usually stuck brooms and mops back there, but that was getting annoying because 2 little boys got them out all the time to play with them....

When I saw this idea on pinterest I knew I had to have it.  I emailed it to Jamie and he thought it was a great idea too!  So we no longer have empty unused space in that little gap....

We have a rolling pantry!  I love it.  It holds almost everything I had in my existing pantry before.

Which left me with lots of space to reorganize my pantry.

Which of course, led to another project.  Once I got it all emptied out I couldn't put it back together without a fresh coat of paint.

But I can't just reorganize one part of my kitchen and call it good.  Reorganizing the pantry led to all this too:

I'm loving me reorganized kitchen....but of course, it doesn't stop there....and for those who complained about all the suspense from my last post...I'll give you a little sneak peak:

look what Tate can do!!

Imagine my surprise yesterday when I'm getting stuff out of the closest and turn around and find Tate standing up in the middle of the room!  He does it best when he has something in his hands - preferably the ipod.  He stood at least 20 times yesterday and is doing it again today so I think he's definitely got it figured out!  (Sorry for the poor pictures and video - there isn't any electricity in our fort!)

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Happy {adjusted} first birthday Tate!

This week was Tate's adjusted first birthday - when he actually should have been born  - 9 weeks after his actual birthday.  Tate has changed a lot in the last few weeks.  He jabbers constantly - unfortunately he's the only one who understands what he's saying.  Hudson is his official first word. (I have witnesses cause Jamie still doesn't believe me.)  He still says da-da all the time and occasionally I get a ma-ma but not very often!  His favorite word is "uh-oh".  He drops stuff - especially when he's eating - just so he can say "uh-oh" over and over. 

This week he also started really moving - as in cruising, walking holding on to your hands or walking behind the push walker.  It's crazy how quick he caught on.  Just Sunday I noticed he was finally starting to walk along the couch.  A few days later he would hold on to my hands and walk and now he loves to get behind the push walker and go!  I'm afraid walking might be in the near future!  Then I'll really have my hands full!  Twice he has remained standing on his own for 10 seconds or so before he realized I let go and plopped back down.  He loves to climb the stairs to so we have to keep a close eye on him when we're in the basement.  Luckily, big brother is really good at that. :)

He still loves to eat and I think it's safe to say he eats more than Hudson.  Hard to tell though cause Hudson is definitely a grazer.  He's asking for snack 30 minutes after he finished breakfast!  Tate likes to have a fork or spoon in his hand while he eats.  He kind of tries to use it to pick up food but quickly gives up and just shoves it in.  He also loves to play with his hammer and pound on things.  He's pretty good at the toy with the wooden pegs that he can hammer down!  He has started "zooming" cars along on the floor beside him as he crawls.  I don't think Hudson played with cars till just the last few months so it's cute to watch Tate play with them. 

I'm not going to talk about his sleeping in fear of jinxing it - but I'll just say it's been good the last few weeks. ;)

He HATES having his diaper changed and fights it every second.  We can definitely see his personality starting to develop and we can tell we're going to have our hands full.  When he doesn't get his way he lets you know it.  Boy he can throw a fit!  He puts up with his big brother - for now.  But we keep warning Hudson that some day he's going to fight back.  That day will probably come a lot sooner than we will be ready for!  All in all, he's a very happy little boy (can't say baby anymore!) and we are very blessed to have him in our lives. 

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Our Christmas

Christmas Eve started out with a big yummy breakfast at my parent's house. 

 Then came presents, which began with a little (soon to be BIG) surprise for my sister-in-law - a new puppy!  She had hinted to my brother that she wanted one but had NO idea he had bought one for her.  He picked it up a day or two before and the puppy stayed at my parent's till Christmas morning.  Now, I can't remember what kind of dog it is or what they named it, but it's going to be huge and it's a cute name - whatever it is! All the babies loved the little puppy.

Then came more presents.  Hudson finally got the batmobile that he has been talking about forever...he was so excited.  I actually found the Little Mermaid dress for Callista at a garage sale this summer and had it sitting in my laundry room ever since to sew the strap back on.  Finally did it and threw it in with her other gifts - as soon as she put it on she asked if she could get in the water!  It was quickly replaced by the Rapunzel dress though....

Then in the evening we went over to Mimi's for a chili dinner and more presents.  Here's our first picture ever of all the grandkids with Mimi.  (From left: Hudson, Ashley, Garret, Carver, Tate, Isaac and Callista).  Sorry you can't see half of their faces - it's the best we could do!

Then Christmas morning was more presents at our house.  Hudson got mostly stuff he needed - like new shoes, socks, a Captain America toothbrush and several new Berenstain Bear books.  I evidently didn't do so great with his gifst because he still asked for a week after Christmas when Santa was coming!  Tate was pretty content to chase the little red ball from one of his gifts all around the living room that morning. 

And then there's my Christmas present....isn't my hubby wonderful?  He built my present in the freezing cold! More to come on it later when it's all put together!

Our Jesse Tree

This year as part of our Christmas celebration we made a Jesse tree.  We used our Christmas tree instead of having a separate one and used homemade or store bought ornaments to represent each story.

A Jesse tree (in case you haven't ever heard of it) is actually an advent celebration.  It tells the story of God's salvation plan from the beginning of the world, through the Old Testament, to the birth, death and resurrection of Christ. The idea of the Jesse Tree comes from Isaiah 11:1 " A shoot will come up from the stump of Jesse; from his roots a branch will bear fruit."


I knew that we would not remember to do all 25 days so I only did enough for several Bible stories and started it the week before Christmas.  If I'd known how much Hudson would love it, I'd have done more.  He loved reading the stories and hanging the ornaments on the tree, and then retelling the stories to anyone who came over.  His favorite story was the "devil snake" who got kicked out of heaven and tricked Adam and Eve. 

  There are several Jesse tree devotional books that you can purchase.  I thought they were all still too advanced for Hudson.  Ann Voskamp has a great one that she put together as well, along with printables you can use instead of actual ornaments. (There are several different ways you can make your own Jesse tree - just google it for ideas.) But I still thought it was a little too much for him.  So we ended up reading the stories from one of Hudson's Bible's.  This is my favorite children's Bible that we own - The Jesus Storybook Bible.  I love the way they tell the stories and each story ends with a little hint about "someone coming to finish God's plan, etc" so it was perfect for working up to the birth of Jesus. 

I'm definitely planning on doing this again next year - plus Tate will be able to be involved as well.  So now I have all year to look for more ornaments to represent the other Bible stories.

Christmas Decor

I'm spending the day finally getting all the Christmas decorations taken down...so I thought it appropriate to finally post a pic of our decor! 

Our new Christmas tree!  I was so excited to get a bigger tree this year.  Our other tree- the one we bought our first Christmas together was only 5 feet tall and it looked really puny in our basement.  I wanted a new one last year but had too many other things to worry about at the time (Tate) so we didn't mess with it.  But this year, I finally did something about it.  Found this tree on Craigslist for $45.  Pretty good deal when you look at the store and trees cost $500 and up!  Ridiculous.  It's a 7 foot tree and has a 5 foot radius at the bottom.  So it's huge!  Since we had a new tree I decided to try it upstairs this year instead of down.  It was a tight squeeze but it worked.  The other decor I already had and notice my nativity set on the fireplace! 

I HATE wrapping presents.  I'm not any good at it, I always mismeasure and have to do it again, the corners are messy and bows just don't happen unless they're the stick on kind.  So this year I went to something different - fabric bags.  I loved it.  No more wrapping paper for me - ever!  I bought Christmas fabric on sale at JoAnn's in several different patterns and then just sewed different size bags together.  Tied them with Christmas ribbon, stuck a name tag on them and wa-laa!  Wrapping done.  This year was more work since I had to make the bags (although it wasn't hard to do - just cut on the fold and then sew down the two sides, flip right side out and you're done) but next year will be even easier since they're all made.  And they looked cute under the tree too! 

Christmas lights

Before it gets to be February I am going to try to get some Christmas pictures posted!
We went out one night to look at Christmas lights (OK, I admit it - it was actually after Christmas, but we at least did it!  A little too much sickness kept us from the usual holiday festivities.)  I had heard about a house in Andover that had the lights timed to music like the one we had discovered 2 years ago in Wichita.  So we drove the boys out to look at them.  They both loved it - Hudson more than Tate.  He was really into it and didn't want to leave when we finally drove away.  But it was getting too close to Tate's bedtime and we didn't want to listen to him scream the whole way home!

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Hudson agrees with me that Papa Cecil needs to do this to his house next year!