The Joy of a 2 year-old

This is how I found Sydney tonight... "making out" with our Gingerbread house. She is so proud to have discovered that climbing onto the table means all you can eat treats. If you look closely at the mint at the front of the house, you'll notice that the stripes are gone. That is because she must have done this earlier in the day when I had the gingerbread house on my black table (I must not be watching her very closely because I didn't even know she was on that table). When I was polishing the table today, I noticed little feet prints on the table top next to where the house had been. The little foot print, Sydney size, and the missing stripes on the front mint lead to only one thing... Sydney is in love with the mints on the Gingerbread house and I need to do a better job at watching her :-).

Gingerbread House

Addison is now 7 months old and is such a nice baby. She cried for the first 5 1/2 months and now she is so wonderful and mellow. She can be sitting in her highchair now... STARVING... and she'll wait patiently until I get everyone else their food. She just looks around at everyone and waits for her turn. Now I can lay her in her bed and she'll go to sleep all by herself. Hopefully I won't loose all the tone in my legs from all the bouncing I've had to do, but I'm sure grateful that she is happier these days.

This was just a quick snapshot before we went to church today. Sydney did not want to cooperate, hence the candy cane in her had. What cute kids.

My cute master builders. They always do a great job. Tanner did the sidewalk extra great this year and I love Kaitlyn's tree and the roof.

My 2 year old on a stealth "candy seeking mission". Needless to say, the gingerbread house is at a much higher location now.

Sydney's 2nd Birthday

Today is Sydney's 2nd Birthday... So, obviously this was not part of the plan. Sydney is a wonderful 2 year-old climber. I found her on the table and she leaned down and licked her cake. It was hilarious! So we quickly grabbed the video camera and camera and snapped away. This was definitely an impromptu party. She was quite pleased with herself. Then we gave her a "Word World" DVD and toy (this is her favorite show on PBS). She can now proudly say, "I two." We are so grateful to have sweet Sydney in our family.

Baby Addison on Thanksgiving Day. She's getting better at sitting without support.

Cute Kaitlyn doing such a great job on setting the table for our first Thanksgiving dinner in our home. We loved it.

Cute Sydney took over Tanner's job of loading the dishwasher. She was thrilled. I wasn't. Climbing is a curse in an almost 2 year old.

Tanner's cute Indian outfit that he made at his Kindergarten feast. So cute.

Tanner and Kaitlyn showing off the pies they helped their grandma Omi make.


Sydney still proud of herself and making a big mess with the soapy water.

My early Christmas present: a new bedroom set

I am so excited about this new bedroom set. We've been using my husbands childhood bedroom furniture for almost 9 1/2 years. I think we deserved to get our very own. Our friends furniture store in town is downsizing to just 1 store (instead of their 2 stores) so they were holding fabulous sells. I didn't think we would be lucky enough to find anything... but we were. The bedding is a hodge podge of whatever I found that was the right kind of blue. I didn't want the room to be too dark... and I really wanted this color of blue. Luckily I found the decorative pillows at TJ Maxx and the sheets. THat made me very excited given I really wanted this steel blue color with silver and black. Next the curtains, rods and lamps were the perfect color blue and matched the hardware on the dresser on end tables (there is also a large dresser with a mirror.. the mirror is still on the floor so I didn't take the picture). FInding the duvet cover was more of a trick... Trying to find fabric without a lot of crazy stuff going on was very difficult. Luckily Pottery Barn came to my rescue with steel blue embroidered dots as an accent. I LOVE IT!!! I feel so grown-up now.