Monday, December 2, 2013

Santa Claus is Coming to Town

We love Christmas around here. We love the new new traditions we are starting with our little family and the traditions we have done with our families for years. We started off the holiday season by decorating the house.

The kids were great helpers for about 5 minutes, but then they lost interest and just made a mess the rest of the time.

Caden learned to say a couple of cute sayings for Christmas: 
-If you ask him about Santa Claus he says, "Ho, ho, ho houz" (Basically Santa's at our house).
-He loves the snowman decoration that sings "We wish you a Merry Christmas." He turns it on, then runs around in circles. He even learned how to say "new year"
-
 Her face doesn't show it, but Makayla loved getting wrapped up in the tinsel.
 Once we started putting ornaments on the tree, both the kids wanted to jump in and help.


 Our finished upstairs tree


 Then we moved downstairs to finish our other tree. The first ornament Caden found was the headless doll. He got the honors again of putting it on the tree this year.


 Makayla loves decorating the tree. She has redecorated our tree downstairs multiple times now... needless to say, all of the ornaments are only about three feet high on the tree.


 Here's our downstairs tree!

I love the way it looks with all the lights on it. I love going down there at night and just sitting in the dark with the lights on the tree. 
I bought new stockings and I absolutely love them! It is so crazy how fast our little family is growing. It was only five years ago on our first Christmas together that we had two little stockings on our mantle... now there's four!
 Ever since we moved into our house Tyler has wanted to put lights on the roof, but our house is so tall that he doesn't dare. We haven't had lights until this year because Tyler decided to decorate the trees in front. Plus we got a cute blow up Santa on our front porch. I think the highlight of the kids' day is when we go outside to turn on the lights and Santa.

 Now that the house is decorated, we can start with all of our fun traditions! Let the Christmas season begin.

Saturday, November 30, 2013

Not a creative title this time... Just "November"

To start off the month of November, here's some pictures of our kids as little buddies.



Most of the time they are really cute together and play with each other. But a lot of the times they are little stinks. Caden learned how to fight back, so now he hits Makayla when she takes toys away from him and  Makayla learned how to tattle. She runs to me crying "Caden said, "no" to me and hit me."

The worst is in the car. Since Caden is still in a rear facing car seat, they have to sit right next to each other and they fight constantly. I get so frustrated when I hear, "mom, Caden put his foot on my car seat" over, and over, and over, and over. Uggh!

When they are not tattling or yelling, they are really cute... See?



It was snowing in early November and Makayla ran to the kitchen to get a stool so that she could watch the snow fall.
These two sometimes like to help me make the bed. They are good helpers with the pillows.

Makayla likes to get buried in them.

I had to take a picture of this because Makayla asked me for an apple and just took random little bites all over.
Who doesn't love piggy back rides with daddy?
One night we read books together in our bed. The kids had so much fun.


This was the funniest thing... Caden was pretending to take pictures of Tyler. He would stand by the fireplace and wait for Tyler to say "cheese!"
Then he would come over to show Daddy the "picture" he took. It is so cute to see the things the kids pick up.
But then he kept getting mad that Tyler's shorts were up, so he would come over to fix them before he would take the next picture.

We don't know for sure, but we might have a photographer on our hands (or a perfectionist)

Caden loves books. He is always going to his room to get a book and bring it back to us.

Cute sayings of the kids:
-Since Tracy has been pregnant (which I need to do a separate post about because she had baby Camden on November 5th!) Makayla thinks that she has a baby in her belly too. She'll say things like, "There's a baby in my belly. He's crying. He's kicking"
-One day it was raining and Makayla kept singing, "Rain, rain go away... get another time."
Makayla keeps asking us where things come from (clothes, toys, food,). She'll say things to us like, "Where did you get that from?" Since we've been talking about Christmas a lot lately, Makayla has started to say things like, "Where did you get that from? For Christmas?"
-Makayla is getting to be a good negotiator. When we tell her she needs to take a nap she tells us, "I need 5 more minutes." When I pick her up from Brooke's she says, "I need 5 more minutes on the way home." One day we told her she could play for 10 more minutes, and she said, "no, I want 5 more minutes." Not going to argue with the logic of a todd.
-We were in the check out line at the store and Caden kept yelling "don't," so then Makayla would tattle by saying, "mom, Caden said, 'Don't'" (except she yells "don't"... so basically everyone in the store was staring at us because both my kids were yelling "don't" at the top of their lungs. )
-Makayla woke up from her nap the other day and told me that "The heater was bugging me"
-Normally I am her best friend, but one day I did something that made her mad and she said to me, "you're not my best friend today!"


Caden tries so hard to talk and we are starting to understand some of the things he is saying.
-If you ask him where Daddy is he either says, "tow" (out of town) or "wor" (work).
-He learned to say "Brooke" and yells her name every time we show up to her house.
-He can say "Addy" and "Con-uh" (Conner) (His friends at day care)
-He motions with his arm and says something resembling "come on"
-He learned to say "apple", "up dere" (up there),  "elp" (help), and "ni-ni" (night, night)
-My absolute favorite saying of Caden's is "yesh" (yes). He really understands things. We asked him one day if he wanted to get in his jammies, and he said, "yesh," so then we asked him if he wanted to go to bed, and he shook his head no.
-My other favorite is when he says, "anks" (thanks).
-The other day he ran around the house saying, "Mom-ma, are you?"
-If you show him a picture of a cat and ask him what it is, he responds with "meow". If you ask him about elephant he makes a spitting noise.
-Speaking of kitties, Caden loves to pretend to be a kitty. He loves to crawl around the house saying, "meow"
-If you ask him if he likes one thing or another he will always say the last thing. Like, if we ask him if he likes daddy or mommy better, he will say mommy. Then we'll switch, and he will say daddy.

These Little Turkeys are Thankful For...

We did thankful turkeys again this year and we had so much fun doing it! This was Caden's first year doing one because he was sick last year. We traced out their feet for the body of the turkey and their hands for the feathers. We have the kids write on the feathers things they are thankful for.



Makayla said she was thankful for: 
1. Mommy and Daddy
2. Caden
3. Addy (her friend at daycare)
4. Blankie
5. Princesses


Caden is thankful for: 
1. Mommy and Daddy
2. Sister
3. Brooke 
4. Blankie
5. Books

This year we had Thanksgiving dinner at our house and had my family over. I had my camera sitting out, but I only took one picture the whole night, this one of Hannah reading Caden books.


Thanksgiving is one of my favorite times of the year. I love getting together with our families, going shopping for Black Friday, decorating our house for Christmas, and spending the entire weekend with my cute little family... I mean, really, who wouldn't love these two?


Thursday, November 21, 2013

A Needed Day Off

My cute little Caden had a pretty bad fever the last few days, so we kept him home from daycare today. He was probably fine to go today, but I was looking for an excuse to stay home for a day. I still took Makayla to daycare which meant I got to spend an entire day with my bestest little bud!
We had fun playing with all of Sister's toys (as you can see the babies in the warming drawer)
We snuggled all day and read books (Caden is still the best snuggler... especially when he's sick)
We tried to schedule a lunch date with Daddy or Emily, but they both blew us off (obviously their loss!)
We watched parts of Sesame Street and Dinosaur Train. Caden screamed with excitement for all 10 minutes of his t.v. attention span.

Yup, pretty much it was the funnest day! I wish the kids would get sick more often (That's really not true... maybe I should just pretend to be sick)

Sunday, November 3, 2013

I love Technology!

Because even when Daddy has to go out of town, we can still talk to him like he is here with us!

A Spooktacular Halloween!

Halloween day and night was so much fun this year! Makayla seemed to understand it more this year and Caden was just so happy to wear his costume. We spent weeks before Halloween practicing trick-or treating. We would walk around our house and have the kids practice knocking, saying "trick-or-treat, then saying "thanks". They were so excited for the actual day and couldn't wait to go get some candy. 

That morning we got the kids all ready to go to Brooke's house for their daycare Halloween party. 
I think Princess Belle and Scooby Doo are the cutest ever! Caden was hilarious this year because he walked around the house going, "Meow"! We decided he was Scooby-doo with an identity crisis! :)



 Caden was so proud of his costume. We asked him if he wanted the hood off and he got so mad when we tried to take it off.

At Brooke's house they got to have a party complete with musical chairs, candy, and cupcakes. When we got home the kids were so excited to go out trick or treating, but I had to hold them off until Daddy got home from work. When he got home, we loaded up the kids and we were off. 

 We stopped at the first house and the kids were so excited to get candy in their pumpkins.

 Grandma and Grandpa stopped by with some treats for the kids and then they stayed and went around the bock with us to watch the kids.


We thought the kids would only make it around the little block, but they were having so much fun that we ended up going around the big block too. They had so much candy by the end of the night that they couldn't even hold their buckets. Makayla kept telling me her bucket was "too heavy".

When we got back Grandma Kathy was there with some more treats for the kids! The rest of the night Makayla helped us hand out candy.

Halloween was the funnest this year because both kids understood it and had so much fun. Even now, days after Halloween, Makayla is still going around the house with her green pumpkin and organizing all her candy.