Christmas Morning in Monee

Santa came a day early for us - what a swell guy!

Pre-Santa's visit


Post-Santa's visit


We hyped Luke up the night before, but of course when he woke up the next morning, he said he wanted to go downstairs to eat breakfast. He had completely forgotten about Santa coming so we had to get him re-excited, which didn't take long!


He went straight for the phone in the kitchen set!


Merry 1st Christmas to this little one!


Luke went through his stocking first and was most excited about his Lightning McQueen umbrella!


And then the present wrapping began. I swear he would have been happy with just one gift because once he opened the first one, he just wanted to play with it. We had to keep encouraging him to open the rest!




Paigey playing with her new purse!


Paige opened this present by herself!


This present was for Paige, but Luke is enjoying it too and showing Paige how it works!




Nala got to open some presents too!


And a Christmas morning photo in their signature pose :) (Of course you can't get them both to look at you!)




It was a great start to our Christmas weekend!

Gingerbread House

I took a lot of pictures of our many Christmas celebrations, but for now, here are some pictures of the gingerbread house we built last Friday.













And one of Miss Paige from Friday - if you look very closely, you can see her teeth!


Lots more to come on our fun Christmas weekend!

Merry Christmas from our family to yours!

Scribbles Of Wishes Christmas Card

This season, send Christmas cards personalized with family photos.

View the entire collection of cards.

All I Want for Christmas...

are my two bottom teeth?!?!

Tuesday night Wally noticed that Paige's 2 bottom teeth came through (two for one - I'll take it!). Leave it to Wally to have his fingers in Paige's mouth. He noticed Luke's first tooth this way too! We are pretty lucky that that is the way we find out our children have teeth though. Paige had some cold symptoms over the weekend but now I am thinking it was related to her teething. She hasn't been any more drooly than usual and definitely not cranky. She has just been her happy little self! Hopefully she continues to teeth with no issue like her brother did!

I have to say though that when Wally said her teeth were coming through, I immediately got teary-eyed. Really? Teeth already? Can't she just stay little forever? I love that gummy smile of hers! It is so crazy how quickly the little ones change. :sigh:

One other quick Paige note - she is rolling (finally!). She did it for the first time on Tuesday and each night she has started doing it more and more (and actually tolerating being on her tummy for a bit). She is rolling only to her left back to belly and then to her right belly to back.

Such a big girl so soon!

(sorry no pics - I will make up for it over the Christmas weekend!)

The Week

Believe it or not, I actually picked up my camera a few times this week!

Our week in review!

Baby girl has been wanting to bust out of her Bumbo so it was time to get the high chair out.


I would say squash is her favorite so far! And she is a MESSY eater. She likes to try to 'help' you with the spoon (even if you give her her own) and it just turns into a disaster!


Luke enjoyed an apple-icious breakfast - apple jacks and an apple!


Miss Paige had some fun in her walker!


The kids 'played' together!


Luke was in a picture-posing mood!


We busted out the ducky tub because Paige is sitting so well on her own and needed some more room to splash!


Mommy headed out for some early morning shopping on Saturday and finished her Christmas shopping - yay!

Lukey gave me his sweetest smile :)


We headed to Luke's friend AJ's birthday party at Chuck-E-Cheese where chaos ensued and this Mommy couldn't wait to leave!

We enjoyed the little bit of snow we got!




Luke was very excited about his new mittens. I told him they were water-resistant so now he asks every time if he can wear his water-resistant gloves - love it!


Nala enjoyed the snow too!


Saturday night after the kids were asleep, I poured myself a glass of wine, put on Miracle on 34th Street, and started wrapping presents.

And today, we baked!

Wally took a stab at the old Baker's Dozen gingerbread cookies. Luke helped.


And then I made my 2 staples - M & M cookies and cutouts and this year we tried some peanut butter ball cookies and triple chocolate pudding balls.

My little helper elf was in charge of separating the red and green M & M's from the other colors (remind me to purchase the Christmas bag in November before they are sold out everywhere!). Unfortunately, he was fired from this job fairly quickly as he kept eating them!


I brought him back later on in the day to help me with the Christmas cutouts. He lasted about 5 minutes and then was on to bigger and better things! We still need to frost, but that is the worst part so we'll tackle that tomorrow night!

And Miss Paige, well she was just her happy self today (even with a bad cold!).


And that about sums up the past week! We are looking forward to these last few days before the Big Guy pays a visit to our house and we hit the road for the holiday!

Interview at 3 Years Old

I found this idea on Pinterest (duh!). We will ask Luke the same 20 questions every year on his birthday beginning with his 3rd. I plan on putting his responses along with a picture from his birthday in a photo album so he will have it when he grows up. It will be fun to see how the answers change from year to year.

So here we go - our interview with Luke at 3 years old (in his words)!

1. What is your favorite color? RED
2. What is your favorite toy? LIGHTNING MCQUEEN
3. What is your favorite fruit? APPLE
4. What is your favorite tv show? MICKEY
5. What is your favorite thing to eat for lunch? P JELLY (aka peanut butter and jelly)
6. What is your favorite outfit? LIGHTNING MCQUEEN SHIRT
7. What is your favorite game? DOGGIE GAME AT CHUCK-E-CHEESE YOU FEED HIM THE BALLS
8. What is your favorite snack? FRUIT SNACKS
9. What is your favorite animal? GIRAFFE
10. What is your favorite song? TWINKLE TWINKLE
11. What is your favorite book? CARS BOOK
12. Who is your best friend? AJ
13. What is your favorite cereal? FRUIT HOOPS
14. What is your favorite thing to do outside? PLAY
15. What is your favorite drink? FRUIT PUNCH
16. What is your favorite holiday? CHRISTMAS
17. What is your favorite thing to take to bed with you? MY BLANKIE
18. What is your favorite thing to eat for breakfast? CEREAL
19. What do you want to have for dinner on your birthday? SOME CHICKEN NUGGETS
20. What do you want to be when you grow up? A ROCKETSHIP

Luke's Birthday Celebration

Sunday was all about Luke - it was his actual birthday and birthday party day!

It started off with him waking up at 5:50 (seriously!), but I think what woke him was catching a glimpse of the streamers we hung from his doorway and all of the balloons in his room! He woke up yelling, "Look at all of the kaboons!". It was well worth the time spent blowing them all up the night before! I wish I would have gotten a picture.

Then we headed downstairs where his gifts from us were waiting on the table.

Wearing his new Cars slippers and holding his Cars lunchbox full of tons of Cars cars (are you catching on to the theme here???) Everything we got him was Cars related!


Wearing his Cars shirt and showing how many Cars cars he has. He also got more from others for his birthday and there might be some more to come for Christmas. We made sure to coordinate so we don't have duplicates!


Then it was time to party!






(Brayden Goodbred)


Age-appropriate Transformers - yay!


Oh Paigey!






It was a great day spent with family and friends! Luke is very blessed to have so many wonderful people in his life! And we were ALL in bed by 8 PM that night :)

Happy 3rd Birthday Lukey boy! Love you!

Birthday Celebration #1

We kicked off Luke's birthday weekend with dinner at TGI Friday's on Friday night.

All ready to go!


I made sure to tell the waitress about his birthday and hoped that he wouldn't be too freaked out by people singing to him. He was very serious, but did great!


And he thoroughly enjoyed the dessert they brought him!


After dinner, we drove around looking at Christmas lights and decorations. Luke absolutely loved it! We went down the cul-de-sac by our house to the house that always has a million lights and decorations and usually music synchronized with it, but this year, there was a sign that said there would be no musical show. We were a little disappointed, but Luke was still amazed by all of the lights!




The big party was on Sunday - more to come!