Megan's Camp Out

Megan earned a camp out in the living room because she was good all week. The tent is a little too small though. She busted right out of it while she was sleeping.

James being all cute

William was standing on the stairs the other night and he would take a picture when James was running down the hall so it would go off right when he got to the stairs. James thought this was very funny. I love big toothy smiles on him. :)

Santa on the Firetruck - Home Edition

Our Santa gets off the truck to visit with the kids. He'll even knock on your door if you're not out there. Unfortunately the route completely misses our house but we only have to walk to the street behind us to see him. James started yelling "All done" as soon as he saw that we were trying to get him to see this Santa person again. He did get close enough to take a candy cane from him. I guess nothing is too traumatic to keep him from getting a candy cane.



I think its the angle he's standing at, but the dog looks like his eyes are crossed which is pretty funny with the tongue sticking out.

Santa's House

There is a house that completely goes all out with Christmas lights every year and they also have Santa available for visits on the weekends. We tried to go Saturday night but got there about 15 minutes before Santa was supposed to leave and the line was way too long. So we tried coming back 15 minutes before he got there Sunday night and still had to wait an hour to see him, the line was so long. It was bitterly cold out that night too. Megan and James were troopers though. A lot of other kids were crying but not them. They toughed it out. James wouldn't go near Santa again though. He started crying as soon as we made it into the house. He did think about giving Santa a high five but changed his mind. Santa still gave him a present and Megan got an orange and some pencils and erasers and candy.

Nativity Play

Our church had the Sunday school kids put on a Nativity play last weekend. Megan was an angel and had no lines, other than the one line all the angels together had to say. The play went really well much to the delight of my mom, who helped organize it.


Practicing the words to "Away in a Manager" with her friends.

Megan's Christmas Show

Megan's dance school had their Christmas show last weekend and Megan did wonderful. She was the best dancer in the whole show if I do say so myself. :) She said she was a little nervous about all those people watching her but you can't tell by watching her. There are only 5 girls in the entire class and one was too shy to do the show. In the video she is the one on the far left. I'm sorry its not better quality. We could only video or take pictures from our seats, which were near the back. I have it zoomed in as far as it would go. William got a much better video on our regular camcorder though.


It was so packed in there, Megan and Krista had to share a seat for the first act. Luckily a lot of people who were only there to see people in the first act cleared out at intermission so we had a lot more room when it came time for Megan to dance.

Santa on the Firetruck - Parents Edition

Here are some pictures from when Santa came by my parents house on a firetruck. I took a video of it, but I'll spare you that. Its loud and doesn't show a whole lot. You get a glimpse of James waving which I would have focused more on but I didn't realize he was waving to Santa until it was over.



Dancing with Grandma while waiting




James is waving to Santa here. He seems to like Santa from a distance. :)

Video of James talking

Warning: Do not watch this video if the words poop or diarrhea offend you. James repeated the word "idea" a couple of weeks ago and I guess it sounded enough like diarrhea to give Megan the idea of teaching him that word. Of course that one he learns right away and will repeat it anytime you want him to. William taught him the "I pooped" part.

Christmas card out takes

We have a crappy picture again this year. I think it is safe to assume it will be crappy until James is much older.


Megan trying to show James how to pose. She was upset her pajamas did not show in the final picture, so you can see them here.


What James was doing in most of the shots I got.


The winner, which I cropped to show just their faces then Walmart decided to crop a little more than I told them to. Oh well.


I have no idea what he was doing here.

Random Pictures

Megan taking the name "tree skirt" literally.


Practice run of hair and make-up for her dance Christmas show.


Apparently this is what happens to your hair when it is gelled profusely and then stuck up in a bun all day. Megan thought she looked evil so she made her face match. I don't know what goofy Dad was doing in the back.

I have lots more pictures and videos coming. I'm only allowing myself two posts right now because I have to get ready for work. After today I'm off until Monday, but one of the bad things about working at a church is that holiday time is extremely busy time. Hopefully I can get everything done and be home at a decent hour tonight. I still have presents to wrap and cookies to bake and a house to clean.

Breakfast with Santa

Megan's school had a "Breakfast with Santa" fundraiser earlier this month.



Megan sat on Santa's lap but she would not look at him or speak to him.


This is James after we moved him closer to see if he would sit on Santa's lap. Obviously he wouldn't. :)

James is crazy without RJ

I mentioned a couple weeks ago that James loves his stuffed animal, RJ. I found a picture of him new...



Compared to what he looked like a few weeks ago...



The reason I came across a picture of him new was that I had to search for a new RJ. He had chewed his nose right off and his stuffing was starting to come out. I noticed this around 6 pm tonight. So of course I took it away from him and didn't think anything of it until I heard William getting James ready for bed. I yelled up to him not to give him RJ to sleep with because of the stuffing. Well, when James went to bed he started crying up a storm, which is very unlike him. He usually goes right to bed without a peep. The only thing we could think of that was wrong was that he didn't have RJ. So we got him back out and tried to sew him up as much as possible. I worked on him for a little bit while William held back a sobbing James and then we switched. Finally we got RJ sewed up enough where we felt he was ok to give back to James. He immediately calmed down, got a drink of water and marched his butt back to his bed. Our crappy patch job is not going to hold up long so I ordered a new one for him immediately after he went back to bed. I don't want to have to go through that again anytime soon. :)

James' Birthday Continued

Megan is doing better now. I had a feeling she was going to get sick because she kept complaining about her stomach hurting on Saturday and the usual remedies weren't working. Poor thing was up really late Saturday throwing up. She woke up on Sunday with a fever, but otherwise fine. I kept her home today just to be on the safe side, but the fever is gone and her tummy seems to be ok now. Luckily no one else has gotten the bug too because me, her and James were all eating birthday cake off the same fork on Saturday. :(

I took James for his 2 year check up this morning. He's doing great physically. I told the doctor that he just started talking and she said that while all children develop differently, if he's not saying more words than I can count by March we need to consider taking him to a speech therapist. But he seems to be learning new words all the time, so I don't think that will be a concern. Just today I taught him to say "corn". :) He finally got his MMR shot and he got a flu shot as well. He did pretty well. The stupid nurse took too long getting his height and majorly upset him and then went about trying three other times to get his height and upsetting him even more each time. It took him less time to calm down after the shots than it did from getting his height measured. He is still a big boy but his height and weight are good. I enjoyed my day off with them. I had some illusion that I was going to get tons of stuff done today but between meals, the doctor, and a quick trip to the store, I haven't had time to do anything else.

James' Birthday

James turned 2 years old yesterday. We had a small party for him with some family. Grandma, Granddaddy, Aunt Lana, Uncle Keith, Aunt Martha and soon-to-be Uncle Scott all came over. I had planned to get him a Mickey Mouse birthday cake but they all seemed too girly, so I changed plans at the last minute and get a Thomas the Train cake. He got lots of Thomas toys too, which he loves, so he may be developing an obsession with Thomas at 2 years old, like Megan developed her obsession with Dora at 2 years old. He's talking a lot more now. He calls waffles "faffles" and water "wa-wa" and he loves pointing out crosses and saying "He-sus" (Jesus). For some reason he calls Mickey Mouse "So-so" and Granddaddy is "La-la". I'm not sure where he got those from, but they are pretty funny, especially La La.

More later...Megan just threw up. :(

Happy Birthday Dad!

Today is my dad's birthday. He likes to tell Megan that he is 6 years old. He never gets any older than 6, so she's looking forward to being older than him next year. :)

Also 9 years ago, William gave my dad the best present he could ever ask for - him as a son-in-law. William asked me to marry him on my dad's birthday. :)

RJ

James has a stuff animal (it was actually Megan's that he claimed as his own). Its the raccoon "RJ" from the movie Over the Hedge. James sleeps with RJ every night and plays with him everyday. RJ has seen some better days. I wish I had a before picture of him. James will hug him and then set into biting his face off. RJ's face is constantly wet from being bit so much and his face stinks something awful. And James seems to think everyone wants to bite RJ's face as much as he does because he will shove it in everyone else's face too.

Halloween

The tradition continues...My mom made this devil costume 31 years ago for Matt. He wore it, I wore it, Megan wore it and now James wore it. The tail needs to be reconstructed after James though. I should have known he'd be the one to destroy it. :) Everyone seemed to think Megan was Cinderella but she was actually Alice in Wonderland. James was not shy trick or treating. When people held out a bowl of candy and told them to help themselves, he dug right in.

Pumpkin Patch

This year the orchard right near our house had a corn maze so we were able to make our pumpkin patch trip one weekday afternoon. William liked it because we were the only ones there. :)

"It wouldn't be October if I didn't spend $20 to wander around a g.d. cornfield."