Christmas Morning!

Up bright and early! I love Owen's face.

Owen was super excited about everything.

Everyone helped Paige.

Paige is cute.

Paige had the fanciest outfit of all. I will be looking for many more reasons for her to wear this dress before she grows out of it.

Christmas Eve!

We spent Christmas Eve on our own this year but we actually had a nice and relaxing day. In the morning we went to see a big model train setup at a local nursery, then went to church (standing room only of course!) and then had a big dinner. Owen decided Santa would like three chocolate chip cookies and milk and the reindeer would like three apples and milk. He must have been right because the next morning it was all gone!

Owen proudly posing with Thomas

Owen proudly posing with Paige.

Mustachioed Snowman

Yes, that's a word. Pat and Owen got a chance to use our snowman kit! I like the placement of the "mouth" because it looks like a fun mustache.

Ho Ho Ho!

Food

Just some pictures of yummy food we've had lately.

Paige had her first puff the other day! She worked really hard at picking them up but couldn't manage to get them in her mouth on her own:)

Homemade pizza from a week or two ago.

Banana Snowman

Baking and Birthday!

Happy Birthday Mom! We had our annual Christmas baking/birthday celebration over the weekend and this year we decided to make a Yule Log (other years we made: Rugelach, Sugarplums, Fruitcake, Gingerbread House and Rum Balls). It was chocolate cake, chocolate pudding and chocolate frosting. Really tasty! It also doubled as a birthday cake. More pictures to come next post!

Sometimes...

A lot of times our days are like this...

But other times they are like this:)

They're both fun to remember later but only one of them is fun in the moment...

Outtakes

It's time for Christmas card outtakes! The one we ended up using was actually the first one we took but I was hoping we could somehow get Paige to smile so we kept trying. Pat and I are pretty consistent with our smiles and even Owen did pretty good. Paige was the wild card!
Outtakes 2008
Outtakes 2009

Jump!

Paige jumps in her jumper! Surprise guest at the end of the video!

Paige and Hippo

April 2010 and December 2010

Because

Paige is starting to look very grown up.

And she's trying to crawl. But mostly it just looks like she's swaying:)

Letter to Santa

Owen mailed his letter to Santa yesterday! It was pretty exciting and very cute because he insisted on putting on mittens, boots and a hat to go outside even though he was still wearing his pajamas and didn't think to bother with a coat. He also kept dropping it on the ground which made me laugh super hard because he would try to pick it up, and then start giggling because his mittens would prevent it.



You can see the light dusting of snow on the ground but he kept trying to make snowballs anyway:)

Leftovers

I thought I might do some exciting things with our Thanksgiving leftovers but I didn't really. The more exciting part for me was even having leftovers in the first place! We're usually out of town so we don't get to make turkey sandwiches and whatnot.

Everything (cranberry sauce, turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes) piled on a leftover roll. I'm sure lots of people do this but it was my first time!

Peanut butter and cranberry sauce. That sauce stuff that comes in a can. Totally jelly-like, never thought about it. This tasted totally normal and not at all special. Easy way to use up the leftover sauce though.

School Picture

Owen is cute.

A Bit More...

A couple more pictures from Thanksgiving.

This was Paige's setup while we watched some of the parade.


Owen likes giving thumbs-up to everything these days.

Thanksgiving!

We got to spend Thanksgiving at home this year with our families and even got to make Thanksgiving dinner! We were a little intimidated by the idea of roasting a turkey but now we are pros.

The table!

The people!

Paige's first bite of her Thanksgiving dinner.

We made Owen this turkey the night before as a little game to play when we thought he could use some entertainment. We hid the feathers around the room and he had to find them. I didn't realize how much he would enjoy it but he thought it was great and has actually played many times since then!

Feeding Paige

Paige likes to amuse me while I'm trying to feed her. Recently she's gotten in the habit of slamming her hands down, grabbing her high chair tray and squishing herself backward. Lucky for you, I got a video of it:)

Then and Now

I haven't done one of these in a long time. Time to compare Owen in 2007 to Owen in 2010!

Stuff

I actually very rarely have the tv on when just me and Paige are hanging out and this is the reason why...I left her sitting up (just for a moment!) and playing with this balloon (I realize that probably isn't a proper toy for a 7 month old...) while the tv was on mute and I came back to this.

This was the dinner I served on our anniversary. It was actually pretty bad timing because it was a recipe I've been wanting to try for awhile but I knew that it might cause some issues for Owen and that Pat wouldn't like that it had tomatoes in it. At least I liked it!

Recipe here

I tried to compensate for the dinner by having a good dessert for Owen to look forward to but he actually preferred not to eat anything than to have to eat his dinner to get to the dessert.

7 years!

It's our 7th anniversary! Hooray! We went to Pier W on Saturday to celebrate and it was fantastic. The view was great, the food was great, and the company was great (that's you, Pat!)!

Holiday Walk!

Yesterday we got to do a few of Owen's favorite things: ride on a trolley, look at model trains, and eat cookies. Our town was having it's annual Holiday Walk (click here for pics from last year) and the weather was fantastic so we were really able to enjoy ourselves.

I snapped a quick picture of Owen in front of the trolley after we got off.


We thought Paige would be asleep the whole time but she stayed awake until we started walking home and then woke up right when we tried to put her to bed. She doesn't want to miss anything!

Almost Better!

Well, I was sick for about 5 days and now I'm feeling a billion times better. Stomach flu is not fun. Because of that, I had to stop my daily oatmeal (I know a few of you will be super excited to hear that part)! I lasted two months though! I don't really have any pictures relating to stomach flu (lucky you!) so I'll put up one of Paige:)

Bye Bye Halloween!

Paige helped me put away our Halloween stuff the other day so I let her model some of our costume pieces.

Cat

Pirate

This is unrelated...look at all that hair!

Halloween Food

Nothing fancy going on here but I thought our lunch was so cute that I had to share:) Also, I don't take credit for these ideas. I saw them on the internet at some point.

Jack-O-Lantern Oranges-Used kitchen shears to cut away the rind.


Mummy Pizzas-English muffins, string cheese, pasta sauce and peas.

Halloween 2010

So...our Halloween...Owen threw up about 15 minutes before trick or treating and since we are awesome/horrible parents we still let him go around the neighborhood. Since his Buzz Lightyear costume was um..."dirty"...he got to be a bat again. For the third year! Pat asked him if he was feeling better while they were out and Owen said he felt a little better every time someone put some candy in his basket:)

I didn't get any good pictures before Owen left because he was still a bit distraught so this picture is from when he got home. We let him pick one piece of candy to eat and he picked a box of Nerds which he ate very slowly, one by one, thus delaying his bedtime.

Paige and I stayed home to hand out candy. To accomodate for the weather Paige ended up being some sort of Bear Ballerina.

Tomorrow: pictures of our Halloween lunch!