My BABY is TWO!!

Two years ago today, our sweet Thad was born. I can't believe my BABY is two. We are so thankful that our family was blessed with this precious little guy. He really completes our family.

Here he was a 3 months. At this point, he was a REALLY difficult baby. You wouldn't know it by this sweet little innocent face, but he was my hardest baby by far!
at 6 months:

at one year:

and now...........our little man is growing up so fast.

Here are a few little things about Thaddy at two years old.......

* He is busy, busy, busy- constantly breaking, spilling, or ruining (...I mean playing with, exploring, or discovering) something.

*LOVES to play with his big "sissy" and "bu-bu".

*Talking a lot and tries to say so much. I do think the other two were talking more at this point though.

*Still LOVES his binky! AKA his "bee-bee".

*Loves to play in the toilet and flush things, anything- Barbies, cars, and the aforementioned "bee-bee" down the toilet.

*LOVES to play outside and just wants to be doing whatever the older kids are doing.

*Still a pretty big boy. He weighs about 30 pounds and is 35 inches tall.

*Is a snuggler- more so than the other two. He likes to get his binky, and a blankie and come snuggle in my lap, thought usually just for a minute until he thinks of something else to get into.

*Is a pretty good eater, and will usually eat what ever we are eating. For some reason he loves to sit on Brent's lap at dinner. It is any annoying habit, but I'm just glad it's not my lap.

*He really is more of a Daddy's boy than the other two were. He always asks "where Daddy?"

*Is so sweet and loving. Gives lots of hugs and kisses. Out of the blue he will tell me, "Love you"- just melts my heart!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY SWEET BOY!!! WE LOVE YOU!!!

Christmas in Oklahoma: Part II

The second day we were in Oklahoma, Tuesday, we celebrated Christams at my parents'. We had a great time with more yummy food, fun, and more gifts.

Hollace got a whole box full of adorable little outfits for her American Girl dolls, handmade my Nana. They are soooo cute.

Thad getting lost in the wrapping paper.

Kissing Cousins.

Nana and three of the four grandkids.

Aunt Sydnie and cousin Margot.... Uncle Jeremy was there too, he just didn't make it in this picture.

There seems to be a theme with Rhett and silly face in pictures.

Papa and Larry sharing some Christmas snacks.

The whole fam

It was a very Merry Christmas and a great visit in Oklahoma. We stayed the rest of the week and drove home all day Saturday, which was New Years Day--two years to THE DAY that we drove to Nashville for the first time- to live!

Like always, the week went so fast and we are looking forward to our next visit.

Christmas in Oklahoma: Part 1

We left the day after Christmas and drove about 11 hours to Edmond and stayed with our great friends, the Carpenters. The next morning we drove on to Mooreland and had Christmas at Brent's parents'.

The kids were so excited to see everyone- and to get more presents.

Thad had to try out Hollace's Paper Jam guitar.

Hollace getting a little help fixing Julie's hair in her new salon chair.

Grammy and Papa got more help than they needed opening presents.

Just when we thought all the presents were opened, more would turn up. So many presents!

Rhett giving Gunnar some DS pointers.

This was a little wrestling game that Rhett got, but everyone had fun with this one. Thad and Uncle Scott are going at it here.

We failed to get a picture of everyone together, or even one of the 4 cousins together! I really need to do better about this.

Grammy Terri did a replay of her famous Christmas morning brunch, so we could enjoy it too. It was a great time with lots of great family and food. We are blessed to be a part of this family!

Flashback Friday

Oh my!......Found this sweet picture while looking through some old ones this morning. This is Hollace Claire at 9 months old, taken by my Dad in the backyard of our little yellow house on 8th St. in Woodward.

Love this picture! and LOVE this girl!.......

..........this girl who helped me unload the dishes this morning, and who made candy with me today using a "Make your own candy kit" she got for a gift, and who is upstairs playing school with one of her friends and her little brother right now...........

Where does the time go?

It's Christmas!- FINALLY!!

Well, finally a Christmas post, anyway. My computer is finally fixed and functioning again! Yea!

Here are the three kiddos on Christmas Eve. This is the best pic of them together.....

Most of them looked more like this..........
We had a nice Christmas Eve together. We had "attempted" to go to the Candlelight service at our church at 3pm. We were a little late b/c Brent was on call and had something he had to take care of just as we were leaving. When we finally got there and got the boys checked in to the nursery we were about 10-15 minutes late, and there was NOWHERE to sit- I mean NOWHERE, not just nowhere to sit in our favorite section, or where we would have a good view, etc.... NOWHERE!-and our church holds A LOT of people. We had to go get the boys and go back home! It was crazy! I guess it's a good thing that so many people were in God's house on Christmas Eve, but it was a little frustrating for us. We got out of our sweat pants and got ready and made the drive to the church, and hurriedly checked the boys in, just to turn around and go back home, without any candle lights or "Oh Holy Night" or story of our King, born as a tiny precious bundle!...... I was a little bummed.

Anyway, back to our Christmas Eve at home.........

Brent read the Christmas story from the Bible and Hollace did a little performance of the Christmas story using our Little People Nativity set. I was pretty impressed with the details she included. Nice to know that some of it is sticking.

We said goodbye to Elfie. (Yes, I know that is a very un-original name, but it's what Hollace picked a couple of years ago.)

..........and left a little treat of cookies and milk for Santa and carrots for each of the reindeer.

Christmas morning.....the kids were really excited about their DSs. I think they were really surprised.

Thad is thinking, "Where is my DS? All I got is this toothbrush!"

Actually he got a little learning laptop thing. We were hoping this might make him feel like he had his own little DS, because obviously he wasn't going to get a real one- I sort of can't even believe my 7 and 4 years olds got one!

Thad actually was really excited about his gifts. I'm not sure what this silly face was about.

Rhett was also excited about his Iron Man gear.

After we opened presents and had some breakfast, we ventured out to enjoy the snow that arrived Christmas Eve and was still coming down. It wasn't a ton of snow, but very pretty and from what I hear it was the first white snow in Tennessee in 17 years!

It was enough to sled............

and have snow ball fights............

We had a wonderful Christmas at home, just the 5 of us. I am really glad we get to be at OUR home on Christmas! I know lots of people that travel and are somewhere else on Christmas and wouldn't want it any other way. I guess it's just whatever you're use to. We were usually at home at Christmas when I little, so I like to be at home with our family now too.

We packed later Christmas day and headed to Oklahoma early that morning. I'll post some pics of our time there soon.

Excuses, Excuses!!

Usually when I go two weeks without posting I have a pretty good excuse why. Usually it's because there just hasn't been much going on that's blog worthy or because there has been so much going on I just haven't had time to blog about it.

This time I have a different excuse as neither of those excuses are true. I have lots to post: Christmas, playing in the snow, our trip to Oklahoma, etc..... and we will be on snow day #3 for the week, tomorrow so I do have time. Between dressing and undressing 3 children in snow proof pants and shirts, two pair of socks, snow boots, coats, hats, and mittens- about 16 times a day, then cleaning up the mess of dirty, melted snow between each time of coming in "to warm up" so we can repeat the process...... I do have time.

So, my excuse this time is my computer, which has become painfully slow lately. It goes from bad to worse any time I try to open up my pictures. It freezes the computer up and makes it unusable- it won't do anything, sometimes I can't even get it to shut down so I can start over. Since I can't use my pictures, and WHAT is a blog post without a picture?... I haven't been blogging. I am going to get an external hard drive to put my pictures on so I can take them off this computer. Any other suggestions?

I'll leave you with this funny story, since I can't include some cute picture.

The other day while driving in the van I saw a wrecker with a badly wrecked car on it. I pointed it out to Rhett, and his response was, "Cool!! Mom, sometime can we have a wreck?"- Ok, that's not the funny part. I talked to him about the seriousness of a wreck and how maybe on his video games or on tv a car may have a wreck then just go on like nothing happened, but this is NOT how it happens in real life. I explained that sometimes people get hurt really bad in car wrecks, and sometimes even die!!- and that even if you don't get hurt, your car may be damaged and you wouldn't have a car to drive anymore.

He listened to all this then we had this conversation:

Rhett: "Well if our car didn't work anymore, we could just go get one of those that no one is using."
Me: "There are not just cars out there that no one is using that we can take. Cars belong to someone and they use them."
Rhett: "Yes there are. I see them all the time. There are lots of cars that no one is using and they are all shiny and sometimes they even have balloons on them!"

(Did you get that he is describing a car lot?)

Isn't is funny to get a glimpse of the world through the eyes of a child. To him a car lot is just a bunch of pretty cars lined up waiting for someone to come and use them. I'm sure he wonders why we drive the same old boring van day in and day out when we could just go pick up one of these balloon adorned beauties!