It's Beginning to Look Like Christmas

The Christmas decorations where unpacked immediately after Thanksgiving.  This year it was so much fun to see how excited Neal was about all the decorations.  It was hard to get him to be patient, he just wanted to open every box he could as quickly as possible.  He loved discovering his stocking again and was eager to hang it up for Santa along with Gwendolyn's.  He said "look mommy mine is a penguin 'cause I'm a boy and Sissy's is birds 'cause she's a girl, and only girls can have birdy stockings" (should I tell him that penguins are a bird also?)

Decorating the Tree was his favorite part and once all the ornaments were unpacked and hung Neal continued to look through the boxes in hopes of finding  one more thing to hang up on the tree.

Neal wants the Christmas lights, both inside and outside, to be on at all times.  We even hung some lights up in his bedroom which he uses as his nightlight.

This Christmas will be different for us, in that we will have a quiet Christmas here at our house with just the four of us.  I am looking forward to being able to start some Christmas traditions for our family. We can't wait to spend Christmas morning with these two smiling faces.

Our First Thanksgiving

2014 marks our first Thanksgiving at our house.  This was the first year that we didn't have Thanksgiving at either of our parents homes.  It was a little strange to think of having Thanksgiving here.  I was a little nervous knowing that we were the ones who were in-charge and that I had to cook a turkey (never cooked a turkey before).   This was one of those times that made me realize that Tyler and I are the parents now, the adults, and that Thanksgiving here will be normal for our kids.

We had a great time!  We ended up having 9 adults and 4 kids here for dinner.  It was a ton of fun and really great to have a few of those guest be family.

Thanks to everyone's help we had a great Thanksgiving meal and really great desserts.  Also, cooking a turkey, not nearly as hard as I thought.  We filled our day with football, games, and lots of food.

Aunt Jessi, Uncle Wes and Uncle Zach stayed with us the whole weekend, had lots of fun and ate lots of leftovers.

Over all I have to say our first Thanksgiving here was a smashing success. Anything is fun mixed with family and good friends and we were blessed with both this year :)

(Sadly I neglected to get a complete family photo of all of us, hopefully for Christmas I will remember) 

My little Man

Some days are good, some bad, some fly by and some seem to drag on forever.  Each day brings something new and each day my little boy grows bigger and bigger.

I love that I get to spend each day at home with my kids and I love the time I get to play with Neal.  My time is often occupied with taking care of Gwendolyn so uninterrupted time with Neal is harder to find these days, but when I get the time to play with him we have so much fun.

I love seeing his big smile and hearing him laugh as we play anything and everything from superheroes to cupcake baking.