2010, Our Year In Review

Just for fun, this is a little run-down of what all we did in 2010.  It seemed like a crazy time starting out the year with an almost newborn!  Time flies and it's time to start another year!

January

We started out our new year with lots of snow!  Matthew was still so little and John Michael seemed like a baby still, too.  It was a hard, cold winter in the house with a 20 month old and a little tiny baby!

               

February

February greeted us with even more snow! We took advantage of it and sledded in our driveway!  Matthew was still a little baby but started to be so much more alert and do more things.  John Michael was still working through a few jealousy issues but overall still learning how to be a big brother and language, etc.

      

March

In March Matthew bloomed into our happy, constantly-smiling boy!  We started having some nice, warm days so we were finally able to get outside more and more.  That makes a stay-at-home mama happy!

                        

April

In April we celebrated Easter and really took advantage of the nice, warm days!

May

In May we celebrated John Michael's second birthday with a barnyard themed bash!  It was fun and oh so cute!  Matthew got his big-boy car seat just like brother and the boys really started interacting a lot more together.  It is so sweet to see them starting to really take an interest in each other!

            

June

In June it started to get hot, hot, hot!  We spent more and more time outside with our water hose and I started learning how to juggle two babies at our neighborhood pool.  I'm still learning!  Next summer should be interesting.

                   

July

We headed back home for July 4th and Jordan flew in to meet us.  It was one of the worst trips ever.  Both boys were very, very sick with very high fevers and no one slept.  At least it was enjoyable being with our families for the 4th.  I keep thinking how this coming 4th of July we'll hopefully have a new little one in our arms!  We swam at GaGa & Bop's house and I took advantage of the pool during the boys' naptime!

August

In August Uncle Judd showed up for a surprise visit!  We visited the Animal Safari and Jordan and I celebrated our 4 year anniversary on the 5th!  We spent a lot of time downtown at our Farmer's Market on Saturdays and we usually always played out back or went for a walk after dinner!  I love summer!  John Michael started Mother's Day Out at the end of August.

        

September

September started football season for us and both boys love football!  Matthew started being mroe mobile and creeping and hanging onto furniture.  Our garden was still yielding veggies and both boys love to help Jordan bring in the harvest.  We also visited the Animal Safari one more time and JM got to pet his favorite lemur again.  He loves that lemur!

                    

       

October

A lot happened in October!  Matthew got his first few front teeth, starting eating table food, and was nearly walking!  We celebrated Halloween at church and enjoyed Alabama's wonderful football season!  John Michael is really starting to love going to Mother's Day Out and I can tell he's really taking to it!

November

November seemed like a busy month!  I was so tired and nausous and we found out in early November that we were expecting baby #3!!  We drove home to Alabama to celebrate Thanksgiving and Matthew's first birthday!  Matthew started officially walking and getting into everything all the time!  John Michael's vocabulary seemed to really start taking off as he learned more and more new things at school!

December

In December we told all of our friends about our exciting baby news!  I slowly decorating the house for Christmas and just felt really tired a lot in December.  John Michael enjoyed his first Christmas parade and Matthew slept through it!  John Michael really started opening up more and talking up a storm ALL the time!  His vocabulary and talking took off like lightning at the end of the month and he hasn't stopped since.  He also started potty training; which is going quite well!  He's getting to be a really big boy!  We enjoyed our warm, snuggly Christmas Day in PJs for most of the day!

We had a wonderful 2010 and we cannot wait to see what's in store for 2011.  We are anxiously waiting for the newest little one and we know this year is going to be exciting, tired, and great!

          

Yet Another Christmas Post

This should be my last Christmas post!  Whew!  I wanted my family to see that I knew how to make my very own Christmas dinner!  I was a bit nervous about making my own ham, etc. but I ended up doing OK and it all turned out all right!  I made a few things the night before, so that helped.

First things first, I made my very first homemade hot chocolate and it was soooo good!  We put the boys down for nap and curled up on the couch with our homemade peppermint hot chocolate while we watched HGTV's Crazy Christmas Lights show and the White House Christmas show. 

I wanted to make a Coca-Cola ham (Coke was a recurring them in our Christmas dinner this year, I don't know why!) so I look around online and found a recipe adapted from a Martha Stewart recipe.  I believe it was called How to Make a Coca-Cola ham for Lazy People.  I was all over that.

I also made my favorite slow-cooker mac n cheese!  It is so easy and sooo good!

I was so pleasantly surprised to see that everything turned out really good.  Even the ham!  I don't even like ham usually, but it was quite good!  We're keeping it real classy here with our Wonder Pets telephone in the background!

Here's Matthew enjoying his Coca-Cola salad.  He went directly into the bathtub after this.  We about had to hose him off to get all the jello off of him so that we could even bathe him!

And last, but not least, we enjoyed Coca-Cola cake for dessert...I told you we had a Coca-Cola themed Christmas dinner!  I made it the night before, almost cried because I messed up the recipe, and then decided we would eat it anyway.  It was pretty good, but it could have been more moist!

John Michael enjoyed his Coca-Cola cake!

And just for fun.....

Matthew's curls were out of control on Christmas night!  They were so stinkin' cute!

And here's John Michael trying on Mr. Potato Head glasses!  I don't think they quite fit.

Happy New Year!!

Let's Back Up A Bit!

I already did my Christmas post, but I wanted to make sure I go in our pre-Christmas festivities also!  On the 23rd we decided to have a few couples over that also were not having a lot of family come in for the holidays.  Everyone brought something and we hosted in our home.  We had a fantastic night and everything was so good!

Since I had to clean and get the house ready for that night I let the boys kind of play with whatever.  Matthew discovered the guest bathroom shower.  He had never really even been in there before and so he was so excited to discover a new place to play!

 Who knew an empty shower stall could hold so much fun?!

 Peek-a-boo!

 John Michael was ready for Christmas too!  I love his Santa shirt!

Since I only had under 24 hours to really get the house together, I did a few home-made decorations with things that I had around the house.  We provided the drinks, so I made cranberry ice cubes the night before and I made a cute little display of lights and greenery under my drink dispenser. 

 I also used things that I had around the house to make a centerpiece for our table.  We already had oranges and cloves and cranberries so I made them into a cute display with some greenery.  Matthew painted the red star!

 It was so easy and it was fun to just use things I had around the house!

 It was so nice to have our Christmas-decorated home filled with the sounds of little ones playing and grown-ups talking!

 

The next day, Christmas Eve, we decided to make a new Christmas tradition...Krispy Kreme!  We packed up late in the morning because the boys had slept so long from playing so hard with their friends the night before.  Both boys got a "hot now" donut right when we walked in the door.  It was love at first bite! 

 John Michael got a snowman donut and Matthew got a regular one!

They loved it, and we did too!

Of course we had to go see how they made those donuts!

It was interesting and both boys enjoyed watching all the donuts being made!

I think it was a fun, new Christmas Eve tradition to start for our family!

Later in the morning Jordan decided that it would be a fun idea to take John Michael to see his first animated movie.  I thought he was joking; he wasn't.  We ended up taking both boys to see "Tangled" (or Tingled as John Michael says) and he did really well and is still talking about it!  Matthew did pretty well but I ended up having to take him out towards the end.  It was a cute movie and we all loved it!  It was a fun, but busy Christmas Eve!