Merry Christmas!!

Hope everyone has a very Merry Christmas!! We are headed to Birmingham tomorrow and looking forward to seeing everyone over the next several days. We had Round 1 with my dad's family this past weekend at our house and it was so much fun! It was great to spend a little Christmas at our home for a change. It was also nice to not have to worry about packing bags!! Thank you so much Nana, Papa B Kevin and Kim for coming to stay with us!! James loved his presents and loved spending time with you all!

James LOVES opening presents in general! He was so proud he could do all by himself. And he HAD to help all of us open our presents too! I am thinking Santa should wrap empty boxes to put under the tree no need to spend extra money on actual toys, he has the best time ripping the paper! Last year he loved playing with empty boxes this year he loves unwrapping them! I have a feeling each Christmas with James is going to get better and better.

Pictures to come once I have time to download them :)

Clarification

As Chad was reading the latest post last night he began to point out my misuse of words and all of my grammatical errors. I just want to make sure everyone understands that I am not the best speller and completely rely on spell check when I remember to use it and I tend to type fragments or run on sentences or sometimes leave words out (kind of like this one). These are just my thoughts and please try to overlook all of my mistakes :)

Below are a couple of pics from our Christmas Card photo session. The 3 of us headed down to the bluff in Fairhope. My vision was I wanted to get a picture of James with the bay/pier in the background since we moved to Fairhope during 2009. Next year I will not have a vision because I think when you do there is just too much pressure and it becomes a tense environment. Chad was such a good sport to come along to help but after an hour of photo taking and an outfit change he was done. Plus earlier in the day we had driven 4 hours home from Birmingham.

This picture I think would have been perfect however you cannot see his face because my flash did not turn on. Not very happy about that!

All in all I was pleased with the way our card turned out and just hope Chad forgets about this session by next year so he will be willing to help again!

I'm Back!

Ok so I know it has been awhile since the last post but we have been kind of busy. I love the holidays, the smell of Christmas trees, the extra decorations, Christmas dinnerware, the Christmas lights in peoples yards, the family gatherings just about everything. However I tend to get a little stressed :) So many gifts to buy and then wrap, picking out the perfect tree, decorating the tree, ordering Christmas cards, addressing Christmas cards and the list goes on.

Additionally the number of cars on the road seem to increase significantly, available parking at any retail location is scarce and people tend to lose all patients, including myself :) I will say I was in a complete tizzy this time last week but after this weekend I feel 1000X better. Our house is completely decorated, Christmas cards are sent, almost all of our presents are purchased and most are wrapped! Now I can begin to enjoy the season! Plus having a young child seems to make the holidays that much merrier. James still does not understand but he is loving Santas, snowmen, and Rudolph as long as they in books or pictures. We attempted seeing Santa this year and it wasn't as successful as last year. For the pic this year we all 3 sat in Santa's lap. The pic is quite comical, both James and Chad had lost all patients after waiting in line so you can only imagine. Here are a few pics below of our house and James with the tree

This is James' favorite ornament. It is a pic of Chad and I on our wedding day. Every day he goes straight to this ornament and pulls it off. Thankfully it is not breakable :)

And then he tries to put it back on...he has not mastered that one yet. The ornament usually ends up on the floor.

Kind of a random picture but this is James watching Curious George Christmas. I thought it was too cute that he was propped on the pillow laying down watching a movie.

Reading with Daddy...wanted to have his arm propped up just like him

Lately James has been obsessed with Mickey Mouse. Loves him. So this past weekend we were at Lowe's and James spotted this little friend and he never made it out of our shopping cart. We were suckered in. This Santa Mickey sings Deck the Halls and James sings along during the Fa la la la part and it was just too cute not to purchase. It may be the cheapest looking Mickey you have ever seen but watching him sing along was too cute to pass up.

Now that we finally have presents under the tree it is hard to explain to a 21 month old that you have to wait until Christmas to open them :) He has already attempted to open a few and I do not feel like rewrapping!

Merry Christmas!!