Christmas 2009

I'm trying to keep up with my blogs, so here are a ton of pics of the kids from Christmas weekend. We had a wonderful time, and I was again reminded just how blessed that we are. I have a wonderful, caring husband who knows me inside and out and does so much for me....I have TWO beautiful children who amaze me everyday at how they are growing, and make me laugh at the hilarious stuff they come up with....we have good jobs, food to eat, and a more than adequate roof over our heads....those things alone leave me so content. I have to remind myself constantly that we would have none of these things if God had not decided to bless us so much...he takes such good care of us, and I am so grateful for that!

Christmas Eve we spent at the house with my mom. We had a great time opening all our gifts, the kids big gifts from her were their tricycles...they can't quite reach the pedals to go by themselves, but are really close!

Christmas morning Kevin's parents and his Grandma Hutchins came over early before the kids got up so they could see them open presents. Our big gift to them was a play kitchen, which they absolutely love. I had been researching kitchens for them for months, and actually found the one I wanted on craigs list (of course), it turned out to be in amazing condition and barely used. It came with two huge boxes of play food and dishes...the past few days they have been in total "pretend" mode-Hunter will get his little plate and load it up with whatever he feels like and then will go sit down at his table with it to snack on, Hannah's favorite thing to do now is pretend to make Kevin and I coffee....we had about 20 cups this morning. Kevin's parents gave them motorized four-wheelers-they took a little bit to figure them out, but were a huge hit! (although our cabinets are taking a beating, because they haven't learned to steer yet)

Later on on Christmas day we headed over to my dad and Kims for lunch. We had a great time over there, and the kids did really well for skipping their nap. As soon as we left my dads house the kids fell asleep in the car, so we decided to just keep driving for a while and took a mini sightseeing trip through Sam Houston State Park. It was a such a beautiful drive, and there was not a soul in sight....so peaceful. I ended up falling asleep too, so we got a good nap in (except Kevin). After recharging, we headed back over to Kevin's parents to eat leftovers before going back home. Needless to say, we were all exhausted-but it was one of the best Christmases that I can ever remember! On New Year's day we are heading down to Houston for Kevin's extended family's Christmas get together, so we're not quite done yet! Hope everyone had a blessed Christmas and has a great New Year's-Love, Mandy

Hannah posing in front of the "baby bed" (my mom found this in her attic-it was mine when I was a little girl)

Hutner saying cheese and eagerly awaiting his presents

Hunter's "surprised" face

still all smiles-so handsome!

Hannah on her tricycle...pink of course!

Hunter in his Christmas jammies-my mom got them matching jammies...Hunter will NEVER wear a hat for me, and he put this one on himself and wore it until bedtime!

short pause for a milk break

playing with their kitchen on Christmas morning...they look like little jailbirds to me in their striped jammies!

riding his new four-wheeler from Gammy and Pa-pa

making circles around the house

opening gifts at Dads house

passed out on the way home...

can you tell we had a busy day?

Christmas Party and Santa Pics

This past weekend I had my office Christmas party, it was a lot of fun...always a good excuse for Kevin and I to have a night out, and a nice dinner. I felt brave that night and volunteered to flambe the bananas foster-very yummy! Yesterday we took the kids to do Santa pictures. They were pretty much as I expected they would be. The second we started walking towards him to put them in his lap they screamed like they were being abandoned. I had been trying to get them ready for the moment by talking about Santa Claus all week and even showing them their last years picture, but it still didn't work. I am predicting 2 more years of bad santa pictures, them maybe they will come around:) I put the new picture up on the fridge next to the santa picture from last year...this morning while I was making their breakfast Hannah pointed to the picture and said "Mommy, mommy, Santa Claus", to which I said "yep, that Santa Claus". Then she said "Hannah's crying!" Then they both proceeded to crack up laughing like it was the funniest thing they've ever seen....gotta love a two year old's sense of humor!

Elmo has competition

That's right folks, a new obsession with a well known big purple dinosaur has begun at our house......BARNEY.

I remember when I was in junior high, flipping through the channels on the tv and seeing Barney on the PBS. I would quickly change the channel and think to myself "whatever happens when I grow up....my kids will not ever watch that show". Well, it's happened. Funny how things change like that when you have kids. For the past year or so, Hunter and Hannah have been completely obsessed with Elmo or anything Sesame Street. A few months ago when I started turn on the tv for our 9am Sesame Street ritual, they started screaming "no, no, Barney!" Keep in mind they are two year olds, and their speech is not always distinguishable. So, of course to me it sounded like they were saying "no, no, running", to which I said"no...no running we're going to watch Sesame Street". (Don't ask me how I confused "Barney" and "running") This dialogue went back and forth several times for a few days, which ended up with them totally frustrated and me totally confused. The next week, when I walked into their classroom to pick them up from school, they ran up to me and started saying the same thing and pointing at the tv. Evidently, when they moved up to the 2 year old classroom, they also began watching Barney. Man, did I feel like a fool. I'm sure they were thinking "yeah mom, duh! We've been telling you we want to watch Barney for a week now!"

So....that's how it happened. I will try to get a video of them when the intro to the show starts....they run around and start dancing like wild little monkeys! Hunter is now perfecting his rendition of the famous "I love u, u love me" song. He sang it at the top of his lungs at Kohl's and TJ Maxx yesterday. It was so cute, I didn't have the heart to tell him to lower his voice. A few weeks ago we went to the annual Children's festival in The Woodlands to see Barney live. We all had a lot of fun, and they LOVED it. I guess Barney isn't so bad after all...

Halloween...very late!

First off, let us say a very belated "Happy Birthday" to one of Hunter and Hannah's favorite little pals miss Adalee Kate Grindstaff! I can't believe she is already one...her birthday was actually on October 30th. As you can see above, she is absolutely adorable and ever so fashionable!

a little pumpkin carving pre-Halloween...

Hannah was a "pumpkin princess"

Hunter was a farmer...he was not feeling the cowboy hat...

Finger Pricks :(

To sum up October for us....crazy, busy, fun, and ROUGH! We are just now getting back into the swing of things around here, hallelujah!

Over the last few weeks we have all had a pretty bad cold...nothing serious like the flu (thank goodness), but still not fun. We have all been way too healthy this year so I figure we were just due for something....here's a little how our last few weeks have been...

The week before last when Hunters symptoms first started (runny nose, coughing), I decided to go ahead and make a trip to the doctor to rule out the swine flu...yes I am overly paranoid. Well, turns out he had an ear infection, so they sent us home with some good old antibiotics for Hunter (Hannah is fine at this point, just a slight runny nose). So a few days later Hunter starts running a fever and coughed all night long....me, being the paranoid mom, thinks the antibiotics should have kicked in so something is wrong so I make yet another appointment.

The morning of the appointment Hunter woke up with no fever and in a generally good mood-I thought about canceling the appt, but decided against it and went ahead. Doc says that his ear looks better, but wanted to run a blood test to determine whether what he had was viral or bacterial. So the nurse comes in to do the finger prick and takes what seems like FOREVER squeezing his little finger...after she left Hunter was fine and continued playing with the toys in the office. Hannah, on the other hand, began having a complete meltdown. All we can figure out is that she was watching Hunters finger have the blood drawn, and she thought she was next. After trying to calm her down and explain to her that she was fine and she would NOT have to have her finger pricked, she was still freaking out, so I handed her to Kevin so he could have a try. The second I handed her to Kevin she threw up ALL over him and herself. At the exact same time, the doc walks back in to give us the test results, and sees that things have gotten messy so he calls in his nurses for a "clean-up". Keep in mind that up until the finger prick, Hannah has been as happy/healthy as can be. My first thought was that she has come down with a stomach virus, until we lay her on the table to undress her and she turned completely white as a ghost and limp as a noodle. The doc called the nurse back in and they immediately began checking her vitals and trying to get her to wake up....which scared me even more. As it turns out, she had what they called a "veso-vagal episode" (spelling?), which basically means she got so worked up, her blood pressure dropped way down and she passed out. Just to be sure, the doc wanted to do one more thing on her....you guessed it, a finger prick. Luckily at this point, she was so exhausted that all she wanted to do was sleep.

As I am holding her in my arms while they are pricking her finger (which I promised her she would they would not do), I notice that Hunter (the reason we are in here in the first place), is running around the room dancing and singing his ABC's. All I could do was shake my head, because I knew I had probably brought this all on myself. So the one thing I learned from this fiasco is to follow my instinct....if I had, then we would have avoided the situation entirely. Poor Hannah. As it turned out, Hunter just had a cold. Hannah was eating chicken nuggets an hour later.

Bellies full of gold fish