Christmas Eve

Christmas Eve was a relaxing day!

  I had did all my food prep the day before so we could have a relaxing morning.

We went to one of the Christmas Eve services at church.

An annual tradition at church is singing Silent Night by candlelit.  Matthew was mesmerized by the candle flame.

After church we went to Grammie and Papa's for Oyster stew and lots of other yummy food.

Then we opened gifts!

Matthew got some new jammies!

Some farm legos!

A "Frank" combine from the Disney movie Cars.

(Did you know that Disney Cars 2 is coming June 2011?)

A John Deere tractor!

Playing with "Frank"

Our nephew Levi hamming it up for the camera!

Our niece Emma waiting to open her last present (a new bike)!

We also found out that Emma and Levi are going to have a baby brother or sister due in June!

Eating Cookies for a Mid Morning Snack

I decided to make my mom her favorite cookies!

Favorite cookie: Chocolate chip cookies made in a mini muffin pan with a Hershey kiss on top!

I always mix it up and do different types of kisses and even hugs on top.

Matthew enjoyed them too!

Gingerbread House

I decided that doing a gingerbread house with Matthew would be fun!

It was LOTS of fun and LOTS of mess! :)

I don't remember ever doing a gingerbread house before so I had this vision in my head what I wanted it to look like.  I quickly realized that I should have known better to have a vision.

I decided to just let Matthew be creative!

It was way more fun and less stressful!

I got a little silly and put frosting on Matthew's nose.

He thought that was funny.

So he must more frosting on his face!

We had candy everywhere.  Some little marble shaped candies came with the kit and they went everywhere!

He decided that he wanted to do the icing himself.

He did pretty good but I had to keep pushing it to the tip.

As you can see, we had frosting everywhere!

Here is our frosting covered boy with his finished gingerbread house!

Putting the frosting on his face was not a smart idea on my part. 

 His face broke out in a rash! 

I was lucky and it cleared up pretty quickly!



My Mom's Family Christmas Party

This is my family! 

We are growing by leaps and bounds.

I'm going to be an auntie again!  My sister and brother in law are expecting.  Baby is due in July.

• Front row (L to R): Scott, Matthew, my mom, niece Annabelle, nephew Austin, my step dad, his son Troy
• Back row: Me, brother in law Wayne, sister Susan, sister Patty, Mary (step-dad's future daughter in law She is also expecting), step dad's son, Jerry

This is my Grandma with most of her grandkids and their spouses. (she has 4 more)

Grandma and her great grandchildren (she has 3 more).

She is known to her great grandchild as "Old" Grandma.

Close up of my adorable niece Annabelle who is almost a year old and will be a big sister in July!

Our gifts for our white elephant game.  Here is how we play: You get a gift if you roll doubles.  We time it so that we know how long it takes for the gifts to be taken.  After all the gifts are gone, you open what you have but don't put them away because now you can roll doubles and steal gifts but we only have as long as it took the gifts to disappear from the center.  Usually there are one or two popular gifts that could round and round.  I was pretty unlucky that night and only rolled two doubles but then my gifts were stolen.  Matthew had a hard time at first.  Once the gifts were open, he seen a tractor and got it when he rolled doubles again.  He was pretty excited about the tractor and he ended up with it and played most of the night with his tractor.

My cousin and his wife just had a baby on Thanksgiving so we loved her up.
Matthew wanted to touch her.

And hold her!

And love her up some more!

She slept through it all!

This is my aunt and her family!

My other aunt and her family.

We had lots of fun and ate lots of yummy food!



Winter Wonderland

The Brainerd Lakes area Sertoma Club organizes a beautiful light show with donates from local companies during the Christmas season with LOTS of lights called Winter Wonderland.  For a small fee, you drive through the displays. They even have a radio station dedicated to Winter Wonderland so you tune your radio to the station and listen to the music as you go.  Here are only a few pictures of some of the displays:

When you are done you can go in and visit Santa.

Matthew talked about Santa until it was our turn and then he didn't want anything to do with him.  He wouldn't even go sit by Santa with Scott holding him.  No pictures with Santa this year.

Baking Cookies

The next few posts are catch up posts from all our activities from the past few weeks.

Sorry to all my faithful reader for not updating sooner.

Matthew and I tried to make cookies one day.  Our molasses sugar cookies were the only ones to turn out.  Matthew enjoying one!

Our first dozen was done!

We ended up making 3 dozen!

On that day, I realized that I would rather be crafting instead of baking.

Don't get me wrong, I still have a few desserts that I love to make but I didn't have all the ingredients to make the desserts that I wanted to.

Jesus Loves You

I just had to show you this super cute video!
We are still working on the "you" and "me"!

And yes he is chewing gum which only means one thing-He went potty in the potty chair shortly before the video was taken.

We are having some success with potty training but when he doesn't want to-He Won't!

A Christmas Celebration

On Friday night, we had Matthew's birthmother, Adie and her family (well most of her family) over for dinner.  They spoiled Matthew with lots of Christmas gifts.  He loves everything gift that he got!!

We had a wonderful dinner!

Matthew giving his Adie a kiss!

Matthew snuggling with his Adie and playing with his new train.

Playing with his new train set on his new art table with Adie and Mamma!

We always have so much fun and it seems like time flies when they are here.

So Proud......

Tonight after supper, Matthew was running around naked (what can I say, he loves to be naked) while Scott and I were cleaning the kitchen.  After a few minutes, Matthew got really excited and came and pulled Scott by the finger over to his potty chair.  He had gone potty in his potty chair all by himself.  He was pretty proud of himself!!!!!!!  After he got gum, he showed me where he had gone a little bit on the floor before hand.  I'm thinking that the running around naked is really going to help with potty training.  So if you ever come to our house be warned that you might see a naked little boy.

Potty Training

We have been hit and miss with the potty training.  There are days that he refuses to want to sit on the potty chair.  There were days that he would sit but when he had to go he always wanted his diaper back on.  We decided to try a bribe approach.  We told him that the only way he could have gum (He LOVES gum!) is if he went potty in the potty chair.  His little individual packs of gum sat in a little dish on the counter in the bathroom for lots of days.  Yesterday I decided that it was an underwear day and I was going to try very hard to put him on the potty chair faithfully.  First time I tried, he screamed and carried on so he went about playing.  Not even 5 minutes later when I looked, he was wet.  So we got everything cleaned up and put some fresh underwear on.

Look who got gum a little while later:

(Picture from cell phone)

After supper while watching Charlie Brown Christmas, he was sitting again!

Once he realized Daddy was taking his picture, he got embarrassed!

Guess what?????

He got gum again!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Must be a Growth Spurt...........

Well this picture was just too cute not to share.....

He was one thirsty boy the other night!

He just couldn't wait to get some in a cup!

On Monday night, Daddy and Matthew had supper while I was at a meeting at church.

When I got home, I had supper and Matthew wanted some of mine so we shared.

Daddy said that Matthew ate REALLY good at supper even wanting more when he was done.

As we were finishing up, Matthew wanted a drink but when Daddy went into the fridge to get the water Matthew seen the yogurt and wanted that instead.

You would have thought that he hadn't eaten all day the way that he gobbled it up!

For some unknown reason, he loves to run around in only his diaper or just bare naked.

It does save on the laundry!