My Cute December Boys

Christmas Pics

Michael's Bday Pics

These pictures go with my previous post so I won't add a lot of copy--enjoy!

Where have I been?????

Okay--sorry!  Has it really been two months since I posted to my blog--wow!!  I thought I'd get in a quick post before the year ends and update you all on what we've been doing the past couple of months.

We had a wonderful time trick-or-treating on Halloween with Michael's best buddy, Jacob Iannace.  Originally Michael was planning on being "Thomas the Tank Engine" and we had the costume.  I went to the store to purchase a costume for Cal and Michael saw the chicken costume and it was meant to be.  If I'd had a little more time, I would have tried to fashion some sort of "egg" costume for Cal, but the Woody worked out great for him--he even wore the hat for quite some time.  Of course, you can't really count on the weather to be even slightly cold here in October, so we were really surprised that Michael didn't pass out from heat stroke all bundled up in all the chicken fur (feathers) that comprised his costume.  Anyway--it was fun!

We traveled to three states during a two week period around Thanksgiving--NC, NJ, and AL.  We got to see almost our entire family on both sides and the kids had an absolute ball with their cousins.  After Thanksgiving,  Michael stayed at his Nana's house all my himself for a week.  They made a mansion of a gingerbread house, played on tractors, loaders, and concrete trucks, and of course, Michael got undivided attention and also a "yes" to practically everything he could come up with that he wanted to do.  That's what grandmothers are for, right?  It made for a difficult couple of days when he got home and had to share me with Cal and all the other household duties that make up my day--but we all recovered!!

We had Christmas at our house twice this year.  We celebrated with Chris's mom and dad the weekend before and then my parents, grandparents and aunt came down for Christmas.  Santa dropped off a big boy bike for Michael and a kitchen for Cal.  We had Michael's bday party the weekend before Christmas with a few friends--I can't believe I have a 4-year-old in my house!

Now we're looking forward to Cal's 2nd bday in January--he's decided he is a big boy now by starting to climb out of his crib and also climb on everything else.  So, we turned Cal's crib into a toddler bed the day after Christmas and he's good to go--he loves climbing in and laying his head on his pillow!

Hope everyone has a Happy New Year.  It's almost 10pm on New Year's Eve and I'm not even sure I'll make it until midnight :-)

more pictures..........

I think I tried to insert too many pictures at one time so these weren't included in my last post.

Big News!!!!!

Well, along with these cute pics of the boys, I am updating the blog to let you know that we will be moving away from Charleston this coming April. Chris was selected to attend school. We will be going to ASAM at McGuire AFB in New Jersey. We are so excited since this is a great thing for Chris to do in his Air Force career and we have heard wonderful things about the area in New Jersey. We will leave Charleston at the end of April. We will probably live on base since we'll only be there for one year, but we are going up to visit the area in November and will look around at all our options. Hopefully we'll have lots of visitors since we'll be 45 minutes from Philadelphia and 90 minutes from NYC. I'm already thinking about the colored lights on the Christmas tree at Rockefeller Center and all the window displays at Christmas!! The pictures are just some cute recent ones of the boys doing silly things. Michael still likes to squeeze himself into his Captain Feathersword costume and they love to walk around in whatever shoes I happened to have lying around. Enjoy--more updates on the move to follow!

Another Digital Layout

I did this page of Mark tonight. This will be the last page of the book. The background paper that looks like a flag is actually some artwork of his that I scanned into my computer. The typed story is something he wrote on the computer one day. His mom printed it out and gave it to me and I scanned that in too. I love how I was able to use these items of his on the page in a way that I wouldn't have been able to in a regular scrapbook layout.

YIKES!!!!! Addicted to Digital Scrapbooking!

Okay, if you are reading this you probably know that I am an avid scrapbooker, rubber stamper, card-making addict. Now I can add digital scrapbooking to my repertoire. For the past year, I have unsuccessfully tried to teach myself how to do this. Yesterday I stumbled across some video tutorials. I watched every one of them while the boys were napping today and created this page tonight in no time flat.

This is going to be the cover page for an album I just finished making of my cousin, Mark, who passed away last October. I'll be giving it to his mom, Georgia, soon and I think this page is perfect for the beginning of the album and I hope she likes it.

Now I'll begin working on my family albums and I'll probably digitally scrap them so I can determine if I want to make the switch to all digital layouts. I'm about three years behind, so I'm hoping I'll be able to save time, storage space, and money by making the switch. Only time will tell...............................and I'm sure my hubby will have some opinions too!

Michael Dumping the Loader

This video needs no introduction!

Michael's Adventure at Evergreen Concrete

Well, when we were in Alabama last month visiting Chris's family, we spent one afternoon up at the concrete plant that Chris's mom and dad own. Michael was thrilled to sit in one of Poppa's concrete trucks and pretend to drive it, so you can imagine that he really didn't know what to do with himself when he climbed up into the loader and actually got to steer it and make several trips of loading and dumping into the hopper. Chris's dad said after the first dump, Michael said, "Let's do it again." So they did it again about 4 more times. If I can manage to get up the nerve to try uploading videos again, I'll load the video of him doing it!

Cal on the Dishwasher

 
 

Hope you aren't still waiting.........

for the videos!! I haven't been able to psych myself up to try again. We've worked on our computer a little and have been busy getting ready for all our fall activities. It has been unbearably hot here--believe it or not, too hot to even bother going to the pool! We've had rain for about 5 days and this afternoon we enjoyed a much needed day outside. The boys played all over their swingset, in the sandbox, had wagon rides, and rode scooters and cars. We even fired up our chiminea in the backyard--it was beautiful outside!

The boys start their mom's morning out days on Wednesday of this week and Michael and I are in full swing with his K4 curriculum that I'm homeschooling him with. So far, he is very receptive to learning and is doing a great job with it. I'm looking forward to having two days a week to get stuff done while the boys are at the church. We're also doing MOPS at our church and Michael will be going to AWANA with his friend, Samantha.

Stay tuned for the video

Well--wishful thinking. I still can't get it to work right. It's 11:35 and I've been working on this for 3 hours. I'm giving up for now and will try again later.

Keep checking back for more videos.

Video of Cal Walking!!!!!

Well, here's my second attempt at inserting video clips to my blogger. The problem hasn't been with me, but my computer. The program I usually use to upload videos isn't working, so I had to use another one which was uploading the movies too large for YouTube and the blogger to accept. So after hours and hours of teaching myself how to use the new program, I think I've got the hang of it..........

My First Attempt with a Video

Here's a cute video of Cal taken this month. He is flexing his muscles, grimacing his face, and showing us how strong he is........

Michael's Guitar and other Silly Pictures

Cal eating cookies in his chair

Guess who wants to be picked up?

How is it that Michael is a preschooler now?

He cannot stand still for pictures today!

Just a boy and his guitar

He used all the markers on his nose.........

only the orange and blue on his leg

Well, I couldn't resist taking this picture of Michael with his guitar. His Nana and Poppa bought it for him and he plays it all the time. He usually sleeps with it too and tries to carry it everywhere we go. He ran downstairs after his bath while Chris was getting Cal dressed and picked it up just like he was-----

The pictures of him with marker all over his face and leg were about a month ago. He had been watching a video for quiet time and I was upstairs putting Cal down for a nap and jumped on the computer for a few minutes to check email, etc. I was thinking to myself that he was being really quiet......................

The other pictures I took yesterday--nothing special about the day, just some pictures!