Walking and mashed pototoes

Seth is finally walking! He's pretty funny because he sticks his hands out like he's trying to grab someone to steady his little feet. He'll only go 5-10 steps, fall down and then start crawling. Oh well. At least it's progress.

So tonight at dinner we had mashed potatoes. Candace looks at me with a pained expression after eating some and says, "Mom, I couldn't swallow that junk of potatoes". Justin and I cracked up. We can't laugh in front of her though because she thinks we're laughing at her. We tried real hard to bury our faces in our hands. Apparently "junk" means "a whole lot of something". Maybe they are trying to say "chunk", I don't know. Justin was trying to make a face at her right before she said that and without evening breaking her stride she saw his face and stuck out her tongue. Not even a smile or a giggle. What a character. I love our little sweeties.

Christmas Nativity and a Texas Christmas

Before we left for Christmas, Meagan volunteered to rake the leaves. What a sweet girl. It's not too hard to get her to help out when we're working.

See those chairs? They use them to climb the tree. Pretty ingenious. I just hope they don't fall out of the tree and hit those bricks.

We went to San Antonio for Thanksgiving, and again for Christmas. But, this time we spent most of the time in Houston with my family. It's a 15 hr drive to Houston so we usually stop over at the Paul Hotel in San Antonio. ;) We were only there for a few days, but we got to put on a Nativity. Justin's mom has accrued quite the collection of costumes. They're gathered from the Philippines, India and Cambodia, thanks to Dad's, Josh's and Justin's missions there, respectively.

In order to make it a little more interesting I've put the pics and videos on a little presentation slide show...thingy...

Unfortunately the videos were too big so I had to break it up.

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I'm really glad we got to do that. I think it helps the kids recognize the real meaning of Christmas.

Christmas morning was fun too.

Opening stockings

Here's the I Spy bags I was making. They love to play with them during church. (yes!)

Successful project. Thank heaven.

I had a lot of leftover charms that I filled the I Spy bags with so I decided to get them a charm bracelet to put them on. Meagan loves jewelery, as you can see.

Candace...not so much.

Sethy boy was sweet enough to show me his train. He's really not old enough to appreciate it yet. All in due time, my boy.

Hooray for warm fuzzies!

Good thing I got them some warm stuff. It got cold while we were there and I didn't pack much warm stuff.

Happy girls. The Nintendo DS was invented for long car trips. Thank you modern technology.

I made a weighted blanket for my dad too. Hopefully he'll sleep better at night. He loves lavender...go figure.

Here's little Breannah's weighted blanket.

And here's where the other I Spy bags went.

Probably my favorite moment of the day. Candace went to find a "quiet spot" to enjoy her new story book reader...in the laundry room. What can I say, we've got a lot of family and they're not exactly quiet enough for a little light reading.

Birthdays

It's a few days post birthday, but it's the first chance I've had to write about Seth's birthday on the 8th.

Candace loves to take pictures with my camera, even though she has her own. I think she's been deleting some pictures. She deleted one I know I took but couldn't find. Luckily I was able to just take it again. I've also found some pictures locked. Not sure how she does that but I can't delete them or get them off the camera when she locks them. So after Candace worked her magic on my camera one day she showed me two pictures I have never seen before. Somehow they must have been on the camera hard drive instead of the memory card or something. I have no idea how they came back but I was really glad to see them.

One year ago

Seth's Birth

 

What a sweet little man. I knew we had taken more pictures of him but I never saw that many. Thank goodness.

Now one year later, THE BIG ONE!

 

Man, he's gotten big. And, since Seth doesn't have a preference, the cake was my choice. It was brownies.

What's better than brownies for your birthday, you ask? Brownies covered in almond cool whip, sliced strawberries and fudge topping, that's what. Oh goodness they were good. Seth thought so too.

He was pretty tired so he kept rubbing his eyes, hence the chocolate in his eyebrows. Had to throw him in the bath (his favorite pastime) before present time.

He doesn't really know how to use a hammer. But he does like to bang and make noise, which is the whole point of this thing. He kept trying to bang with the handle on the colored pegs. He's a sweetie.

I've finally finished a couple of my homemade Christmas gifts. This is a weighted blanket. It's supposed to help you sleep for those who like to sleep with heavy blankets on them but without all the heat. It's filled with poly beads so it's washable. Great for little girls who like to get blankets dirty with lots of use.

This is one of several I Spy bags I'm making for some sweet little girls in my family.

 They're filled with the same poly beads as the blanket, along with some little treasures to "spy". Now I need to finish up the other 5...sigh.

Slow and steady wins the race, right? That's what I keep telling myself. I've got one week to finish what I can, then I'll have to take the rest down to Texas with us to finish them up. I don't want to do that when I'm on vacation. I just need a good block of undisturbed time (yeah right, do I ever get that?) to knock out a bunch of them.

Christmas time, Thanksgiving, cutie cute and a little surprise

You guessed it. I'm all alone while Justin's on another scout camp out. So...I'm catching up on the ol' blog that I haven't updated in about a month.

I've decorated for Christmas, even though we won't be here for the two weeks surrounding Christmas.
Christmas lights make me happy. I like to look at them. It's not Christmas without them and a Christmas tree. Here's what I've got so far.

 

Oh, I also made that tree skirt last year. It's white crushed velvet and satin. We've got matching stockings. :) Looks a little funky in this picture though. I've skipped putting the blown glass ornaments on this year. Sethy boy is too dangerous. They do look wonderful sparkling through the lights, though. He won't pull anything off as long as there isn't anything around that he can pull up on to stand.

Here's our little winter wonderland. 2000 lights. I really want to put some giant lollipops or peppermints on stakes in the middle of the yard or something. I love the idea of a gingerbread house, with lots of sweets all over with some frosting or snow to top it off. Not sure how I would do that though. Maybe next year when we'll be here long enough to make it worth all the work. The icicle lights are my favorite. Every 5th bulb twinkles. The rest of the lights stay on. Way hard to find lights like that and pretty pricey to boot. I can only buy a little at a time. Next year I'll add another strand along with some large candy :)

I'm also working on my homemade Christmas presents. I think I jumped in a little too deep with that one. Way too many projects to finish. I've got all of them started and half finished. Now if I can just catch up on the housework I can get this stuff done before Christmas. I'll post pictures of my lovely little creations as I finish them. You'll be amazed. Honestly, you better be.

This was a few weeks ago. Meagan took Seth outside to swing. He really loves her. She's so good with him. He liked swinging too.

  

 

We went to San Antonio for Thanksgiving. One of the Paul's family friend's daughter (wow, mouthful) got married the day before Thanksgiving. They are going to hate their anniversary. I can relate. Ours is December 27. You do whatcha gotta do when you get married as students in between semesters and school holidays.

All-in-all, great food and fun dancing. Meagan was struttin' her stuff all night. She has some seriously funny dance moves. If you need convincing, watch Megadance on my facebook.

Grandma and Seth. Who doesn't love that?

He's so funny lately. Every time there is music playing or a rythm (like me stirring chocolate milk in a glass, tapping my fingernails on the counter, etc.) he starts wiggling his middle and dancing.

He also starting clapping and waving Thanksgiving week. I love to watch babies clap their chubby little uncoordinated hands. It's one of my favorite things.

Okay, one more cute thing. He's been saying "kidta, kidta, kidta..." a lot. I couldn't figure out why he made that particular sound until I was tickling him one day. "tickle, tickle, tickle..." So now every time he says kidta kidta I must tickle him. He asked for it.


This video is from Thanksgiving of Seth and Wagner, Jordan and Alyssa's little dog. Right before I shot this Wagner was following Seth around and licking his face. Seth was getting upset because he couldn't escape. It was so funny and we were all laughing so hard. They are the same size.

This next little dish is something I worked on for several weeks after I got photoshop. I was looking online at tutorials on how to use all the tools in the program and came across a tut on how to make your own Greek statue image. Justin and I have a little joke about Greek statues which I won't go into at this juncture. But it inspired me to create this. Michelangelo's "David". It's been edited to protect the innocent.

Isn't that awesome!? You can see the original online if you'd like. I'm not including it here because it's a nudey so viewer discretion is advised. Just Google Michelangelo's David. I thought about doing one with my head on a goddess statue but all of those are seriously nudey. I got tired of looking at naked statues as I decided on a picture I could use. Thank heaven for the giant fig leaf. What is it with the antiquity's fascination with naked people?

Halloween and photoshop

The long awaited Halloween photos have arrived. 

Meagan as a Queen and Candace as a Snow Princess. These are the dresses I got at the thrift store for $4 and $8 bucks. The face paint added a nice touch and they absolutely loved it. Their hair was really nice too, but you can't see it in this pic. I didn't get any pictures of it, actually.

Labyrinth

For those who haven't seen the movie...you are missing out. We have it if you want to borrow it. :) Great '80's movie. Justin is Jareth, the Goblin King, I'm Sarah and Seth is Toby. Make sure you check out Justin's tight pants. ;P Several old ladies did.

 Justin played the Labyrinth soundtrack in our car as trick-or-treaters came around. He made Seth dance when the "Magic Dance" song came on. I love dressing up for Halloween.

 I'm also trying out photoshop. Way cool features. I can finally take out a bunch of crap I don't want now. I took out a lot of shine on me and Candace and some redness in one of the pics. It's like a magic eraser. I'm not real great at it. More experienced folks can probably see some imperfections but I'm hooked. I'm kind of tempted to make Justin's, um...pants...a little bigger. LOL! Stay tuned. j/k