New Year's Eve

 The kids celebrated New Year's Eve at school with a parade!! I can only imagine how loud that was.

You can see Charlotte in the front in purple and Tommy is in the back by the super tall kid with his hood pulled up.  :-)

Tommy's class celebrated with 2017 shades!

Thanks to Gaga and Pop for babysitting so that Mama and Dada could celebrate New Year's Eve with a noisemaker parade too!! We had shades at one point but they didn't fit very well.

I also cannot imagine how loud we also were. ;-)

Happy New Years Everyone! It's 2017!

Purdue Game with a Friend

 Tommy's friend Bode was at the game and we asked his mom if he would want to join us where we were sitting.  She said sure and the boys were so excited.

 They had a great time! The whole time they were either talking about Purdue basketball (surprisingly) or just saying potty words.  Haha!!

Charlotte wanted to be a part of it too so she was throwing in words at will.  Too funny.


You can see in the video how jacked up they were for the game. Actually they were just talking about things that STINK.  What?? I don't know.  Six year olds.  Good times though!

CHRISTMAS 2016!

Christmas is a magical time! First the magic comes in getting your family to pose for a Christmas card.  On Black Friday, I had to work.  I got an email about a sale for Christmas cards.  I had this idea to model the cover of the movie, "It's a Wonderful Life." When I got home from work, I mentioned it to Andrew and he said, "Sure let's do it." So we picked out our clothes for the shoot.  We dressed the kids first and then ourselves.  While we were getting ready, Charlotte grabbed a tub of vaseline and smeared it on her face and in her bangs.  Yikes! I cleaned her up the best I could. We posed and set the camera to take 10 continuous shots.  It took 6 tries but we got the shot!

Well we got the shot that I filtered and cropped the crap out of until it looked just right. :-)

Would you like to see some outtakes? Here's a focus shot while I set up the camera.  I'm a big fan of this one actually.

Here's a lovely one.  Don't you like the hallway doors open so you can see in our closet? Also, the kids are hogging the light! ;-)

Mom's gotta fix her hair.  Dada is rolling his eyes. :)

Soooooo how did we do? I think it turned out pretty great.  We got a lot of compliments.  I wish you could see more of Tommy's face but after vaseline, 60 pictures, and everyone sweating, we were ready to be DONE.

So quick little side note, speaking of work (terrible segue btw), I planned the District Christmas party.  I swear I planned 57 parties this month between work, Tommy's birthday and Christmas.  Sheesh.  This party, just like all of them, turned out fantastic! 

 So on Sunday after our last Thanksgiving, we put up our tree and Christmas lights.  Tommy put the star on the tree as the finishing touch.

 We had a new tree this year thanks to Aunt Laura, Uncle Andy and cousin David.  The kids loved decorating it.

 They had a Giving Tree at school where we basically purchased presents for the classroom.  I pulled a Barbie doll.  So I bought a Veterinarian Barbie complete with a small puppy to doctor up.  They were excited!

I also purchased a fire station set for the after school kids class.

 We discovered a Christmas app on our cable box so they kids were able to do a little Christmas karaoke.

 On Christmas eve, we made Christmas sugar cookies with Grandma Katie's old cookie cutters. I also used an egg substitute that was made out of chia and flaxseed. Odd but it actually made the cookies rise! Amazing! The texture was great and the taste wasn't that bad either.  (I will have to try a cake next!)

 They had fun making a mess, I mean, icing cookies.

 But mostly they just loved eating them.

 They turned out quite beautiful, huh?

 After the kids went to bed, Santa came and laid out all kinds of goodies.  Santa doesn't wrap his presents (thank goodness!) so it didn't take too long.  However in the middle of it, Tommy came downstairs after having a bad dream. I have never moved so fast in my life.  I don't think he saw Santa or anything since he was pretty out of it but WOW was I freaked out. Oh notice the movie on TV? We finally own it now instead of looking for it on tv every year.


In the morning, the kids were very excited!!

 They love their tent and Poppy Troll doll and remote controlled T-Rex.  Charlotte also got the necklace that Moana wears and Tommy got Maui's fishhook.  They must have been super good this year!

I think Charlotte thinks so!!

 After we opened presents, we sat and ate some Christmas Divvies Chocolate chip cookies. Yum!

 We headed to my parents house on Christmas Day for Keiper Christmas.  If you would have told me last Christmas that I wouldn't be hosting and that we would be celebrating Christmas IN TOWN, I would have slapped you silly.  But here we are! This is one of the only pictures I took all day.  The kids were playing Just Dance.  Charlotte was INTO IT! But she didn't really understand how to play so much. :-)

Here's the other proof of our Christmas that day.  Photo cred to Brother Adam.  Lovely picture.

 The following day, we headed down to Westfield for Thornburg Christmas.  I was so happy we were able to get a picture of the grandkiddos and their grandparents!

Here's a cousin pic too! So sweet! Wyatt doesn't know what to think. :-)

Here's one that shows a little bit more candid personality.  Ha!

 We did a gift card exchange and we skyped in Cait and Scott for the occasion.

 One last sweet picture of Pop and Charlotte looked at the beautiful Christmas tree.

We really had a magical, wonderful Christmas this year.  We hope you did too! Merry Christmas!

Pictures with Santa!

 We visited Santa once again this year.  Charlotte was a little scared again.

 But the pictures didn't show it.  They loved it.  Tommy asked for a dinosaur and teepee.  Charlotte asked for a troll doll.

 The pictures above are the professional ones but I took this one.  They were slightly hesitant but they gave high fives finally.

Look at the comparison shot from last year.  They've certainly grown! 

The Elf on the Shelf is Back

 My love/hate relationship with the Elf on the Shelf has reignited this year.  It was hard to remember in the beginning but we set a reminder and that helped.  Tommy named our elf Jac this year.  Not Jack, but Jac.  He spelled it for me. :)

 Jac arrived with a letter saying, "You have too many dang toys! Get rid of some and give them to other kids!" in much more polite phrasing of course.

Jac decided to take the kids dirty jammies and string them through the living room. How dare that little stinkpot?

But then he started behaving a little better.  He rode on one of Tommy's dinosaurs.

 He also married Princess Anna.  Charlotte loved that one.

 He hung on the microwave one day.  The next day he fell off.  So then he had to heal his boo boo.

 He left a Christmas Science Experiment for Tommy which he loved.  All you need is M&Ms and water.  Thanks Google!

 So basically if you put M&Ms in water, the M's will float to the top.  Crazy right? Explanation is in the link above.

 After the M&Ms, the elf decided to remind the kids to regularly brush their teeth.

 Tommy mentioned that he really hoped the elf would take a bath in marshmallows again so guess what happened?? Marshmallow bath time!

Near the end, I was losing momentum so he basically just dressed up in the toys clothes.  Strange indeed.

The kids really enjoyed it so I have to say I enjoyed it too.  It's hard to remember each day but it is fun to see the kids run down first thing in the morning to find him.  They love the tradition. :-)

The First Tooth!

 Big news at our house! Tommy lost a tooth!! It was traumatic but we got through it.  Yes, traumatic, for both of us.  I have a real problem with wiggly teeth or basically anything tooth related.  It just freaks me out.  So I certainly didn't help him with this brand new experience.  It had been wiggly for awhile and one day while eating a carrot, it became REALLY loose.  He freaked out (it must have hurt a little).  So I tried not to freak out and told him he could just pull it out.  He was NOT having it. So I told him I could give him some tylenol if he was hurting.  Then some sort of placebo effect kicked in.  I didn't even give him the medicine.  He just felt like I had, I guess.  He grabbed his tooth and easily pulled it right out.

We were so excited!!! We had to FaceTime Dada who was on his way to the Crossroads Classic that day.  We also FaceTimed Grandma.  She answered and it was just Tommy showing his teeth.  He wouldn't say anything.  It cracked me up.  He was super excited.  The tooth fairy was going to come!! Hooray!

In celebration, we went to see Trolls again.  However, this picture is not from the theater that was showing Trolls.  They sold us tickets to see Moana and I didn't look closely except for the number.  So we missed the first 15 minutes of Trolls because we were sitting in the Moana theater waiting for it to start.  We had to gather all our winter coats, snacks, sandwiches (yeah I brought sandwiches, it was dinnertime, ha!), and sneak all of us out of the theater and figure out which one we were supposed to be in.  Whoops!

Oh well.  It was still a fun celebration.  You'll probably notice that Tommy doesn't smile without showing his missing tooth gap now.  It's pretty cute.

Oh yeah, the tooth fairy visited! That was exciting.  She brought a dollar! Tommy took his dollar and chose to buy a slinky.  Good choice, buddy!

Congrats on your first tooth! It looks like it won't be long before we have another for the tooth fairy.