Saturday, December 30, 2006

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!


This post is WAY overdue! We have been super busy lately and seem to have forgotten to get a new post up. We looked back and realized the last post was on Dec. 15th! Ooops! That was a while ago!

We hope everyone had a blessed Christmas!
Our Christmas started the Friday before Christmas. We went over to Brian's parents house to celebrate with them. We ate a yummy Christmas lunch and enjoyed spending time with them and opening presents. Maddox decided that he was not going to take a nap the whole time we were there. He probably didn't want to miss anything.
Maddox was not too interested in opening presents. He was mostly fascinated by tags and paper that was on the floor. He played with some of his new toys and then finally crashed rocking with Jamie. We headed home not long after that and started packing for our trip to Houston the next morning.




PJ got Maddox to laugh by putting on his new flashlight. We all got a pretty good laugh out of it too!


We decided to leave as early as we could Saturday morning in hopes that Maddox would sleep most of the way. We were able to get on the road by 5:30 am!! Maddox slept pretty much the whole way and only got upset when we were about 30mins from Jamie's parents house. Of course we all took naps later that day because we were so tired from getting up at 4:15.
Maddox and Jamie both caught some sort of a cold before we left and it was in full force the day we got there. We ended up having to call to get Maddox a prescription because he got pink eye. He was pretty miserable and ran fever off and on. Christmas Eve was an especially rough day for him with fever and nasty congestion. Thankfully we were feeling better Christmas morning and much better the day after Christmas.
We spent Christmas Eve doing some last minute shopping and then that night we went to Jamie's parent's neighbor's house for a Christmas Eve party. They are Scottish so of course the party was fun!
Christmas morning we got up and opened presents. Again, Maddox was not too interested in opening them. He liked climbing on his presents more. We ate some yummy monkey bread for breakfast and then played with our new toys.




Maddox got a new Dallas Cowboys outfit for Christmas from his PawPaw so he wore that as his Christmas outfit because it was game day for the Cowboys.

That afternoon Jamie's aunt and uncle and cousin came over for lunch. We ate some more yummy food then played a fun board game.
Tuesday was Jamie's mom's birthday. Jamie and her mom went after Christmas shopping in the morning then we started packing up to head home.

Wednesday was an exciting day because we got to hang out as a family at home. Brian had the day off so we spent some quality family time together. We also got to go shopping for our new glider rocker! It should be in towards the end of January! We are really excited about our new glider and will definitely post pictures of it when it comes in. We ended up having a really great day and we were both sad to see it end and for Brian to go back to work on Thursday. But the workweek was short and now we have the long weekend to spend together again.
So on to an update about Maddox:
He is crawling now and is very good at it! He prefers crawling to scooting now. He can also pull up on everything! We have to be cautious because he often finds unsteady things to pull up on. He will be 8 months old on the 2nd!! Wow! That has gone by fast! Only 4 more months and we will be celebrating his first birthday!
He is eating a lot more now and is pretty proficient at feeding himself. He would much rather feed himself than be fed by us.




That is about all that has been going on with us. Tomorrow night we have a New Years party at our house so we have been spending today picking up around the house and getting ready for it.

We hope you all have had a wonderful Christmas and holiday season. We wish you a Happy New Year too!

Friday, December 15, 2006

Around the House

Maddox has been busy around the house these days. We thought we would post some pictures of him in action.
He LOVES to eat now but only table food. He screams when we give him baby food or spits it out. He likes the chewing (gumming) that he gets to do with table food. We have included a couple of pictures of him eating some avacado. He loves avacado, peas, bread, carrots....etc etc. Basically he loves anything he can eat himself.





We tried giving him some baby food green beans but as you can see from these pictures he wasn't too fond of them and they ended up on his face instead.



Now whenever we are busy in the kitchen we put him on the floor to play instead of his exersaucer. If we put him in his exersaucer he gets mad because he can't move around on the floor. While moving around on the floor he discovered the dog bowls. He is fascinated with them and thinks he just has to have them. Don't worry we pick them up before he can get to them. We took this while Maddie was eating and Maddox wanted to help her finish it!



He also likes digging in his toy box. Pulling up on this and getting to stand is probably his most favorite thing besides eating of course. He also loves to climb all over us and he is very strong so we really have to watch and hold on to him.



Our computer is in Maddox's room and often when he is taking a nap we will get on to check email/update the blog/read the news etc. Well Maddox has discovered that we are still in the room and knows exactly how to find us. He scoots down to the end of the bed that the blanket is not covering and peeks out at us. Usually he starts screaming because he is mad because we are not paying attention to him, but sometimes he just likes to look at us and play.



So those are some shots of Maddox and his daily activities.

We have been doing well. Tonight we are going out on a date and leaving Maddox with a sitter. There is a new sushi place in Monroe that we would like to try out. It will be nice to have a nice evening out together.
Not too much else has been going on. We are just getting ready for Christmas. We are trying to stay focused on the real reason we celebrate Christmas, Christ's birth, and not get caught up in all the other stuff. Christmas is not about how many presents you can buy or gifts you will give. It is sad to see how people get so caught up with gift buying, Santa, and parties and forget why we celebrate the holiday. This year it was nearly impossible to find Christmas cards that actually said "Merry Christmas" all of them said "Holiday Greetings" or "Seasons Greetings". It is just another way we see the true meaning of Christmas being forgotten.
End of Soapbox. ;)

We hope you have a great weekend!
Love Always,

Wednesday, December 06, 2006

Today is the Day!!

Today is the day that this will be arriving at our door!
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Jamie has been eyeing this vacuum for a long long time. If you have never heard of a Dyson vacuum you should read up on them. They are supposed to be top of the line and be great at getting up dog hair. We definitely need something powerful to get up all of the dog hair we have. We will report more on it after we have used it. UPS says that it should be here sometime between 8am and 7pm.....pretty ambiguous huh? Our UPS man usually stops by mid afternoon so that gives us a little better idea of the drop off time.
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So on to things you really want to hear about.
We are doing great! We are trying not to get caught up in all the hustle and bustle of Christmas but it is very hard. Our schedule seems to be filled with lots of stuff these days and the days seem to be flying by very quickly.
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Friday we picked up our Christmas tree! We got it from Lowes because it is the only reasonably priced place to get a tree around here. Maddox really liked the whole experience because he got to touch all the trees. That boy is fascinated with anything outdoorsy. We got lights on it Saturday and finally decorated it Sunday. It is decorated with white, silver, and purple glass balls. It has a big bow at the top but we would like to replace that with an angel or a star, we just have not found one we like yet. We think it looks pretty good. So far Maddox only scoots to the tree and tries to reach the branches, but overall he is really not that interested in it. Next year will be different!
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Saturday we went shopping with Brian's parents in Shreveport. Shreveport is an hour away so it is an all day event. They have a great outlet mall in Shreveport so that is why we went there. Maddox enjoyed the shopping as much as he could. He is not that found of strollers, so he got aggravated a couple of times. This happens every time we go shopping so it was nothing new. Finally, he fell asleep and the shopping trip became more relaxed for Jamie after that.
On our way home from shopping we stopped at Brian's parent's house so they could hang out with Maddox for a while. Maddox was in a very playful mood.
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Sunday we went to church and out to lunch and in the afternoon we took some pictures for our Christmas card. It was freezing outside so we tried to hurry and between takes we were trying to keep Maddox wrapped up in a blanket. We got some great pictures. Of course we will not be posting the pictures that are on the card but here are a few that did not make the cut.
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Maddox has been doing great as always. He is almost crawling. He gets up on his hands and knees and moves a little bit but just has not gotten the overall coordination down yet. He still scoots and is very fast so we have to keep an extra watchful eye out for him. We spend a lot more time on the floor these days...one reason for the new vacuum! He does not like being in his exersaucer as much anymore because he can't go anywhere. He loves to just sit on the floor and play and really loves it if we get down and play with him.
Eating leaves (his other hobby!)
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We are guessing we weighs around 15 1/2 pounds now. He is definitely getting heavier to tote around!
He had a breakthrough with solid foods! Apparently he does not like baby food but likes big people food. We tried giving him little pieces of noodle and carrot from Jamie's yummy homemade chicken noodle soup and he LOVED them, so he ate those for a few days. Then, we tried giving him little pieces of bread and he loved that too. He loves to chew the food. We have tried baby food again but he really just has to be in the mood to eat it whereas with the real food he'll eat until he busts! So now he gets little bites of whatever we are eating as long as it does not have dairy in it.
Maddox's favorite color is apparently orange. He loves everything orange, probably because it is so bright. He loves this dog toy we have that is an orange monster and will go after it if it is in sight. We went to pick him out a new sippy cup and we decided to let him choose what color he wanted. We put the green orange and blue sippy cups in front of him and of course he went straight to the orange one! So now he has a new orange sippy cup.
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That is about all that has been going on with us this week. We said we would get a new post up soon and we did!! Hopefully we will be back to weekly posts but we cannot guarantee that....you'll just have to check in periodically!

We love you all

P.S Remember the REAL reason we celebrate Christmas is not Santa Claus and presents!

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