Christmastime fun

Since I have not posted in a while, this will be a "all things Christmastime" post (sorry for the delay Janet and Grandma A. :)).

Last week, Tay had her Christmas program for preschool. She has been about it talking non-stop since they stared practice over a month ago. She could not wait to get up on stage and sing her heart out. When the night finally came, she was so excited. Grandparents and cousins were in tow for the show and it was sort of a big deal. But then she got on stage, could not find us, and realized there were alot of people staring at her. She was on the verge of breakdown, but thankfully her teacher came to the rescue and all was good. And once she got to stand by her bestie Kylie (on left), she was golden.

Friday night we decorated cookies with cousins. There were 4 of us who each made about 5 dozen cookies, so it was quite the production. The night ended watching dancing Christmas lights (Noah was pant-less, of course).

And then we come to our 3rd Annual Neighborhood Ugly Christmas Sweater Party. I love our neighbors for numerous reasons, but one being that everyone wears a sweater. No one is above the ugliness.
We also made sure to throw in a few games, my favorite being "jingle box". The object is the get the balls out of a tissue box by dancing or moving around...good times.

And to wrap up the Christmastime fun, Tay and Mark went to the Nutcracker. She absolutely loved it and I know it helped that her favorite 2 cousins were along for the show. Can I please just freeze time and keep these kids little?

Christmas 2013

Every year my mom makes a calender for us. I love it because we never know what pictures to expect, except for the one in December. We always take the kids' picture in their pj's by our tree.

Let me just say that this was the best out of 74. And no, that is not an exaggeration.

A couple of my favorite not so calender worthy pictures...

I just love these kids.

fall pictures

Thank you Raechel :)

Thanksgiving (and Christmas) with the in-laws

Last weekend we made the trip up to Ohio to visit Mark's family. Since I will be fairly large and pregnant by Christmastime, we combined the trip to celebrate Christmas and Thanksgiving.


All the cousins. This picture took at least 45 shots. And yes, it is the best we got.

Noah was sort of obsessed with this Jeep. He even popped the hood to check out the engine. I seriously cannot get enough of this kid. 

Taylor can officially swing like a big girl. It sort of made me tear up when I realized that she can do it all by herself.

First official Christmas presents of the year. The kids were excited!

Halloween

Who doesn't love dressing up in costumes? Well, actually I don't normally love to dress up, but our kids think it's sort of amazing. This year I was lame-o and did not have a costume. I am going to go ahead and play the pregnant card and use that as my excuse.

We had our 3rd annual neighborhood chili-cook off last weekend. All the peeps in the hood got together and let the kids run around like crazy people while we chatted it up and ate some yummy chili. I have yet to win the contest, but I am banking on next year.

Tay's preschool had a pumpkin patch day where her and all her classmates went and found a pumpkin with their name on it. I was able to go along and Tay was pretty excited that me and Noah came to watch.
According to Tay's teachers, she has a "best friend" in her class. The bottom right is of the girls with their pumpkins talking about who knows what :)

And then there was the BIG night, Halloween that is. And what did I do? Well, forgot my camera of course. Thankfully our wonderful friends took a picture of the Elliott clan.

And this has nothing to do with Halloween, but our friend, Raechel Myers, took family photos for us last weekend. She sent me this "sneak peek" and I am in love with it!

baby pool + leaves = fun times

Sometimes you just have to fill up a baby pool with leaves and go crazy!

Let the paperwork begin...again

Adoption has not been on the forefront of my mind the past several months. With pregnancy and fall activities and everyday life, it has fallen to the wayside.

I still think about our baby in Africa, I still daily pray for him or her, but the details, the paperwork, has not been something on my mind...until last week.

I love how God uses those around us to remind us that He is not only in control of the big things, but he also is in all the little details of our lives, like paperwork. Over the past weeks I have seen new friends who are adopting, friends coming home with their babies, and heard stories of others who are on their journey. All these things combined brought our journey back up to me.

With that, I realized that our homestudy and immigration paperwork is about to expire. That same day, I contacted our adoption agency and our home study agency all to start this wonderfully fun part of the process I like to call the "paper chase". We technically should have started about 1 month ago, so we are kicking into high gear to gir r dun (yeah, I just said that).

So here we are again, in the details, gathering all the documents needed. Although tedious, it has given me a fresh reminder of our adoption and the sweet little face we will see at the end of this journey.

pumpkin time, round 2

Last week we went with neighbors, today we went with Daddy. There is really not much to say expect that my kids are just too darn cute not to post more pictures :)

I could seriously just eat this kid up.

Noted for next year. I don't think it will be long before Noah passes up Tay. 

My lil' southern girl. 

Pumpkin Time

Fall may be one of my favorite times of the year; cooler weather, pumpkiney smells, yummy baked treats, windows open, apple cider, and the list goes on.

Yesterday afternoon we headed to the pumpkin patch with neighborhood friends. We will be going back. It is pretty awesome.

And this morning the kids painted their pumpkins.

Let me just note the following:
1. When Noah goes to bed with his hair wet, it looks fluffy and awesome in the morning. 
2. Noah's has an attention span of about 2.3 seconds. He splattered some paint on his pumpkins, and then moved on to other things such as putting the paint into the outlet covers. 
3. Taylor's smile is completely real...not forced AT ALL, she was just having an awesome time (this is sarcasm in case there were doubts). You'll know which picture I talking about when you see it.

kids are fun

Tay and Noah make me laugh...like alot. They are both silly in their own little ways. Since my mind seems to be going a little more with each pregnancy, I thought it best to write down some of my recent favorite Noah and Tay moments before they are too far gone. And yes, this post is all bullet points.

• Noah loves Spider-man. I really have no idea where his obsession comes from. Anytime we are at a store, he zones in on everything that has to do with Spider-man. It is actually quite amazing how he can spot him out of no where. So it came to no surprise that when I asked him who he wanted to be for Halloween, he said "pie-er-man". I was a little hesitant when we bought the costume, because he really despises getting dressed up. But when he put it on, it was like he transformed. He kept saying "I pie-er-man" and then proceeded to run around like a crazy man knocking things over and acting all tough. Here is the crazy part, he has never seen a movie, cartoon, or show of Spider-man. He has seen pictures, that's it. I guess the inner boy just knows that Spider-man has some crazy awesome superpowers. I must get a video of him in action.

• Mark's birthday is tomorrow. Now that our kids are getting older, I wanted them to pick a gift out for Mark. My plan was to head to Target and let them each pick out something from the dollar bins. But when I asked Tay what she wanted to get him she said "roller skates". Now if you know Mark, you know that he has been wanting roller blades for a long time. He talks about it frequently and is always on the hunt for a good deal. So when she said that was what she wanted to get him, I knew we at least had to look. To my pleasant surprise, Target had a pair that happened to be in Mark's size. We bought the blades and I had a "let's keep this a secret from daddy talk" with Tay. I told her that we had to wait for Daddy's birthday and let it be a surprise until he opened it. From what I could tell, she was completely on board....
  However, within 5 minutes of Mark getting home from work that day, Tay says "Daddy I have a secret". Tay then goes on to say " Daddy we got you roller blades. They are like really big. Noah and me made you a card. It's for your birthday". Total birthday secret fail. I guess I should have known that no 4 year old is really capable of keeping a secret of this magnitude. 

• This baby in my belly has really decided to make an appearance over the last few weeks. I come across this wonderful idea on Pinterest to take a picture of my belly every week. I don't quite make it happen once per week, but at least every other week. It is sort of miraculous how much I grew in just 5 short weeks.   

• We are hoping to have Noah moved to an official big boy bed sometime over the next few months. My initial plan was to keep him in his crib forever, but now that he can freely climb in and out I had to move on to plan B. Our first step was to see how he did in his crib which we converted to a toddler bed. He watched us convert the crib while we told him about his new "big boy bed". He was super pumped and it was quite cute. After it was converted I put him down for a nap. Before he went down he said "Dido (his beloved dinosuar lovey), Daddy. He wanted to give his dino to Mark as part of his big boy transition. If you know Noah you know how much he loves his dino. If we ever lost him, I think Noahs world would come to an end. So for him to want to give it up, was really surprising...and funny. However, this new founded big boyness did not last long. Withing 20 seconds, he was ready for it back. And we are happy to report that so far the big boy bed is working out quite nicely!  

• We took a little neighborhood trip to the fire station. Of course the kids thought is was some kind of awesome. Noah made sure to get up in the fire chiefs face and ask for dump trucks on several occasions. You can't win them all.

The first week of preschool…

was 2 weeks ago, but better late then never, right?

I had all these “great” photo ideas for Tay’s first day of preschool. But unfortunately, our nice camera quit working. It was a set back, but at least I had the old, small back up camera. And then…we arrived at her school, she posed all cute like and the back up camera wasn't working. Complete fail in the picture department.

BUT, thankfully I have a friend whose little boy happens to go to the same preschool. Yay!! She took some pictures for us. Of course I would have been all paparazzi like and taken and overload of pictures, but maybe this worked out better for all involved :)

Taylor did wonderful. She walked right in, found her name, sat down, and started coloring. 

She seems to really enjoy school, although I don’t get to hear much about her day. I am going to have to get used to having her gone 2 days a week, but I have to admit, it’s a nice break and a good excuse for some one-on-one time with my little guy.

Day 1 - Tuesday, September  4th, 2012

Day 2 - Thursday, September 6th, 2012

Ice cream treat to celebrate the first week :)