doing our part to overflow the landfills...

merry christmas! brax was so tired by the mid afternoon that he just layed in chance's lap and made a courtesy attempt to finish his gifts...i guess a combination of early rising and running on nothing but sugar from the stocking! mia loved her twins and appropriatly named them mia and brax...reminds me of that old nickelodeon show 'pete & pete'...we accumulated a pile of trash from toy packaging that nearly filled our dining room!.. had a great day & enjoyed being the home that everyone came to instead of doing all the driving!we'll be heading out for our 7 hour treck to mississippi bright and early tomorrow! enoy the rest of 2008!

and that make 8...

after 8 years we still get together every year for our christmas party...here are a few friends from high school...we've christmas partied together since our junior year and there is no end in sight :) we spent the nite eating, of course, dirty santa, and reenacting goofy old pictures that were taken in the past...the hit gifts were definitly the aprons from anthropologie...so cute!! around midnite, mia and i loaded up and once again headed back north...even though we're only 25ish, it does feel like time has knocked us on our tail when we talk of the past years since high school..what a gem to have such friendships...speaking of..you'll see meg in some of these..we date back to 1st grade...& lauren came in at 3rd grade!.."time keeps on tickin, tickin, tickin..into the fuuuuture..." happy christmas eve!!

how sweet it is...

made a trip to the boro today for some old fashioned cookie decorating...why drive an hour away to ice cookies, you ask...well..friendship...for our two small children, melissa have shared pregnancies and each one was born 2 weeks apart, so with that, we naturally became friends...i appreciate her talent, patience, and our genuine conversations...i am truly grateful for her friendship...eliyah and mia are like old college roomates when they get together... brax, as you'll see loved the frosting and what a great pic of ava & adelynn! after a whole lot of sugar, a little lunch, and several diapers later, the kids and i headed back north...enjoy the pix of our day!

somebody give santa a prozac...

ok, so far we've visited at least 4 santa's ....unitil recently mia has been strongly opposed to the big guy, so anytime she mentioned his name, we jumped at the chance to take her..hoping to help her face her fear..yeah, i know..she's 3-she'll grow out of it...every one we've seen (except the one sitting in a golf cart at rural king...he was great!) has been a lure to get your 30 bucks for a 5x7...seriously, kid after kid, i watch them look at the camera(not smile) then put the kid down and wait for the next snotty toddler...now, for many of us..going to see santa is a big deal and for him to fall in step with the rest of the world just to meet quota is kinda disheartning...as we left the one at opryland hotel, (i was certain he would be a good one- after all, travel channel just voted opryland 'the most christmassy hotel in the world, so surely he's the best santa ever..) mia asks, "mom, why was he so grumpy?"..."maybe he's tired" i tell her as i turn to glare at him :)

they did have a cute little train...braxton loved it...he literally tried to fit thru the fence (see pic)...ok the story behind chance feeding him is hilarious...we stopped for ice cream in the hotel but were trying to make our way to the couches down the hall to sit and eat it...well, of course brax didn't understand that, so he just thought he wasn't gonna get any...so taking things in his own hands, as we walked he would run and latch onto our legs, wrapping his hands all the way around so we couldn't move...once he'd get a bite, he'd sprint ahead to the next person, latch on, get a bite...repeat...it was so funny!

twinkle toes...

here's mia's little dance class...they've been practicing for weeks now to perform in front of these sweet little old people at the nursing home (she's the one on the far right...kinda hard to tell cause i was pretty far back) back in october, we were already in the christmas spirit singing "where are you christmas, why can't i find you, why have you gone away......" (grinch) this was the song they danced to...they all started out with reindeer antlers on but as you can see, they didn't survive the performance...so, yes, i wasted a trip to walmart... oh, and i met a little dancer there who spells her name a-l-l-y-s-o-n! i think thats the first one in my lifetime so far...

ok, so for him we pretended it was a cowboy hat...he'll realize and be embarrassed when he's 16 or so...

what we've been up to...

incredible pic of the sky the other day...we were sitting upstairs and it was gettin pretty dark, then all the sudden this orange glow lit up the room...it was amazing! growing up, i'd see pretty pix of the sky/sunset, etc...and would think 'whats the big deal' ..now i realize that these don't happen everyday...rare and beautiful...

next pic..my girlfriend jess is a few weeks off from delivering little anna kate...here's us at her shower..jess and i met as we trained for our first half marathon together...it's rare that we see eachother when we're not sweaty and sportsbra-ish, so we had to mark the moment :) it's amazing the friends you make when you simply do what you enjoy...

then, you'll see mia and brax at a pottery shop working on some christmas presents....a must do for anyone with a 3 year old...an old polish grandma (who i'm assuming owns the place) seemed to enjoy helping them each step of the way...

ballerina baby...

sweet little mia...learning my way thru photoshop....