Santa Claus is Coming to Town!

And we are ready! Well, mostly - still need a few gifts - but the house is all decorated and we are definitely in the spirit! It has been really cold outside so I decided on the next warm day we got (it is Arkansas, I knew we still had a warm day coming) I would hang our Christmas lights. Well, that came on the day after Thanksgiving - perfect timing! So, I hung all our lights on the house and then had Nathan help me with the blow ups for the roof (we put ours up on the roof to keep the dogs and cats from tearing them up).

Thumbs up!

Ryans reaction once I took her out to see :)

We are real tree people - the smell, the look - I just cannot get enough of them! I swear I have already said "that tree smells so good" 100 times - Noah actually asked me if I was going to say that every day until Christmas - yes son, I will. There was slim pickins' on trees but the one we got is perfect! It was so full and had no bad spots! Noah said it was "way more awesomer" than all the other ones there! Then the kids decided they wanted baby real trees for their rooms. They picked them up and looked at us with those big blue eyes and said "please" - so we ended up with those too :)

I decided to go with the less is more approach again this year - I just like having a few simple decorations out instead of everything Christmas we have got - we have a lot of stuff. So, I pulled out my favorites and it looks just right. Noah, Ryan and I decorated the tree. Well, actually Noah and I decorated it while Ryan slept but we saved her a few ornaments to put on the tree. Daddy took his typical role of helping make sure the tree was straight and the star was on and the "supervising" the actual decorating from the couch :) We got new lights for the tree this year and they are SO cool! Noah found them at the store and once he showed them to me I just HAD to have them! Of course they only had one box but we luckily found the last box at another store too! They switch from all colored lights to all white lights - the best of both worlds!

The lights go from this...

to this :)

Noahs tree in his room :)

Ryan's tree in her room :)

Our stockings :)

Some simple pretties for the season :)

We have been watching Christmas movies non-stop, doing Christmas crafts, visited Santa for the annual Santa photo, and anything else we can find to do Christmas related! We have the parade coming up and some Christmas lights to look at  - and before we know it, Santa will be in town!

Thanksgiving 2014

We are blessed with lots of family so that means around the holidays we have lots of stops! We started our Thanksgiving day at my grandmas house for lunch and visiting. My grandma still has all the toys my cousins and I played with as children so it is really neat to watch them all play with them too.

Playing in the same toy boy I used to play in :)

We LOVE Grandma Bobbie!

We then went to Nathan's grandparents house for a late lunch/dinner. Nathan's family is a lot smaller than mine and there is only one other little kid besides ours - their cousin Paxton - but them three played very well together for a long time! Then it was time for me to leave to meet my dad for our Thanksgiving tradition of shopping at Walmart! Nathan gladly stayed with the kids - well, gladly until he realized they hadn't napped - then it was not so good. There was 6 of us at Walmart together and we got 5 carts full of stuff for the 10 kids we were shopping for! Black Friday shopping is not really as big of a deal as people make it out to be - yes there are lots of people, yes there are lines but don't go if you are in a hurry. We have so much fun when we go! We almost always get everything we go after and have never fought for anything - and I have never seen a fight either. I love our Black Friday tradition and plan to keep it going with my kids!

The kids LOVE playing with their cousin Paxton!

Oh how I love these two :)

My favorite picture of the holiday :)

We always celebrate Thanksgiving with my mom on the Friday after Thanksgiving and we don't do a traditional menu - this year we decided on Italian! So, Nathan and I made 2 different pasta bakes and a salad. We were also celebrating Nathans birthday, my brothers girlfriend Jessica and my sister-in-law Emilys birthdays. Lots of good food and visiting were had :)

Ryan and Greyson loved making me a nervous wreck playing on the stairs!

That afternoon we knew Ryan had to nap - after no nap the day before we were not willing to go through that again. So Nathan went to his parents to visit with family that came in from out of town while I hung Christmas lights while Ryan napped. It was 70 degrees outside so I had to hang the lights before it got cold again! We then went to dinner with all of Nathan's Stillwell family to end our two day Thanksgiving celebration.

We have so much to be thankful for and are glad we got to see so much family this holiday!

Happy 33rd Birthday Nathan!

We celebrated Nathan's 33rd birthday this weekend! I believe everyone should have a special day once a year to celebrate them - even if it is just dinner and a cake (or brownies) with a candle. I gave Nathan a few ideas of things to do for his birthday and he chose to go to Ft. Smith to eat and shop. So, we had his mom watch the kids and off we went! Before we left we had Noah take a picture of us - it was SO funny. He said "ok, now stand right up next to eachother, look right here, say cheese! Ok, now lets take a silly face one. Good job guys!" - he has heard all of these a few times before :)

Thanks Noah :)

We couldn't decide where to eat so we decided to eat lunch and then shop and then dinner too before we went home :) So, we went to our favorite TGI Fridays for lunch and to watch the first half of the Razorback game. We then went to Toys R Us and finished our Santa shopping for the kids! Done before Thanksgiving!! Then we went to a few other stores and Nathan decided he wanted to sit in the car and listen to the game while I ran in and got what we needed. So, he got to hear the Razorabacks shut out Ole Miss and I got to get Ryan some shirts that would reach her waist and get rid of the flesh belt she has been having lately :) It was a win-win! We then went to Academy - Nathans favorite store! The past few times we have went there we had the kids with us and they were not cooperating so it was nice this time to walk all around quietly and look at everything. We ended our evening with Olive Garden :)

The next day was Nathan's actual birthday. So, Noah and I got up early and Noah made him a craft while I made brownies and cooked breakfast. The smoke detector usually goes off while I am cooking, partially due to it's bad location and partially due to my cooking. It pretty much goes off every time I cook bacon though and this year was no exception. Nathan even recorded it going off this year and posted it on Facebook - he better just be glad I have a good sense of humor :) It was all edible though - or he ate it and didn't get sick anyway :) We gave him his gifts next - I got him some enlarged framed prints of his car racing. He got to open his other present earlier in the week. He was online about to send an email to get a sponsor to send him a nitrous bottle warmer so before he did that I had to fess up that I had already bought him one so he didn't need to do that :)

He likes fire more than I am comfortable with :/

We went to church and out to eat Mexican food and then just hung around the house watching movies and playing with the kids for the rest of the day. He said he had a good birthday and acted like he liked his gifts :) Now, on to Thanksgiving!

A "Yes" Weekend :)

We had a weekend where I said "yes" to most everything the kids asked for - love when I am able to do that. We started out Friday night with going to the movies to see Big Hero 6. Noah asked to see it but I wasn't sure about taking Ryan to the movies yet. The preview came on and she laughed and laughed at it, so I took it as a sign :) Nathan had a friend in from out of state and was gone visiting with him a majority of the weekend, so I decided to brave the movies alone with both kids for Ryan's first time at the movies. I really wasn't sure how this was going to go.

The lines were long, but the kids stayed right by my side and were awesome. We got our food and while going in the movie door Noah went in first and Ryan ran into the corner of the door and hit her head and fell and started screaming, then Noah came back out to check on her and spilled some popcorn. So, there I was sitting in the hallway of the movie theater in a pile of popcorn with a screaming kid - I was doubting my decision at that point. Luckily, I was able to get them together and get them in right before the movie started. Ryan stared at the screen from the moment I got her in there until an hour into the movie. She sat in her own seat and ate popcorn and drank her water and was perfect. After an hour she stood up some, and sat in my lap some, but was never disruptive and never stopped watching the movie. I was shocked at how well she did. Noah was awesome too. He still hasn't got the whisper thing down, but other than that he was great. He laughed harder than I have ever heard him laugh. Then the main character died and he looked at me with big tears in his eyes and his lip out and said "momma, this is going to make me really cry". I was thinking surely they are not going to kill off the main character, so I took a chance and told him that he was not really dead and to just wait and see. Well, he did die, but luckily they made a new one (he was a robot) so then he looked at me and said he was going to cry now because he was so happy! :) He was really into this movie!

Saturday morning we had our family pictures. Those are always an adventure. Ryan was not wanting to take them, at all. Especially without Momma right there with her. Noah was the same way at age 2, so I know it will get better, so I just have to take what she will give us for now. We got more crying and pouting pictures from her than anything, but once the skittles came out and I got her to say she wanted a green one, it looked like she was smiling! So I would say "what color skittle do you want?" and she would say "greeeeeen" and we would all look and smile - we finally got a good picture! She loved throwing leaves outside and started loosening up a little once the session was over of course :) As promised, they both got their toy for taking family pictures - I am all about a good bribe :)

Greeeeeeen! ;)

The rest of our weekend was spent doing crafts, wrestling, watching Christmas movies, having a plastic food picnic in the living room, a dance off, doing puzzles, and eating Halloween candy (I swear that bucket will never be empty). The kids are at such a fun age for some weekends full of nothing but memories being made :)

Monkey see, monkey do :)

Best friends :)

Noah loves doing crafts :)