Quick Birthday Card

The 7th was Joe's birthday and I had been planning on making him a card, but I never got around to it until about 2pm that day. Elijah did most of the work though:



Originally it was suppose to have more things on it, like a sentiment and buttons... manly buttons of course... and that was about it. However, after Elijah finished "writing" his message on the piece of cut out card stock, I was looking at it and thought that if anything else was on it, it would take away from whatever he did. I like the way it turned out. Inside it said "I told Elijah to write something for your birthday, so he wrote what is on the front of this card. It could mean anything, but I like to think it says, "I love you, daddy".

That's about it out of me. Nothing else going on, except we had a blizzard on Friday and Saturday and Lord only knows how much snow was dumped on us again today. They said on the news that the total for the winter of 2009-2010 is 72" and we are suppose to get more on Monday... When is Spring getting here again?

Elijah's Birthday Party

I don't know where time goes anymore, I actually did a double take at my calendar when I was counting how many weeks it has been since we celebrated. To my surprise it has been over 3 weeks since we had his party. Somehow I still feel the need to share a few pics and videos... cause that's what I do. :-)

Studying the balloons he got from his Grandma Marie

He loved playing with the bear.

But, most of all, he loved -hitting- them and watching them bounce back

Enjoying his McNugget Happy Meal dinner. No veggies included.

Time to open presents

He got lots of cool toys, but he loved his Mickey Mouse Club House train the most out of all the presents he received that day.

He played with it for 45 minutes straight... we timed it.

I think his favorite thing of the night was the singing though. That's where the movies come in:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cvbCjoa6ZjA

Ok, so he didn't want the cupcake. You saw that. However, you didn't see him get down from his booster seat, go over to the candle laying on the table and try putting it back in the cupcake. At that point he "made" us sing to him again, so -he- could blow out of the candle:



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fkvSrBpuhJ0

Hope you enjoyed. I will try to update again soon!

New Years Resolutions

As most people do, at the beginning of each new year, I make a resolution. Although, by definition, resolution isn't really the right word... I make more of a goal for myself for the next year. This year my goal is to pay more attention to Azalea, to pet her more and praise her more and play with her more. Because these past 2 years she has kinda just been... there. Elijah took precedence, as he should, but I still feel like I've been semi-neglecting her. So far this year... all 14 days of it... I've been doing better.

As it turns out, I wasn't the only one who made a resolution... Joe made one too. His, well our, resolution is to not eat out at all this year. That includes delivery and pickup. If it doesn't come from a grocery store, we don't eat it. Now there are exceptions to the rule. If we have a gift card, it doesn't count. If someone else pays, it doesn't count. And if it's a birthday or special event (ie our anniversary) it doesn't count. Before I tell you how wonderfully we are doing, I must say this is one of the hardest resolutions ever, for me. After working all day it's so easy to just pull up to McDonalds or order some Chinese to be delivered. No cooking and no dishes to clean, sounds like a dream... With a big price tag.

But anyway, even though it's hard things have been going well. Joe even made something new a week or so ago. He made his dad's chili... a double batch, so we could freeze it and it would be an easy dinner later on. And because I know how we are with "What's in the freezer? I don't know. Let's just order something", I made this list on the white board on our fridge:



So at a glance you can see everything that is available for cooking.

And last, but not least, it looks as though Elijah has made a resolution also. He has tried more new foods this month than he probably has, before, in his entire life. Ok, maybe not that many... but what is more amazing is that after he tries them, he eats the whole thing that was given to him. He has had fish, meatballs, triscuits and pretzel sticks to name a few. Last night he even ate pizza. Actually, there was -one- thing that he tried and ended up throwing on the floor, it was peas. I totally don't blame him for this, I hate peas also, so I think I'll give him a pass on that one. Hopefully he'll continue to try new things and make meal time a whole lot easier.

That's about it, a few resolutions and some progress on each. We shall see what the rest of the year brings and maybe at the end of the year I'll post an entry saying how they all went... If I remember.

Two!

My precious little baby doll turns two today!

We are celebrating tonight... and because everyone in the family gets to pick a birthday dinner, but he can't really talk yet, we decided he would get a McNugget Happy Meal for his dinner. I think he will love it and he doesn't even have to have any veggies if he doesn't want them.

After dinner we are having cupcakes... and cookies (Nutter Butters) because he loves cookies. Opening presents will be last, but I'm sure his favorite part of the day. He got in plenty of practice at Christmas, so he should be rarin to go.

I'll post pics of his birthday celebration later this week and might even have a video or two to share also. Happy New Year, everyone... A little late.

Movie Wednesday...

Lots has been going on, between getting ready for Christmas, our furnace dying, working full time and being sick, I haven't had a chance to post anything or do anything really.

As of today we only have one more present to buy and we're done. We just need to wrap and we're done with that. Christmas cards and Christmas letters are in the works also, once that is done we will be ready for Christmas to come.

One thing, extra, we did this year was put up a Christmas tree. We haven't put one up in quite a few years because first Azalea was only with us for about a month the first year, then I was 8 and a half month pregnant the next year, third year Elijah was crawling around and I just wasn't prepared to deal with him not listening and getting into it. So here is year #4 and we were prepared to deal with whatever delemas came with having the tree up.

We had the tree up for a few days without anything on it, however even though Elijah had never had a Christmas tree in his house, he knew what was suppose to be done:

Here's a closer look... He put some of his toys on there for decoration.

Next came the lights. He loves those... he especially loves to count them.

Then came ornaments and the star

And we're done!



Elijah needed to examine the lights one more time to make sure they were working correctly.


And now it's time for the movie. Of course it's Christmas Tree related. Here is Elijah helping us put ornaments on the tree... literally.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BNKoc4MU0Y0

Merry Christmas if I don't post again before then!

DYL

It's that time again, where you declare your love. For those of you that need a refresher, here it is. We know that you love your family, friends, pets and co-workers (sometimes). This is a different kind of love. This is a love for things like, book series, movies, food items, cars, video games, etc.

Today I have decided to declare my love for


Take and Toss Sippy Cups




Everyone that has a toddler should own some of these cups. I love everything about them. They are relatively inexpensive, they only have 2 parts (as opposed to other sippys that have 3 and 4 parts), they are leak proof (unless a little boy decides to chew on the spout for a while) and can't be opened by little hands.

They sell a wide variety of colors, they also have some that have characters on them. Elijah has some Sesame Street and Mickey Mouse Club House ones, but they also have other characters as well. We have all sorts of these cups. We have the regular sized ones, the ones with straws(which I don't love as much), the character ones and the huge 10 oz ones. The best part about them is that all of their lids fit each other. If you know my life, this is a big plus in my book. So, in the morning when I'm searching for a sippy, all I have to do is grab one of the bottoms and a random lid, fill and that's it. It's awesome. :-)

Oh and I forgot to add they are dishwasher safe, so you decide whether you want to wash them or toss them afterward. Anyway...

Now it's your turn. What are you going to declare your love for?

My Creations This Past Month

With Christmas fast approaching, I've had little to no time to create anything with paper products, so when that happens and I still have the urge to create. I turn to digital. That's the awesome part about using digital papers and elements to create things, it's quick, it's easy and there's no clean up. I also love it because it's not permanent, I can try things out at different sizes and flip them so one is facing the other direction. You can't really do that with paper products and stamps.

I saw this awesome QP on Tiffany's blog and thought the colors would be perfect for a layout about my sweet little neice Penelope. They call her Pie sometimes, hence the play on words.



Then I saw this gorgeous mini kit at my friend Shay's, blog. I saw the tree and it was just waiting to be used on a card. I adore the colors and I debated on whether I wanted to print it out and do it as a hybrid card or not. I decided against it because I don't think I had anything to go with it, colorwise. This is what I ended up with. I'm gonna print it out on card stock and send it out to someone. :-)



Thanks for looking. I hope to be able to share more with you all again soon.

Movie Friday

We just bought this magnetic, white board for the living room. I thought Elijah would like to play with his number magnets on there and letter magnets (when we get them) or maybe he would like to draw with crayon on it. I didn't really care, it was his board, he could do whatever on it.

All week I've been writing either the alphabet or numbers 1-20 around the outside, because he likes to point to whatever and saying what it is. Then like Wednesday I wrote his full name on the board, but it got messed up, so last night I rewrote his first name really big.

Elijah ran up to the board and started doing this:



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=feiHzUvkxJk

I guess that's what a year and a half of watching sesame street will do to ya. Although I'm sure Super Why and Wheel of Fortune helped a little too.

Stay tuned on Monday for another movie. :-)

Halloween

Early last month I was trying to think of what to dress Elijah up as for Halloween. I was throwing around some ideas and discussing with Joe. Originally I had my heart set on having him be a scarecrow, cause we saw the cutest scarecrow costume at Babies R Us, but Joe didn't like the idea, so it was back to brain storming.

One morning while I was driving Elijah to my parents' house, before work, I was talking to Elijah and saying how we're gonna have to figure out what he's gonna be for Halloween. So I started naming off things and he just kept saying no to all of it. Finally I was like, "What do you want to be for Halloween?" He said "Dog". Now he can't say many words, so I thought maybe he meant something else, but he said dog. So I said, "You want to be a dog for Halloween?" He said "I dodo", which, at that time, meant "Yes" to him. I confirmed it a couple more times over the next few days. He still wanted to be a dog. To this day I still don't know if meant in real life or for Halloween... I guess I'll never know. So it was off to the internet I went... In search of a dog costume that didn't have a dog's head on top (cause I think they look weird).

I found one that I liked and found out it was at a Halloween store near our house (yay for no shipping and handling). Here is the little puppy:

A Christmas Story Moment

My favorite movie around Christmas time is "A Christmas Story". I have no idea why I love it so much, but each Christmas Eve it is always my plan to watch it on TBS at least two times. It doesn't always happen, but anyway.

You know that one part of the movie where his mom asks him what he wants for Christmas he blurts out "I want an Official Red Ryder Carbine-Action Two-Hundred-Shot Range Model Air Rifle" and immediately afterwards he regrets it? I had one of those moments earlier... with my boss...

Someone else on my team, I won't say who *coughMichaelcough* asked if we were going to tell the secretaries something ahead of time instead of us having to tell them afterward. My boss said, "No, we're telling them as we receive them.... Enjoy!" It might have been the last part that made me angry... or the whole thing. I don't know. Then came the Ralphie moment.

I blurted out, "Wouldn't it save time to tell them ahead of time, instead of waiting for *whatever*? Then they can have the things ready and can send them to us with the *other thing*." It was formed as a question, but I certainly wasn't asking one. Then immediate regret and the thought,"Oh my god, did that just come out of my mouth?". It's only been about an hour and I have no idea what she said in response.

The only thing I know is that I'm going to buy some duct tape and put it in my desk for occasions such as these... So next time I feel like speaking my mind, I won't be escorted out of the building.