labor of love

Next time I have the brilliant idea to take on a huge project right before Christmas, someone please ask me to think twice.

It actually started a couple months ago while sitting in church (or should I say walking the halls) with a certain wiggly toddler, realizing I needed something to help entertain him or else we just might end up inactive. I had a friend that had made a really cute quiet book for church, and had seen several different patterns roaming around the internet. I found one on etsy that I loved and decided to see if I could convince my best friend to make one with me. Well she agreed (apparently she's crazy too!) and we began this project together.

There were hours upon hours spent cutting out millions of paper pattern pieces, hours upon hours cutting out the felt that went along with those pieces, and that was just the preparation! Honestly, after that it was much more enjoyable because you could actually start seeing the finished pages come together. But that didn't mean that there weren't plenty of hours spent hand embroidering words or sewing on little buttons, clouds, and zippers.

Whew. Just thinking back on it makes me tired. It was a ton of work, but guess what, Beck loves it! And it keeps him quiet on our laps for more than 5 seconds at a time, so that's all the validation I need!

Yes, it was a ton of work. But in all honesty, I had fun making it and I'm a teensy bit sad it's all done. Hmm, I think I need another project. Any ideas?

a {turner} christmas story

Just as I suspected, Christmas with a child is magical. Well, technically, I had two children this Christmas as the excited, little child comes out in my husband. It really is endearing- how excited he gets. Every day during December he either asks if he can have a present early or if he can give me one of mine early. Cute huh?

Our Christmas was just as it should be- filled with lots of family and way too much delicious food :) Also thrown into the mix last week was my little sister's wedding (Ahh!!), more on that to come. Despite the initial fearful meeting (oh, I just realized I never shared the "classic Santa picture"- imagine screams, tears, and squirms), Beck actually came around to the whole Santa concept and said the cutest "Ho, Ho" every time he saw anything that resembled a Santa Claus!

It didn't take long for him to catch onto unwrapping presents- he's no dummy!

Mmm, lucky boy got Lucky Charms in his stocking. It took him all of 2 seconds to start picking out all of the marshmellows.

Wrapping paper as a hat? Sure. This boy did that all on his own.

We should have known that the best present of all would be the $5 pack of mini nerf balls. He didnt' want anything to do with any of his other presents once he saw these, and he still only wants to play with his "fooball" and "bak a bak a ball".

We took the opportunity to take some shots of the grandkids in their Christmas best. Chance was not a fan of getting his picture taken, but I was lucky to steal this darling shot of his with his twin sis.

Twin sis was quite the opposite- talk about a ham :)

Now this was downright amazing. Definitely not perfect by any means, but I was happy just to catch something decent, considering we were dealing with 7 kiddos under the age of 5! I love each and everyone of these darling cousins!

Hope everyone had a wonderful holiday. I'd be lying if I said I wasn't sad it is all over.

Summer anyone???

puppy love

Oh, If you only knew how much this boy idolizes Cooper. After all, "Pu per" was his first word following "mama" and "dada." I hope one day the puppy can reciprocate the feelings, for now he simply tolerates moments like these.

Little B has been obsessed with the puppy's food for awhile now. We're talking b-line to the dishes as soon as he recognizes he's within crawling distance, and then squealing and picking up the pace when he realizes we're onto him. I usually keep it up on the counter when little man is awake, but the past few days he seemed to not be so interested in it, so I've been leaving it down. 1st mistake.

I went to the bathroom and left him alone playing with his toys in the family room for two seconds. 2nd mistake. From the bathroom I hear him throwing little somethings in the kitchen and walk out to see this:

Sweet boy trying to feed his puppy. My first reaction was to tell him "No! Ca Ca, we don't play with the puppy's food!" But then I recognized the adorable moment and whipped out the camera.

I should have stopped there, because then buddy boy decided he needed to try the puppy's food.

He may or may not have just shoved a piece of dog food in his mouth! I pretty much dropped the camera to barely fish it out of his mouth in time. Nasty!

I absolutely love seeing B adore his puppy. He gets so excited whenever Coop comes into the room. One of my favorite things lately is that B has started to pat for Coop to come to him- he pats the side of his crib, his chubby thigh, or my back. It's darling!

merry and bright

It's official- our home is christmasfied! I actually talked Trav into letting me get out all the ornaments, glitter, and stars 3 whole days before Dec. 1st...AND he even made me a wonderful Christmas playlist while I was decorating away. What a man, huh?!

This year, in order to accomodate a certain one-year-old who doesn't quite get the concept of leaving the "balls" on the tree, we set our tree up on our end table. Just out of reach of buddy boy's chubby hands.

I can already tell that this season is going to be 10x better with little B around. He loves the lights, loves all the ornaments (of course, because they look like a ball), loves the snow, and he's actually going to understand a little of what's going on this year!

perspective

One of my favorite things about being a mom: being able to experience the little things through the eyes of my child. Everyday is full of wonder and exploration.

Little buddy is learning so much right now and I love how every tiny step (literally) and word is worthy of a guess-what-beck-did phone call to daddy. We are proud parents, that's for sure.

down on the farm

As part of his birthday present, Beck's girlfriend (thanks Ellie!) gave him tickets to Farm Country at Thanksgiving Point. We really should have gone sooner...he absolutely LOVED every single minute! It was so fun to see him get excited over all the animals and to say the animal sounds that he knew. As you can see, he was completely fearless when it came to touching them.

I kind of want to freeze this boy right now. He is at such a fun age ....we just can't get enough of him!

a happy halloween

That might just be the cutest puppy I've ever seen. Despite the rainy weather, we had a great halloween. I was actually kind of relieved Beck wasn't really old enough to get the whole trick-or-treating thing, because that meant we got to stay warm and dry :)

In lieu of pumpkin carving, we decorated sugar cookies, cupcakes and caramel apples. Which was just fine with me, because I've never been a fan of the pumpkin guts anyway. The only downside: I'm still recovering from the sugar coma.