Merry Christmas Little Sock Monkeys

We had a really nice Christmas vacation with my family (Farrow's in Albuquerque). We were lucky to get to NM this year due to all of the crazy winter weather. We were scheduled to fly from Champaign to Dallas to ABQ on Christmas Eve at 6:45am, but our flight was delayed about 7 hours. When we finally made it to Dallas we soon found that all of the remaining Dallas- Abq flights were full for the next 2 days. So we decided to rent a car and drive from Dallas to Abq. It was a long drive and we got to my parents house around 3am. Once we got to my parents' house we had a lot of fun!

Grant rolling out flour for sugar cookies.

ABQ Aquarium

Left to Right: Amanda and Aly; Grant and I; Olivia, Kim, and Nicholai

My parents are super troopers! They graciously hosted their four kids' families for a 3 week period. For Christmas, my mom bought all of the grandkids matching Sock Monkey jammies with stuffed Sock Monkeys! Too cute!

Here are my parents with all of their 6 grandchildren (all under 3 1/2 years old).

(Left to Right: Connor, Rowan, Grant, Nicholai, Aly, and Olivia)


We tried to bribe the kids with fruit snacks to sit still. Everyone did pretty good except Grant- he cried for every group picture- I think he likes to be the star of the show. :) As seen below.


My brother Scott's two cutie pies! Olivia and Nicholai

Another attempt at a group photo.
(Left to Right: Rowan, Aly, Nicholai, Olivia, Grant, and Connor)




Grant loved having all of his cousins around. It was a play group that never ended. He and Connor (my sister's little boy) followed each other all over the house. Connor was drinking his bottle on the floor so Grant had to follow suit.


Hope everyone had a wonder Christmas! Happy New Year!

Catch Up!

It seems like as soon as Halloween ends the subsequent holidays sneak up on us so quickly. I can't believe Christmas is less than two weeks away.

We had a great Thanksgiving. We invited some friends over for the feast, but we were so busy with everything that we didn't take pictures of the event, :( just good memories. :) So this is a random sampler post. Enjoy!

Grant is trying to change his own diaper. I would rather he learned how to use the potty over changing his own diaper.

For Thanksgiving my family has a traditional 14 layer jello dish. This was Grant's first encounter with jello and he kept slapping and punching it.


Our friend Julie made these super cute Turkey hats.

Grant always asks me to put my socks on his feet.

We got snow a week or two ago and so I thought Grant might like to play in it. He was having fun until he got snow on his face and then he freaked out and wanted to come back inside. Maybe next time it will be more fun.

We hope everyone has a Happy Holiday Season!

A Man or Woman?

No, we're not pregnant. But evidently, this blog is 82% likely to be written by a woman. That's probably mostly accurate, since I think KaraLee does most of the posts. Care to check on your blog? Supposedly this website uses some artificial intelligence to determine whether your blog is written by a man or woman. Try it and post the results in our comments!

http://genderanalyzer.com/

Socks (Puppets), Bread, and Dancing

So, by popular demand (okay, because families have been requesting politely), this post is dedicated to recent videos of Baby Grant. Grant's at a fun age (isn't every age a fun age?!) and seems to be learning and developing in leaps and bounds. Needless to say, he keeps us on our toes and our house is constantly filled with laughter.

We hope you enjoy these videos. Just for the record, we DO regularly dress our child, but in the evenings going with just the diaper just seems so much easier. :)

Grant has really seemed enthralled with sock puppets and animals recently. Interestingly, he seems more inclined to listen to requests from the puppet, even though he KNOWS where the voice of the puppet is coming from!

Our little dough boy. He just likes to "help" in the kitchen. His helping has evolved from insisting that KaraLee hold him while she's cooking to standing on a chair next to her while she's cooking.



Lord of the Dance. 'Nuff said.