We Have a 2 Year Old!!!

This weekend, we celebrated Griffin's 2nd birthday.  Tanner and I both took the day off and took him to the new Sea Life Aquarium here in town, then to Fritz's for lunch.  The aquarium was very neat and worth every minute of it since Griffin was in awe of all of the fish.  Saturday, we had his birthday party at the park in our neighborhood (dog theme this year).  Lots of family and friends came out on the chilly morning and helped us celebrate.  Shout out to my sister for making the cupcakes and the cutest doggie cake pops!  Thanks so much Linz!  Finally, Sunday (his actual bday) we braved the cold wind and went to Deanna Rose Farmstead.  Again, he loved it and all of the baby animals. 

G Dancing

There's no doubt that Griffin loves to dance.  He will drop whatever he is doing to bounce his head, snap, clap, etc.  Here is a fun video of him gettin' down. :)

Christmas

Whew...we survived Christmas!  Griffin was definitely one lucky little boy.  He received so many gifts and was so delighted opening each one.  By the time we got it all home, our house was nothing but toys!  Needless to say, I FINALLY got it all organized and put away, just today!  YIKES!  That means all of the Christmas stuff is down too and I started organizing.  Let's just say that it was over 4 years worth of junk that has accumulated in our house and needed to get thrown out.  I put Tanner to work downstairs in the storage section, while I was busy in the pantry and the linen closet.  The basement will still be a work in progress but the pantry and closet are DONE!  I took pictures to remind myself of my hard work and to not let it happen again.  So sorry, I'm posting those boring pictures, they're mainly for me.

Here's what our Christmas Eve/Christmas looked like...

It started by getting all of our presents into our car and moved over to Tanner's parent's house...

Of course the stromboli had to come too.  Paige requested it!

All the gifts are ready to be opened at Tanner's parents...

G in his new Christmas jammies

Look who got a 4 wheeler!

...and a kitchen

Christmas morning back at our house

Who stole the cookies from the cookie jar?  Or maybe just from Santa?

Enjoying his new chair

Christmas Day at my parent's and it's Choo-Choo city!

Okay so now here are the boring one's I mentioned earlier...

Pantry!

Part of the linen closet.  It helps because laundry is also going right now. (That's why it's so bare)

Cookies

Remember a few weeks ago, I mentioned about the chaos of the Holiday season?  Well, it's been a chaotic time, that's for sure!  Grif had the stomach flu a couple weeks ago, giving it to both Tanner and myself.  We quickly got over ours, but G's lasted a solid week.  I was very thankful it all happened when it did so we didn't miss out on Christmas.  So, just when we thought we were in the clear, I woke up Thursday with a sore throat, got worse throughout the day, then found out G woke up from his PM nap with a fever.  Sheesh!  Needless to say, I FINALLY went to the doctor Saturday morning and found out I had strep.  Then Tan took G and he also tested positive!  Good gravy...I really hope we are over this sickness thing.

Anyway, I think Grif and I are feeling a little better, thanks to the meds, so I made some cookies for my students to decorate this week and saved a few for G to decorate too.  He really enjoyed it this morning and I really enjoyed watching Tanner stress over the "mess" G was making.  :)  I hope Santa enjoys the cookies!

 

Tree Farms

 Tanner and I planned a trip to a local tree farm today and I am very disappointed with our area's tree farms.  I feel like there should be a Santa's workshop, sleigh rides, hot chocolate, trees and activities at the farms.  But no...unless if there is one that I just don't know about.  So after driving to one and discovering it was closed for the season...WHAT???, we drove to another one close by.  We went on a very short sleigh ride, walked around looking at the trees, then back into the car.  Needless to say, we still enjoyed ourselves.

 

Great Weekend

You can definitely tell the Holidays are coming up; we are jam packed with activities!  This weekend, we had some pictures taken for Grif's 18 months and hopefully for our Christmas card too.  The wind was crazy wicked, so I'm really crossing my fingers that we will have a couple good family ones.  I'm almost certain we got some great one's of G.  He was his normal self-a goofball!  Then, I went to an open house for a student of mine.  She and her two sisters and brother are being adopted, and they are getting to stay altogether!  Obviously, this is so exciting for her and her family; however, I will be terribly sad to see her go.  I met the new family and they seem like wonderful people with huge hearts which is exactly what these little kiddos need.  I was fortunate to have this little girl with me for the last 2 years.  Again, like I said, I will miss her tons; she has found a special place in my heart!

Okay, now on a different note...we are decorating for Christmas!  We are still going to get a real tree, but we decided to put everything up now since I was taking down all of the fall stuff.  It gets me so excited every year.  I always seem to love my house lots more when the Christmas decor is out.  Also, Pinterest is really putting me in the Christmas mood.  I am totally obsessed with it and because of all of the cool things, I've decided to change the "theme" of my tree, AGAIN this year!  Tanner thinks I'm absolutely crazy and quite frankly I agree with him.  We have a ton of ornaments that just sit in the basement and I'm sure I won't use them again for a long, long time, if at all.  (Maybe I can find a fun Pinterest idea that will help me "do" something with them all.)

In the meantime, here are a few pictures from this weekend.  Not very many, I know.  Sorry!

Sitting like Dad...his new favorite thing.

G and Mommy putting up his window decor-whoever created these were very smart people!

So proud!

Mantel so far...still lots more to do

Tanner's working too

a few more...and more to come (oh and by the way, this is the finished product of the cabinet I re-did a while back)

I hope everyone had as great of a weekend as the Brous' did!  Happy early Thanksgiving!

Happy Halloween

The cutest little puppy dog! :)