12.25.08 Christmas Day Celebration with the Worleys

We had a lovely Christmas with Chris' parents, brother, sister-in-law and nephew. It was so nice to have everyone together again. It was 80 degrees for our first Christmas in FL, so we spent the afternoon playing Bocce in our back yard. What a lovely day!

Waiting patiently for our party to begin. I told Grant that once Uncle Todd, Aunt Anita and Martin got there, we were going to have a party. Boy, was it hard to hold him off until then. He couldn't wait to get at those presents! So we distracted him in the play room for a while.

Grant got a new Buzz costume since his was getting too small...

and it's even complete with wings!

When he opened it, he hugged it and said emphatically so all could hear

to alleviate all confusion, "MINE!!"

Playing Bocce in the back yard

Playing with Geotrax

Grant has a new favorite toy! He spends hours back in his play room playing with his new train. Thanks, Grandma and PaPa! Wish you could play with me! Emma Lou likes it too! :-)

Grant FINALLY Sings!

For those of you who know me well, you know that singing is something that brings my heart great joy. So when I had children, I subconsciously had visions of singing with them like I always did with my mom...well, Grant had other ideas! The child will not sing! Well, I am singing at church this week and was practicing today. He asked if he could sing with me, so I pulled out the video camera to see if I could keep the memory forever. Sorry my singing is so poor - I wasn't concentrating on singing, breath support or the words...I was trying to keep Mason quiet and the video camera semi-still. But Grant wouldn't sing unless I was singing, too, so I had to keep singing! Enjoy my little Grant...he's quite off key...I'm wondering if he got the music gene from his father! :-)

12.20.08 Post Christmas Party FUN!

12.20.08 Christmas Party!

Here are a million pictures and videos from Christmas. Sorry for those of you who aren't family...my family wanted to see the kids opening their gifts since they can't be here. My favorite picture in my mind is of Grant as he opened his gifts. After every gift he opened, he would take it to his daddy, jump up and down while shouting, "Open it! Open it!" He was so excited and quite precious. The joy and excitement he had were contagious, for sure! Even Mason was really getting into it!

Here are our Christmas decorations...

One little corner of our house looks quite Christmas-y and fun!

We just had appetizers to munch on while we ate. We had little pigs in a blanket, garlicky cheese bites, grapes popcorn and christmas cookies, of course!

Poor Mason had to really fight to be able to open anything.

Grant was right there, wanting to open it ALL!

Grant wanted to play with every single thing RIGHT AWAY!!

So...of course we did!

Doesn't Mason look so excited and surprised??

Barn

Cars

Geotrax

Xylophone

Ball Popper We'll have to get a better video of this. Mason's arms just flap and he squeals at the top of his lungs when we start to play with this!

What a mess!

12.20.08 Christmas Breakfast

We decided that we were going to celebrate Christmas with just our little family before the rest of the Worley clan comes in for Christmas Eve. We let the boys open the gifts from Chris and I as well as from my family since we won't be getting together with them this year (sob, sob). We had a wonderful day. Chris had been on call, so when he got home, we had a lovely Christmas Breakfast, consisting of a sausage and egg casserole, homemade cinnamon rolls (that I prepared at 5:00 that morning - are you impressed? I figured since Mason was up anyway, I might as well make my time useful!) and fruit salad. Everything was so yummy, and Grant and I had so much fun preparing for it (Grant's favorite part was dribbling the icing all over the cinnamon rolls). Doesn't it look so festive and yummy?

12.17.08 Jacksonville Zoo

My good friend Jan is in town again for Christmas, so we went with her and her sister, Susan, to the Zoo. Susan has a little boy, Lenox, who Grant really enjoys playing with. She also has a 3 week old who is precious! We had a great day at the zoo. It was a little cooler than it was when we went this summer, so the animals were a bit more active. Grant got to feed the giraffes and the birds and LOVED it! It was such a treat to go to the zoo in the middle of December. It was a high of 80 that day...can you believe it's almost Christmas?

12.19.08 Mason's Crawling!

Mason is crawling!!! Finally he is no longer doing the army crawl and is becoming quite proficient at getting around. He's certainly getting into everything, that's for sure! Mason Army Crawling 12.04.08 Mason Crawling 12.19.08 On another note, Mason has really begun to enjoy his jumping toy. He really goes to town on that thing! 12.19.08

12.16.08 Ribbon Fun!

I was finishing up wrapping the last of our gifts and ran out of the room for just a moment to get some more tape. When I came back, I found the two boys with the entire roll of ribbon completely unraveled, having LOTS of fun throwing ribbon on each other's heads. I'm not sure who started it, but I certainly got a good chuckle out of it!