Merry Christmas!

Hohoho. The holiday season is upon us. On Christmas Eve we headed to Toledo for some Christmas family fun.

On Christmas Eve we still had a few presents to wrap and Owen has enjoyed nothing more than he did the empty wrapping paper tubes. (And he's still enjoying them.) Made us wonder if we should have even bought presents...
Brett's mom got Owen this adorable plate to put cookies on for Santa.
Hopefully Santa likes his milk a la sippy cup.

I'm ready for you Santa!

Christmas morning came and it was time to open presents after church. Owen did well in church up until the Liturgy of the Eucharist and then he wanted to walk around. By the end of the mass he was done.

Owen is making his last-minute Christmas calls in front of the tree

Our little angelOwen and Papa JimLet me at the presents!Tearing tissue paper is fun

Pure Joy

Hope you and your family had a wonderful Christmas!

Like mother like son

As I mentioned in a previous post, Owen is now squatting when he plays which is something I did up until I was about 20. (Ok, I wasn't playing anymore but any time I was on the floor working on something that is how I sat.)

I took this shot especially for my family to enjoy:)

Christmas Countdown

The holidays are almost here, and it's hard to believe. Just like every year... Up north it's really sad when the holidays come to an end because you are just left with winter. Cold, cold, winter.

Anywhoo. This past week was a super busy week, but mostly just filled with errands, getting ready for the holiday and work. We took some Christmas photos of Owen.
It shows a nice progression of pushing your kid to do something too hard;) Guess that's what happens with stage moms.

Back to the winter weather- we had lots of snow this week. Since our garage only has room for 1 car and we keep the new one in it, the poor 10-year old Nissan gets left on the street. After 2 major storms and snow plows, it was pretty much buried and we haven't driven it in at least a week. So, Brett cleaned it off and started her up. No problem!
We didn't take it anywhere, but watched at least 5 people dig out their car. The black car in the upper left just got itself out when I took this picture. People were carrying boiling water from their houses and trying all sorts of things. Too bad for our ice scraper.

And lastly, we'll leave you with our Christmas Kitty.

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Things Owen did this Week: (we'll try to get some pictures this week)
Squatting to concentrate on doing something on the floor (I did this until I was about 20)
Sticking his butt up in the air with his head on the floor and looking through his legs
Gave up crawling
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Boys will be boys

I've decided to start off this week's blog with "Things Owen did this Week."

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Things Owen Did this Week:
Began walking more than crawling
Making lots of faces
Laughing after he farts and burps
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It's that last one really that makes me so proud... Oh wait, not me, my husband. Brett and Owen laugh hysterically now when Owen does this. Particularly at the dinner table. It is a gross, b0y thing. But sadly I have to admit it is funny to watch the two of them when this occurs.

Nothing too exciting to report this weekend. LOTS of errands and the traffic was so horrible it took forever to get anywhere.

Owen did enjoy using the vacuum to clean up all the food on the floor that he dropped. He's going through a phase where he likes to help put things away and clean them up. I'm going to milk it for all it's worth.

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas...

We are finally getting into the swing of the holidays around here. Although I feel like there is too much to do and not enough time, but I guess that just goes along with this time of year.

The following pictures were part of a photo shoot for a secret project.

Cute BoySilly Boy

Pretty Tree

I know I shouldn't be touching this, but look how cute I am

Owen is very into the dancing penguin. He was hugging it too, but of course he chose not to perform for the camera. But, we did get him to dance. So cute.

Thanks Great Aunt Lu!

Owen received a beautiful birthday gift from his Great Aunt Lulu (my aunt on my mom's side). A beautiful cross-stitch and the cutest birthday card ever.

She's my crafting soul mate and it was so wonderful to get something handmade. I could not get these pictures to insert properly, so I apologize that they are sideways.

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Things Owen did this week:
-Began clapping as a reaction to the situation rather than just for fun
-Giving hugs when asked
-Playing peekaboo with his hands
-Feeding himself with a spoon (we still have to load it, but it's a start!)

Meowy Christmas

Ok, so it's not quite Christmas yet, but we were decorating this week and everyone, including Walli got in the spirit. Well, maybe she wasn't quite in the spirit (as you can plainly see from the picture), but we have been putting this scarf on her every year for a picture since we got her. She absolutely hates it and it makes us laugh. Works out great.

Brett putting up the little tree for Owen

Owen liking the new decorations

Owen thinking about how much trouble he can get into with the new decorations

It snowed for the first time this season on Sunday night/Monday morning. I was surprise that Owen actually noticed and he kept pointing and laughing. The next weekend that gets snow we'll be sure to get him out there in it.

Our offices are doing a project for the Humane Society and to get in the spirit, we adopted 4 dogs (the agency that is, not us). People volunteered that wanted to help the owners take care of the dogs that come to work with them every day and I'm on team Brody. He's SO cute. It's a nice break from the day to take him out and walk him. Today's activity was chasing a pigeon.

Things Owen is doing this week:
Pointing at things and saying "Dat". He does this both when he wants something or wants to know what something is. He's been doing this for a few weeks now but does it all the time this week. My mom says it's paybacks since I pointed and everything and said "this" incessantly.