What a week!

Wow, what a week this has been....crazy Christmas days! And I think they will only get busier and wilder as Chase gets older. So much to do and we don't even have to travel more than 5 miles away from home to visit everyone!

We had a wonderful Christmas, starting with dinner Christmas Eve with Great Grandma Stokes at Gamma and Papaw's house. I love that Chase has his own names for everyone...even though I am constantly calling them by the wrong name. It's amazing that I haven't confused Chase! We had a yummy dinner and then opened presents.

Christmas morning, Chase was good to us and let us sleep a little past 7. Then we got up and let the festivities begin. It was a great time watching Chase open his gifts and help with ours too! Famous surprised me with a very pretty blingy watch (and it wasn't even on my list!).

After a short nap, we ventured to Nana and KK's for round 3. We had great lunch there and started in on the presents again. After a couple of hours, it was home again to try another nap...but it didn't work. He just jabbered the entire time and we finally got him up after a while.

Then to Great Grandma Stokes' for the celebration with the whole Stokes family. More good food, more presents and one pooped little boy. He and Gavin chased each other through the house and had lots of fun together. Chase fell in the kitchen and got a nice goose egg on his forehead that is still lingering. We tried taking family pictures, but I haven't seen them yet, so I am not sure how those turned out!

All and all, it was a wonderful but exhausting four day weekend. I need a vacation from my vacation!! And I am so ready to take down the decorations and get back to normal!!

Ready for some pics???

Snow buds outside on Sunday
Trying out his new boots!

Refueling

Playing at Nana's

In the paper with Gavin

Helping Nana and Kay with presents

Trying on daddy's new gloves

Christmas PJs

Trying out the tool bench

His big boy bike!

Eating a dill pickle from Lutz's...he liked it!

His shirt is an understatement ;)

Checking out the ornaments

Reading with daddy

The countdown begins

A completed scrapbook page (from June...way behind!)
In the tub...he is into swimming on his belly now!

Christmas pjs

Me and my bubbie

Daddy and Chase

Isn't he getting so big!

Some more Christmas decor...I think I am done now.

Finally got ornaments up last week.

Can you believe that Christmas is just days away now...I am almost ready! It is getting increasingly difficult to get back to my blog on a regular basis, but I will keep trying. After all, this is my online scrapbook to help me remember everything!!

Two weeks ago, Chase started to get sick, had a cough and runny nose. The doctor said give it a week and if he wasn't better, bring him back. Well a week passed and he was better but then another 4 days passed and he was sick again. Bad cough, runny nose, the works. This past Saturday, we stayed in all day, as he was just not feeling well. Chase and I had spent a restless night sleeping on the couch, because he would not go back to sleep in his crib...guess he wanted some mama time. We missed my MDA Christmas party (for the second time in a row...last year Chase had the flu and gave it to me as well) that night but he slept much better. Sunday, we decided to run to Target and see if some fresh air would do him good. When we got there, the flourescent lights made us immediately notice that his eyes looked really red, which we thought could have been from being tired. Sunday night, he didn't sleep great either, but I woke fully expecting to take him to the sitters. He really never ran any fever and I just figured this was something that had to run his course. We had to wake him up Monday morning and as soon as we saw him, we knew he was staying home. His eyes were matted and really red. He still coughing too. I didn't know if he had pink eye or another type of eye infection. Famous stayed home with him and I went to work and got him an appt for the afternoon. We discovered he had a double ear infection and eye infection, but luckily not pink eye....and we got oral antibiotics to take care of both. I don't even want to think about putting eye drops in....just suctioning his nose out already looks and sounds like we are torturing him :) Glad to report, his eyes looked much better this morning and seems like the antibiotics are doing their job.

So with the sickies, I of course have to rock him before bed and love extra on him.....so now when we go to take him to bed, he points to the glider and says "rock". He also has taken to singing Rock a Bye Baby...it is too cute. He has the melody down pretty good and sings "rock a baby". Such a sweetie pie. Makes up for the havoc that he wreaks the rest of the time!!

Just three weeks away

Pushing the swing....
Running away from Daddy

Enjoying a warm spurt outside

A little bathroom decorating in brown, burgandy and greens

Decorating my buffet that I just redid

On top of the TV armoire

Christmas that is and I am not ready at all! Lots to do before then.

Mr man is doing great, staying busy as usual. The boy rarely rests for a minute and is always into something. Since Thanksgiving, he has had a little cough, but never a fever and he seems to be doing better. No coughing at all last night, so that is good. It is so hard to hear him in bed coughing and have nothing you can really do to make him better. So I am glad he slept better last night.

Thanksgiving was great this year. Since we always go two places on Thanksgiving, we always say we are not going to stuff ourselves...but that never happens. There is just too much good food to be had. It was a long day, but I am thankful that we never really have to travel during the holidays...it is nice to be around home.

Not too much new in our house, I started putting up decorations but now just have to finish adding the ornaments to the tree. I decided to change up my colors to red and black this year, so it is taking a little longer to pull it all together. I just love Christmas decorating. Otherwise, just the normal preparations for Santa's arrival. It is going to be so fun this year seeing Chase (and Gavin) ripping into presents. It was so fun watching them interact at Thanksgiving and they had so much fun chasing each other around!

Thanksgiving already??

Trying for a kiss
Reading with mama

Hiding in the clothes basket

Reading with daddy

Blankie love - this boy loves his flannel blankets (or BB as he calls them). He doesn't care which one but he has to have his BB for bedtime and when he gets up in the morning, if there are three blankets in bed with him, he has to take all three out with him. He does not want any other kind of blankets on him...no quilts, no microfleece, nothing...just BB's. Thank goodness Granny made about 20 of them!

Look at that smile...all mischief there!

Man, I can't believe that Christmas is just around the corner! Santa will be here so soon. I have a feeling that Chase is NOT going to be happy to see Santa at the mall this year. I doubt I will even be able to get him out of my arms this time.

Chase is just growing up before our eyes...he just seems like a little man already. He is really talking up a storm and starting to string words together too. He is so dang smart, you wonder where he picks up the things he does.

He loves to have books read to him...first I read it to him then he has to have Daddy read the same book too. Then he gets another book and starts over. He loves to point out the different pictures and identify them. He is loves to color too and make sure that you don't have a pen around him, cause he wants it! His big thing now is pulling and pushing us when he wants something. He tries to pick us up by pulling on our shirt or pant leg to get us to go with him somewhere and he always has to give his sound effects to show how heavy we are.

His eating is getting better again. There for a while, we had about 4 things to choose from for dinner (if you didn't want a fight). But he seemed to get better. He definitely wants to eat like a big boy, using your fork and wants your plate. No little boy bites for him anymore. He always wants to feed himself and gets mad if he thinks you are going to try and feed him.

He loves watching me cook and imitates me alot by dragging out my pots and pans and mixing imaginative food! He likes to try and feed us and have us drink blocks full of juice. He is quite the chef!

Halloween Fun!

Daddy and Chase
Granny and Chase

Granny and Chase

Working the leaf blower

Sweet smile

Hands in the cook cook jar

Scamming granny out of nilla wafers

Our little tiger...note the tongs!

Chase had a fun halloween this year! He was a tiger! He looked so dang cute in his costume...loved the padding in the belly and butt area!

On Halloween, we went to Nana and Kay's (Famous' mom and aunt) house for dinner. We played for a while there and then got into costume. He was not liking the costume at all in the beginning. Then he found a pair of tongs that he liked playing with (I know, this kid cracks me up!) and it completely distracted him...he was fine from then on! We then went to James & Jaime's house, Great-Grandma Stokes, Granny & Grampa's house and the babysitter and neighbors. He did really good, but I could tell he was pretty pooped by the end of it all.

I finally am trying to upload some video. I have no skills with editing it, so bear with my bad taping skills. But it is too cute of Chase walking up to Granny's house! Make sure and turn up the volume and listen for him talking.

Hello Again

Watching toons
At the MU game

Playing in the leaves with Gampa

More leaves

Can't you just hear the sound effects?

Jaime and James at Ria's

Feeding Elmo-- he is becoming quite the little daddy!

Daddy tickling Chase...look at those teeth!

First Anniversary@ Ria's

Hi to everyone who keeps up with this blog! I need to get back to posting every week again, I am going to make a real effort!

On Saturday, the MDA had our annual Day at the Game at Mizzou Homecoming. We had tailgating with beverages and a catered meal across from the Stadium and then to the game. It was a fun time, even though the game was a blow out. That pretty much took up most of the day and we were beat by the time we got home. Chase spent the afternoon and night with G&G Stokes. I think he wore them out, but good news is he took good naps and slept well for them through the night. They must have wore him out too, cause he took 2 - 2 hour naps yesterday! I had to wake him up last night from his evening nap.

The weekend before, we celebrated our first anniversary and went out to dinner with friends to Ria's. We had a good time and enjoyed the company and adult time out!

Other than that, not much else new going on. I love fall weekends, cause we like staying in and getting cozy in our pjs and just relaxing. That is what the weekends are about, right??