A brand new year!

2011 is here!! I love fresh starts and am looking forward to a great new year.

Famous and I rang in the new year with several stops around town and hung out with several friends. We started out with dinner at Chilis and drinks at BWW with Adam and Stephanie. Then met James and Jaime at Das Stein Haus and later met up with Missy, Lee and Erin at C-Dubs. It was a fun, low key evening out in JC!

Who is this strange man??

Self portraits in the car!

Chase is having a great time playing with all his toys. He loves his Thomas trains and take along sets. Here he is playing with his Tidmouth Sheds set.

Do you see him peeking through the door?

Say cheese!

He also got some legos for Christmas too and we had to make some fun stuff with them. Over the summer, I had found some regular Legos (for older kids) at a garage sale and they all came with instructions to make these elaborate vehicles and such. They would take forever to make and I had to follow the instructions verbatim! So, naturally, we had to read the instructions for these legos too. We decided to make dinosaurs.

Rawwrrr!

Last week, Mom and Dad got some free tickets to Mizzou game (thanks Neil!). It was fun to go and I had never been before. I enjoy watching basketball, but it is always fun to be there in person. The game was a blowout though!!

Chase also got a Thomas Zip, Zoom & Logging Adventure set for Christmas from Nana. We finally put it together tonight and he just loves it. He spent 45 minutes playing with it non-stop and if you know his attention spans...that is very out of the ordinary for him. As we went to bed tonight, I laid with him and we talked. I told him I was tired...he said "me too mama, I worked hard on my logging adventure tonight. I so tired". What a little man. And then he sang his ABC's to me and very well I might add too!

He is just becoming quite the little man, learning so much and growing so fast.

The Christmas Wrap Up

A few pictures before we get to Christmas. Chase loves coloring and finally started using his desk to do so...here he is hard at it!!

A couple of weeks ago we got the chance to go to St Louis to see the Rams vs Chiefs game. A lot of fun, except the Rams lost..boo.

At the tailgate

Inside the stadium...nosebleed section!

Our friends Missi and Chris got to go down on the field while the Chiefs practiced prior to the game. They are die hard Chiefs fans... but we are friends with them anyway :)

Onto the Christmas festivities. We were excited to see that it had snowed overnight before Christmas Eve and kept snowing all day. Such a pretty snow too. We tried building a snowman, but it didn't work well. We need lessons!! But we definitely could do snowball fights and Chase had fun trying to get us. I got a couple good ones on Famous too.

Coming for me...hey...I got a camera here!!

Going after Daddy

This is what happens when he doesn't want to come inside yet!

We spent Christmas Eve at Mom and Dad's house and had dinner with Big Grandma Stokes. We had french dip sandwiches, baked potatoes, salad, carrot cake. Yum. Chase had pancakes and wait for it...salad. Which he kept telling me that he really liked and it was very, very good. Crazy kid...add a little ranch and he might eat anything!

Helping Papaw open gifts...he wanted to help everyone.

Got a tool belt and googles....love it. Spent the evening hammering everything.

With his goggles....one of my favorite pics. He said he looked like Bob the Builder.

Thomas, Thomas and more Thomas

Helping Gamma

Coming down the hall Christmas morning.

Opening his art kit

Daddy got another Cardinals shirt

Daddy, err...I mean Chase got Tron for Christmas :)

He decided to use his hammer to unwrap everything

We went to Nana and KK's for lunch on Christmas day. He could hardly contain himself and was very ready to open gifts again!

Thomas wrapping paper

Thomas read along book

Thomas whistle

Playing with Spencer (from Thomas)....do you see a theme here??

Nana and KK opening gifts

After that, we went home to try to get a nap in before heading to Big Grandma's house for dinner. We had to wake him up, but first thing he said was...."time to go play with Gavin?".

Playing with Gavin's Thomas set

More Thomas playing....

(note to self...see if Thomas the Train is a public company...I might want to buy stock, since we own have the inventory now!!)

Unwrapping gifts...what a mess!

Stephanie trying to contain all the boys! Maybe she wants to babysit too??

All and all, it was a wonderful holiday weekend. As I sit here and type this out, I can't help but to feel lucky for all our family and friends. We are beyond blessed! Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to you all!

Christmas is just around the corner

and boy, I do not feel ready at all. Each year I always say I am going to start earlier so that I might actually be able to enjoy the season and I never do. I have the never ending list of things that I want to do, recipes to try, fun decorating and it never happens. Oh well, there is always next year, right??

I made an advent calendar for Chase this year and his is fascinated with opening his gifts each morning. This first couple mornings, he wanted more than just his one envelope, but he is getting the hang of it for sure. Here he is on December 1....he got a matchbox car. By far the candy and the Thomas engine has been his favorites!

I started back to working at Marshall and Co. a month or so ago....just in time for the Christmas party. It was a fun night out, although we always pay for it the next day....and I mean all day. Can't quite recover like we used too. Oh well, it was fun!

Before the party pic

I had decorations up for a couple of weeks before getting the tree upstairs and decorated. Trying to find a free night to get the ornaments on with all three of us was hard to find. Chase really enjoyed putting the ornaments on this year...except he kept putting them all on the same branches. I did mini trees for his room this year with jingle bells and Daddy got a sports tree for his man cave downstairs.



Helping with ornaments

The finished tree

We have been singing Christmas carols in bed instead of reading books for the last couple of weeks and he loves them. I have him recorded but will post that separate. Here he is playing "drums" with his stepstool, ruler and tools. He is very inventive if nothing else!!