Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas to you!  I hope you had a great day of celebration with family.  I surely did.  I am so thankful for all of my blessings.

We've kind of had 3 days of celebrating.  On Sunday, we all ventured up to my parents' house in north GA to eat a late lunch/early dinner (linner?).  My brother and his fam came in from Nashville... my sister and her fam from Gainesville.  An added bonus was that my cousin and her hubby stopped by on their way back to Greenville, SC from Atlanta!  So good to see them.

Some uncle-nephew bonding time.

Sydney reading to Olivia and Madeline.

Mischevious Taylor... what is she up to here?

My sweet little man.

Present time!  (just one... though, I think that turned into just two.  They are pretty convincing.)

Parker loves his Grandmom!

Madeline got some pretty duct tape for Christmas... I think she put it to good use!

Christmas Eve was a welcomed bum-around-the-house day.  In fact, we bummed so much, that we were in a hurry to get things done before church!  Church was at 4 and we didn't leave the house until 4 (doh!), but luckily it's only about 8 minutes away, so we didn't miss too much.  It was a beautiful, candlelight service with gorgeous music.  Afterwards, we did our annual Christmas Eve dinner at our neighbor's house.  Yummy food and great company.

I'm sure, in the blink of an eye, this will be her coming down the stairs for prom.

Sweet sisters.

Sprinkling the "reindeer food" Sydney made at school.

Leaving Santa his milk and cookies.



Christmas morning started pretty early, a little after 6.  The girls were very excited to see that Santa had come, and they played with their toys by the fireplace for a while. Sydney put together, took apart, and put together again a puzzle.  Stephen and I made breakfast, and then we moved onto the tree!

We walked the toy aisles at Walmart several weeks ago, and I told her to pick out one item she can ask Santa for.  Out of ALL the items she could pick from (including the $200 dollhouses I rushed her past), she wanted a Dora guitar. 

Anything else in there?

Parker's not too sure about this.

Once we got things settled down, Parker fed, and things packed up, we headed up to my parents' house again!  We got there, ate a brunch, and then the present-fest began.  It was a madhouse.  With 6 grandkids 9 and under, you can probably imagine.  Lots of fun and great memories were made! 

Parker couldn't get enough of his uncle!

3/5 of the fam.

Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night!

Baby, it's cold outside

Winter seems to have come in with a bang!  Either that, or I'm getting older and my body isn't tolerating the cold very well.  Regardless, Stephen and I have been looking forward to having a long holiday weekend together with the kids, with Saturday having no plans whatsoever!  I planned some activities to keep the girls entertained inside, because we really didn't venture outside too much.

Friday night, the girls and I did our annual gingerbread house, which is starting to be a tradition.  I guess our family is still so new that traditions haven't had the time to prove themselves.  But, we'll call this a tradition for now.  Taylor got into it this year, too.  (Though, all they really wanted to do was eat the gumdrops.)

Parker just observed.  Soon, Parker, soon.

The final product.  Amazing.

 

Saturday- again, the day we had NO plans (and boy was I excited!)- started off a little later than normal.  Stephen woke to feed Parker at 5:30 AM and the girls sleepily came into our bed, but we all stayed in it until 7:30.  These days, that is sleeping in for us!  I had a lot of things I wanted to get done, and some Christmasy activities I had for the girls.  On top of that, we decided to start potty-training Taylor.  Today.  So, the timer was set for every 15 minutes, so whatever we were doing, everything stopped for her to go potty.  (I won't digress on this topic, but here are some stats: her success rate was about 10%, and we used up approximately 75% of the lysol wipes in our house.)  But, it was a really good day- of course, it had its ups and downs with two rambunctious toddlers who are BFFs one minute and fighting the next (oh, sisters...), but it was a nice family-bonding day.

 

Painting ornaments.  In bathing suits, what else?



Sweet Parker.

 

Helping me make gingerbread cookies, something I've never attempted before.

The final product. 

Hanging around the tree.  After these smiles were full out tackles on the rug.

Training- Week 11

Sunday, 12/16:

• Activity: Hip Hop Abs DVD (Total Body Burn)
• Time: 20 minutes

Monday, 12/17:

Activity: Jogging

3.07  miles

31:15  minutes

Average pace: 10:18 minutes/mile

Location: Treadmill

Calories burned: 459

Tuesday. 12/18:

Activity: Jogging

.98 miles

10:32 minutes

Average pace: 10:47 minutes/mile

Location:  Neighborhood

Calories burned: 138

Friday, 12/21:

Activity: Jogging

2.21 miles

22:00 minutes

Average pace: 9:57 minutes/mile

Location: Treadmill

Calories burned: 325

Saturday, 12/22:

**A mixture of exercises for about 20 minutes (sit-ups, squats, push-ups, arm exercises).

 

Here comes Santa Claus...

... and there goes two little girls running as fast as they can away from that bearded man!

We've had two attempts to get pictures taken with Santa this year.  We were 0 for 2 with having happy (girl) campers.

Poor Taylor was literally shaking.

Parker did well, though!

Shhh... they didn't know Santa was behind them.  Notice how Sydney is doing a little Austen Powers finger action.  Hmmm?

One grandparent of a kid in Sydney's class was so sweet and got a Santa to come to her class, plus bought them pizza!  I warned her teacher that Sydney was typically terrified of Santa.  When I picked Sydney up, her teacher told me that Sydney wasn't one bit terrified of Santa.  (peer pressure!  awesome!)  She said she sat in his lap and talked to him and everything.  This is a big step, people!  The only "okay" picture we have of Sydney and Santa was when she was 3 months old.

I don't have pictures yet of Sydney in his lap, but here are some fun pictures of her class with Santa.



Training- Week`10

So... this whole going-back-to-work thing has had an effect on my running.  Just wanted to start with that :)

Here is all I did this week:

Monday, 12/10:

• Activity: Jogging
• 2.01 miles
• 20:10 minutes
• Average pace: 10:02 minutes/mile
• Location: Treadmill
• Calories burned: 301

Saturday, 12/15:

• Activity: Jogging
• 2.55 miles
• 28:01 minutes
• Average pace: 10:58 minutes/mile
• Location: Neighborhood
• Calories burned: 363

Here's to a better week next week!

Latest Doings

I feel like I haven't had many fun blog updates lately!  Thought I'd fill you in on what's been happening here.

Sydney:

Sydney has been a wave of emotions lately.  She can be the sweetest, cutest little thing, and then she can be a disrespectful, defiant little girl.  You never know what you're going to get.  It's very frustrating, as her bad moods seem to hit at very inopportune times.  I'm hoping this is just a phase. 

She has started to read, which is amazing me.  We practice every night, and she learns so much during the day at school.  When did she grow up so much??

She had strep throat last week, so she spent 3 days out of school with me.  We had some nice bonding times.  Thanksfully, she's all better.

I attempted to straighten Sydney's hair one night... check it out!

...she woke up with it curly again.  But look how pretty it still looks!

I love this picture.

Doing her make-up school work.

 

Birthday Parties:

 

I never realized how many December babies there are!  I feel like Sydney's been invited to so many birthday parties lately.  Here are a couple of recent ones:

Dance party at a dance studio... getting glitterfied.

Sydney the ballerina?  Not so sure...

Sydney and her friend Maddie.

 

 

Parker:

 

Parker is 11 weeks today... can you believe it??  He has had a rough week or so.  Last Saturday night, he was up, screaming, from 8:30 PM to 4:00 AM.  That was something completely atypical.  Parker rarely ever cries.  I took him to urgent care Sunday AM, and it turns out he has an ear infection and bronchiolitis.  Uggh. He's on an antibiotic and breathing treatments.

 

He started sleeping in his crib last week.

Sweet boy!

 

 

All about me:

 

Well, I've had an exciting week or so.  I am now braces-less (yay!) and employed again (...yay?...).  I went back to work on Monday, and it's actually nice to get back into the swing of things.  However, it's crazy how quickly stress sets in.  I miss the days of wearing sweats and watching DVR'd Ellens while holding my sweet baby.  But, it's been great to see everyone and I'm glad I came back a little before the break to get caught up on things.  Plus, Parker has been in the wonderful care of my Mom and Stephen, of which I am SO appreciative.

 

Braces are off (finally!) and I now have a retainer to wear.  It's funny, because Taylor really hasn't known me without braces (she was 5 months old when I got them on), so she was a little confused at first. 

 

Training was going pretty well- I ran my first 5K last weekend!  It was hard, but fun.  A few of my neighbors and I ran it together.  However, what I was afraid would happen has happened... I ran my first day back to work, but haven't done anything since.  I'm just so exhausted, but I need to figure out a plan to make running a priority.  Hopefully it's just getting back into things that's making me so tired and it'll get better.

 

A Sydney-taken picture of my no-braces.

I got to run with this sky surrounding me.  Beautiful!

Jingle Jog 2012- Me, Karen, Melissa

Silly girls

 

My Christmas present... before (kind of- there used to be a wire shelf going across the wall)

And after!  Yay!