Day 2: what I wore

An apron! Jeff and I have been working on Luke's birthday dinner and cake for the last few hours, thus an apron. Stay tuned for pics of the cake!

30 day Photo Challenge: Day 1

Ok, so I decided to do a 30 day photo challenge I saw on pinterest. I'm hoping it gets me to remember not only to take pictures, but to then post them. I'm also hoping it will break me out of the box a little bit and mix up what I take pics of and how I take them. So, of course day 1 was the hardest, turn the camera around... self portrait. Here goes nothing.

Jeff pointed out the blurry eye, it is actually an effect where everything but the very center is a little bit blurry. I thought about retaking the picture, but if I did it now you would see something like this:

So... no laughing! I mean it!

It Speaks!

It is official, Luke is talking. His first word was 'mama' which is pretty common. The next two were 'bye' also pretty common... and the not so common but all too fitting for a kid that NEVER stops eating... 'cracker.' We are unsure as to which of the second two words came first as it took a little while to verify they were in fact words, and not just random sounds. But we have our top 3!
  He has 12 teeth, tons of hair and understands pretty much everything. A few weeks ago he got an ornament off the Christmas tree and proudly took it Jeff. Jeff looked at it and said, "baby, you are supposed to leave those on the tree." Luke looked at the ornament, looked at Jeff, then went and put it back on the tree. A few days before that Jeff was sitting on the couch eating Doritos, feeding the occasional one to Luke. Luke must have gotten one he was pretty proud of because he walked over to show it to me, to which I said "where's mine?" He walked over to Jeff, held out his hand for another one, then promptly brought it to me and put it in my mouth. He's a smarty pants! He is also a pretty big boy, but I'll give size updates on Thursday after his one year doctors appointment.
  Alex updates: the kid is crazy. The end.
Seriously though, he's getting so smart! He speaks clearly and in complete sentences (although that is nothing new...) and is in the 'figuring things out' phase. He has to know how and why everything works, and he gets Jeff's tools to try to take things apart and put them back together again. He blesses the food all by himself, but he still loves to snuggle and give kisses (hooray!)
  Anyway, Luke's first birthday is on Wednesday and we are having a construction themed cake. I'll be sure and take pics before we shove his face in it!

Holy Heart Attack Batman

So there I was, finally removing the long past expired juice from the back of the fridge while my darling baby Luke was playing behind me. Or so I thought. I turn around, after a MAXIMUM of 90 seconds and the kid was gone. I hear Alex playing in his new favorite spot at the top of the stairs, so my heart skips a beat and I RUN for the stairs. Oh sweet relief, Luke isn't on them. I look all over the house, can't find him anywhere! So I walk over to where Alex is still playing on the stairs and ask him if he knows where Luke is. He answers "He's up here playing in his room."
AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!
Not only did he climb all the way up my stairs (for those of you that haven't been here or don't remember, there are 21 stairs on this particular flight and they are old farmhouse steep. And they have no railing. And I fell down them 3 days ago,) but he did it in under 2 minutes. So once normal breathing resumed I did what any good mother would do.... got the camera, brought him downstairs and took pictures while he did it again.

Ps. how much do we love his camo boots?!

Happy New Year!

There wasn't a whole lot of action going around these parts for New Years Eve. We played Uno with the kids, and after they went to bed we played Scrabble Slam 'till the ball dropped then it was off to bed. I guess that's what you get when you have little kids, right? Buuuuuuut, I do have a few random cute pics I can share in lieu of crazy pole dancing pics... :0)

Happy New Year!!!

Merry Christmas!

Oh my gosh, this season I have had the Christmas Spirit SOOOOO bad! I swear I was more excited about Christmas than Alex was! And it paid off, I was not disappointed. My boys were excited and grateful and constantly surprised at all the loot they got (Ok, mostly just Alex....) and that made it amazing.
  Last night we went to my mom's house for Christmas Eve, the whole family was there (Except Cyrus & Fam of course) where we had a simple stew dinner and my dad read the story of the first Christmas from the Bible. It's a tradition us kids require of him since we remember our Grandpa Price reading us the story every Christmas eve when we were kids. Since he died while we were all pretty young we cherish it. Thus, we make my dad do the same now. We had stew to remind us of what they ate back when Jesus was born (sort of...) and Jill had a little demonstration for the kids with flat bread, goat cheese and dates. Our small effort to remind little kids that Christmas is more than just presents.
  So then there was Christmas morning. And then there was the inevitable "Uh.... we forgot to charge the battery on the camera." Yup, it's true. We did, forget that is. And since we forgot I must ask your forgiveness for the quality of ALL of the Christmas morning pictures as they were all taken on my phone. Which could be worse, my phone camera is not that bad. And for those of you that have an Iphone, ICloud rules. Anyway, on with the show.

Thank you to Nellie, The Worthams, Grandma and Grandpa Koch, Grandma and Grandpa Price, Grandpa Mayers and everyone else for EVERYTHING! It was all loved and appreciated. Merry Christmas!

Jeff Graduates!!

So it finally happened, and we couldn't be more pleased. Well, I should say I couldn't be more please. Jeff is still positive it's not real, that he's just on Christmas break and he's going to have to go back in January. Poor guy has school PTSD. To help him get over it we went and picked out his new TV last week. For those of you that don't know, I got his family and my family to combine the funds for his graduation present and Christmas present so he could get the big screen he has been wanting forever. It worked out perfectly since about 3 weeks before he graduated ours broke. Anyway, he went and picked one out last.... hmmm.... friday? For those of you that care this is what he got:

http://www.samsclub.com/sams/shop/product.jsp?productId=prod5400031&navAction=push

It's a considerable upgrade in size and picture quality from our old one (oh yeah, and it actually turns on when you press the button) so we are both ridiculously pleased with it. Thanks so much to those of you that contributed! We love you all!