Merry Christmas!!!

We hope your Christmas was as wonderful as ours was. It was a nice time to get together with the family and enjoy some "downtime". (Is that what it's called? 'Cause we're just recovering from it today!)
Christmas Eve was spent at the Gilkerson's house - and the boys were spoiled with gifts as usual! They sure are lucky kids... Here's Owen with Grammy and Poppy:


Dillon and Uncle Andy:Poppy was helping Owen to walk - he's all about the walking now. Still no crawling, just scooting on his butt, but he will walk with your fingers, or with a walker. One of these days I'll get a video of it...

This is one of Dillon's favorites - his "big red truck". He takes it everywhere (minus the trailer part of it), including to bed with him! The other night I went to tuck him in, and he was laying on his tummy with his arm wrapped around the truck like it was a teddy bear or something!

This is Joe's favorite - he never had a Magna Doodle growing up, so he decided to steal Dillon's, and practice his art skills.

A big yellow dumptruck from Uncle Andy is another favorite - he loves to push it around the house, and sometimes will ride in the back as we push it around! Thank you, Andy!!!

Owen was having fun with this little basketball toy- he was actually dropping the balls in the basket. He seems to have a thing for sports - he clings to footballs and baseballs like Dillon clings to his cars!

Thank you, Grammy and Poppy, and Uncle Andy, for all of our wonderful gifts! We love you!

Merry Christmas (cont'd)!!

Christmas morning started around 8:45 (the boys are still too young to wake up super early, thank goodness!), and digging into our stockings. Usually, we'd do this Dec. 6 for St. Nicholas' Day, but we didn't have the stockings up in time this year...


Dillon was all about the unwrapping the cars he found in his stocking - Owen just looked on from the playroom...After the stockings, we moved on to the presents under the tree... Dillon played Santa's helper and passed out the gifts (only after he'd say, "This one's for me!" and we'd tell him otherwise, however!)
He was more than happy to help Owen open his gifts...

And would typically respond, "Whoa! Look at that!!!" or "Check it out!" after unwrapping each gift...
Dillon admired Dad's tie... Daddy explained that every daddy should get a tie for Christmas!
Around noon, we had both families over to our house in the morning for a gift exchange (with my family) and lunch. The boys had a blast with everyone, and it was a great day overall! Here's Dillon posing in his very creative gift from his Aunt Laura - a Home Depot belt! My mom had asked him a few weeks ago if he ever goes to work, and he answered, "Yeah!" She then asked him where he worked, and he said, "Home Depot!" Laura thought it would be a good gift, so he could put his cars in it and not have to carry them around in his hands everywhere. (He will typically carry around 3 or 4 matchbox cars in each hand all day long, and wonder why at the end of the day his fingers hurt!)

After our dinner that night, we wrapped up the festivities with a Happy Birthday song to Jesus, and enjoyed some birthday cake and ice cream! Owen was digging the chocolate cake - he's requested the same thing for his birthday in February!

YMCA Gymnastics

I enrolled Dillon in a baby gymnastics class held by the YMCA this past November, and we met every Monday. The first class, he cried almost the entire time. The second class, it was about 85% of the time. Finally, our last (sixth) class held Dec. 10th, he didn't cry AT ALL! In fact, he spent the majority of the 45 min. class period running around, laughing and having fun. Oh, it was such a relief to see him overcome his fears and start to have fun! Although Joe was skeptical at first (I think he'd rather see his son become the next Jack Nicklaus as opposed to the next Blaine Wilson), I enrolled him to help him get over some of his fears and let out some pent-up energy. I don't envision keeping him in it until he's 18... (That's when having a girl would come in handy!)The big balance beam (3 feet off the ground!) was probably his favorite thing to do!

He's still working on getting enough strength in his hands to hold himself up!

Owen looks on in admiration - he's excited to start his class, too! Only 14 more months to wait!

Dillon shows off his stamps they get on their hands after every class...

Naked Again?

Can someone please explain to me what the obsession with sleeping naked is? I can't keep a diaper on this kid - and when I put those onesie sleepers on him, he ends up taking the whole thing off! This is what we found last night...

We had to wake him up to put his diaper and clothes back on - he was totally out of it, I guess it didn't bother him too much. We were asking if he was cold, and he said (in the most pathetic little 2-1/2 year old voice you can get), "Daddy? I, WAS cold!!!"

Maybe it's the potty training thing, I'm not sure. We did have a breakthrough this past weekend - he actually went #2 in the big potty! He goes every now and again, but we're not pushing it, figure he'll do it when he's ready, and so far he has...

His English language skills continue to amaze us every day - he's quite the talker! He is starting to actually use correct grammar, although he still has his cute phrases like, "I'm stuck-ded!", "I'm trap-ded!" "I want every-stuff!". It's also cute when we pray at night, too - we'll try to steer him in the right direction - "Thank you for my little brother, thank you for my friends, etc." He'll usually fill in blanks with such things as, "Thank you for Poppy's coupe! See it, drive it!", "Thank you for Uncle Andy's digger", "Thank you for big trampoline". We'll say, "Thank you for my baby brother, Owen" and he'll follow with "Thank you push!" "Thank you Owey cries!" (he sometimes gets wound up and pushes Owen down while he's sitting there - that's what he's talking about). Next on to our friends - we say, "Thank you for Miss Julie", Dillon follows with "Thank you for Emi", "Thank you for wevi (Levi)!", "Thank you big purple car! And big orange car and big blue car!" Sometimes he'll say thank you for the potty and his cars, and other random things he's done that day. It really is cute - I'm going to try to get it on camera one of these days... We are very blessed to have our children, and love them very much.

Owen in a Good Mood?

Anyone who know us knows that Owen has never been the happiest baby in the world. It all started when he was 3 weeks old, and has potentially cost him the chance to ever be a big brother. He is better now, most of the time, but still is rarely happy all day long. To all of you readers who boast about your baby being perfect and happy all the time - No, seriously, I'm happy for you, really...

On to my point... Yesterday he was unusually happy and cheerful, so I had to capture the moment - I did get some great shots...

He still isn't crawling - he turned 10mos. on Dec. 4. I think he may be one of those kids who just goes straight to walking. He does get around, just scoots on his butt to get there. I like to call him Scooter.


He also said his first word last week - "Uh-oh". It's so cute, whenever he drops (or throws) something, he'll go, "uh-uh!".


He's growing up fast!!!

Putting up the Christmas Tree

For the first time ever, we got our Christmas tree up and decorations out before December 21st! Pretty impressive if you ask me. I think now that we have a fake tree, we'll try to keep the tradition going of setting it up the weekend after Thanksgiving like most families do. It's nice to see the festive decorations out for more than a couple weeks, it definitely helps to get into the Christmas spirit.

Dillon tried to help, but prefers to remove the ornaments rather than hang them up!

Dillon is in love with his snowmen!!!

First Snow of the Year - Dec. 6, 2007

Dillon was not fond of the snow last year at all - he screamed when we tried to take him out to play in it. This year was a different story - he loved it!

He learned how to eat it, which he thought was pretty neat ("it's COLD, Mommy!"), and how to make snow angels (not the prettiest one ever made, but kind of an angel)...

Too bad it's all melting away already - it was a pretty good amount, too (4-5 inches!)!

Christmas photo shoot - Nov. 23, 2007

I totally wasn't thinking when I scheduled our family photos to be taken on the Friday after Thanksgiving - BLACK FRIDAY to be exact... I thought, "Joe has the day off work, we don't have any plans, it will be great!" Oh yeah, Kristy - everyone else in Columbus and their families will also be out at the mall that, day, too! Whoops - maybe we won't do that again next year... Anyhow, the pictures came out okay. Didn't get the traditional family portrait I had in mind, but I guess there is no such thing as a traditional family portrait when your children are 10 months and 2-1/2 years old... Here are some of the results (quality may not be so great, due to copyright issues...)

Updates

Owen loves bathtime - and loves to dunk his head (or face, rather) under the water. He comes back up coughing, but goes back down to do it again!




Dillon still loves his bathtime, too (doesn't every child?) - after this one, he decided he wanted to do a photo shoot with EVERY stuffed animal and matchbox car he had available. Here are just a couple...

What crazy munchkins we have!

BUGS...

Sorry for the long delay without updates... Our hard drive decided to die on us a couple weeks ago, and it's taken me this long to get a new one and the computer up and running again. I'm still in the process of trying to recover our data from the old one (including all of our pictures). If you haven't backed up your important data from your computer lately - you should highly consider it. I was lucky that this happened to a friend at work a couple weeks before it happened to ours, and it reminded me to back up our pictures. I hadn't done it since Dillon was 12 months old - I would have lost the last year and a half (including Owen's whole life!). Thank goodness I at least have up through October on CDs now.

Anyhow, I'll try to get new pictures up soon, but just wanted to apologize for the delay!

Have a great weekend!