1-11-11

This boy turned 1 on 1-11-11.

Sounds pretty lucky, huh? Unfortunately for him, that wasn't really the case. He was fighting an ear infection and landed at the Doctor's office on his first birthday.

He had been sick with a cold for a while and had been to see the Dr. a few weeks earlier. But on Saturday, the day of his party, he woke up with a fever. Luckily, I had only invited a few family members and most of them couldn't come. The ones who could come had recently spent time with Tyson so I figured they had already been exposed. (And my pediatrician said that Drs. invented birthday parties so kids could spread germs and keep them in business!)

We had a fun "transportation theme" party.
He did feel well enough to blow out his candles, try to eat a cupcake (hard to do when you can't breathe out of your nose) and open presents.

Of course, he did get some extra help...

Logan had a lot of fun playing with his cousins.

We saved some cupcakes to have on Tyson's birthday night. He had started the antibiotic that afternoon and was a little better. He seemed to enjoy his cupcake more.

Happy Birthday, Tyson! I can't believe you've grown from this

to this

We love you!

Noon time New Years

I read a great idea on JDaniel4's Mom blog for celebrating the New Year at noon on New Year's Eve. This way, you can still party it up, have a count down, etc, but no one has to stay up all night. So here is how we rang in the New Year noon time style.
First we had to "make a party" as Logan calls decorating. I hung some streamers while Logan used a poster paint marker to trace the numbers 2011. Luckily, those are easy numbers. The 2 was the only one that was hard for him. He's good at making the letter o, so I showed him how that was the same. Then when he made the 1 he said, "Start at the top and go down." He did it all by himself!

After making the party, we had to celebrate.
First, we had a dance party.

Practicing for Brian and Kari's wedding

Then we had a tornado! Ok, that part of the party was not planned. We were inside dancing away when it started looking ominous outside. Greg and Logan went out to watch.

It was almost 70 degrees at noon on New Years Eve. It was in the 20s by the next morning!

I heard Cindy Pressler saying, "If you live in Barnart, Arnold, Fenton... take cover NOW!" So I went out and told them to come in. We actually went to the basement.

A view of the storm from our basement.

The tornado blew right over the top of us and there was no damage in our area. However, parts of Fenton did get hit pretty hard.
We actually had to toast the New Year at 12:01 after the tornado was over. We had kiddy cocktails of Hawaiian Punch and Sprite. We counted down and everyone gave each other hugs and kisses. Logan still says, "Happy New Year!" and then gives me a kiss.

Logan got to open a firecracker shaped treat. It had candy inside. It actually did "explode" because he ripped it so hard that the candy went flying.

Then we ate Chinese food for lunch since it was January 1, 2011 in China.
After our big party, it was nap time!
We had a lot of fun ringing in the New Year. After our disasterous December, we are looking forward to 2011 being a better year.

Remember when New Year's Eve used to be about partying it up with all our friends. But now, I'm very happy to be spending a New Year celebrating with this little man and his big bro and his Daddy!

Tyson's First Christmas

Ok, I'm finished with my bottle. Time to open a present.

Wait. I could climb up here...

and sit on the present!

What? I'm not supposed to climb on the presents?



But I'm so cute on the presents. I'm totally getting away with this one!



Christmas 2010

The boys had fun on Christmas morning~ especially Logan!

He really loved that Santa brought him presents and CANDY- that was the big highlight, the boy loves candy but doesn't get it too often. Tyson has been fighting a cold for a while now so we have been giving him a bottle of 1/2 juice + 1/2 water in the mornings. He really needs to chug some liquids straight away when he gets up or he is just one congested baby so the bottle really helps. He was much more interested in snuggling with his bottle in daddy's lap than the presents. But it kind of made it easier to only have one kid grabbing for presents.

We also had a white Christmas this year which was very beautiful!

We had enough time to play with some of our toys before heading to Festus for the evening.

Luckily we didn't get enough snow to make the roads dangerous on Christmas day so we were still able to make it to my parent's house (although we were very nervous about going because we were driving their borrowed van).
We loaded up the car and went to Festus after nap time. We opened presents first and then ate a delicous dinner.

This year we had Christmas in the basement- which despite the noise level was a lot of fun. We could all hang out together and there is plenty for all the kids to do: riding toys, video games, trains.

 Nick and my mom even set up a "store" in the closet. Nick would push "his baby" (Tyson) in the car to the store where my mom would sell stuff to them.

I think Nick bought this hat for his baby. Isn't he cute?

We stayed until the boys' bedtime. They fell asleep in the car and we put them to bed at home. It was a good Christmas day. Greg felt ok for most of it and nothing eventful happened. We were thankful for days like that in December.

Christmas Eve 2010

We had an interesting Christmas Eve this year- it was a very "interesting" December in general. Greg had an accident in the van a week before Christmas. We had to jump through a lot of hoops to get the police report and to get a rental van. In the meantime, Greg got sick and we got dumped with snow on Christmas eve. Not wanting to take a sick husband out and infect the whole family or drive my parents borrowed van in the snow, we weren't able to go to Greg's family Christmas party- it ended up getting cancelled anyway. So we stayed home together. Greg started feeling a little better by the afternoon/evening-- or he just faked feeling good to make his wife happy. And we stayed in and did stuff as a family.
Mid-afternoon the UPS guy brought by a Tinkertoy set that I had won off the Scholastic blog!! Logan thought it was Santa, in a big brown suit.

Then we did some family crafting.

Logan made a "birthday cake" for Jesus out of playdough.

We lit the candles and sang. The boys got to open one present- a book to read for bedtime.

Logan was SO excited about Santa coming he could hardly stand it. This was a first for him and it was fun to see him get so into it.
After the boys went to sleep, Santa came!! (Even though we forgot to leave cookies out for him).

Then "Santa" went to bed early because he wasn't feeling so well. :)