New Year's Eve

Tubby time!



We spent the bulk of the afternoon/early evening rearranging furniture upstairs (with the help of Mamaw), so we ended up having a late dinner. Since there was no way we were going to attempt to go out for New Year's, I tried a new Spinach stuffed Chicken Parmesan recipe. It was pretty good.

While I wish that we had some white wine with our dinner, it was just white grape juice, so no flaming! :)

Christmas Night

Playing with some new & some old toys!



A family picture...Brendan was not the most cooperative, so this is the best we got!

Enjoying some apple pie & cheese with DaDa

More presents!

After brunch, we went home...Brendan took a nap, while Bisia, Grampy & Chris painted Brendan's new big boy room!

Then we let Brendan finish opening presents...the distraction of the toys made for a slow process!

Christmas Morning

After seeing what Santa brought Brendan, we all piled into the van and drove to Mamaw & GrandBob's for brunch and to open presents.

Brendan was kind of into opening presents, but quickly became distracted by all the new toys.

Christmas Morning - at home

Our tree Christmas morning!

Checking out what Santa brought

Beep, beep! He loves his new car!

The train, especially the "boose" was a huge hit!

Christmas Eve

Driving Cousin A.J.'s car (from 20 some years ago!)

Checking out the tree...

Reading with Mamaw...

Going down the stairs like a Big Boy! (He does it very well when he wants to. If he doesn't want to, he refuses, stands there and cries and scares me half to death that he'd just going to take a huge tumble down the whole flight.)

Checking for reindeer?

Christmas Eve - Baby Shower for Molly & John

Since Molly & John were only able to be in town for a few days, we decided to have her family baby shower as a part of the Christmas Eve celebration.

I had fun and made Molly & John a diaper cake...my first solo attempt! I think that it turned out pretty good. I bought several other things to "decorate" it with (mittens, baby powder, washclothes, hand sanitizer and diaper rash cream, but it looked nicer "plain" in my opinion, so I filled a little basket for her with the other goodies!



I found this adorable (gender neutral!) baby journal at Borders that family members wrote baby advice for the parents to be.

The happy parents to be!


Baby Bottle Races



Uncle Jim made cupcakes which Alana & Annie decorated into little panda bears (Molly loved Panda bears as a child). Too cute!

Christmas Eve - A Train!

The Christmas eve celebration was at the Barbato's house this year. They had set up an electric train that Brendan was enthralled with! He even learned a new word..."caboose", which comes out "boose!" Uncle Rob was nice enough to supervise Brendan with the train.

Christmas Eve - Cookies for Santa

We left cookies and milk out for Santa before we headed out to our family Christmas Eve celebration. At first Brendan had no real interest in the cookies, but then he decided he was going to "sample" one of them.



After sucking/chewing on it like a pacifier, he ended up just eating the Hershey kiss off the top of the peanut butter cookie.

Shoemaker Christmas Exchange

On 12/23, we usually have a gift exchange with my dad's family - basically his parents, and brothers & sister and their families.

This was Brendan's first gift opening experience this year...I think he kinda got it. We draw names so everyone gets one gift. Here he is opening a car puzzle, a toy truck and goes on its own and a new book.



Worn out from the partying!


My cousin, Molly, who lives in South Carolina & was one of my bridesmaids is also pregnant. She's having her first & the baby's gender is going to be a surprise! Here are two pictures of the two of us...we're due on the same day!

A Visit with Santa Claus

A local bank was having a free event today that included reindeer, reading stories with Mrs. Claus and of course pictures with Santa.

Brendan LOVED the reindeer!



Enjoyed some chocolate chip cookies and a small candy cane...



However, he was NOT a fan of Santa Claus! (Sadly, this was the second attempt...first attempt, DaDa sat with him, but we still had tears.)

22 Months! - Picture added!

Time's flying by!

A Gingerbread Man!

Brendan's Great Grandma (Mimi) met us at Gymboree this week for a quick visit. She brought Brendan a gingerbread cookie. It was his first and he thought it was pretty yummy!

He ate a good half of it (all we'd let him have before bedtime) and was asking for "mores"! He seems to be developing his sweet tooth that Chris & I knew he had to have in there somewhere!

Mama's Got a Brand New Ride

With our growing family, my aching back, and an aging SUV...it hit 100,000 miles recently...we decided it was time to purchase a new car. After two failed attempts to buy a van from a private seller and a dealer, we stumbled upon the perfect van at CarMax. I can't speak highly enough of them. We were given a very fair price for my SUV and so far we seem to have gotten an excellent van! It's a 2005 Toyota Sienna LE. It only has 50,000 miles on it, had plenty of the extras that I wanted and even had a bonus...a DVD player! Brendan doesn't know about it and won't know about it until we take a long car trip, but I think that it will come in handy.