A Preschool New Year's Eve

Because all of our kids will be asleep to welcome in the New Year, one of the mom's from Lillian's preschool class had the brilliant idea to countdown to noon today for them. Lillian's classmate, Street's mom, Brooke graciously had us all over this morning for brunch and a playdate. We had kids everywhere! Lillian's classmates: Street, Lucie, Quinn, Henry, Audrey, and Coral were all there along with siblings. They had a blast playing and then counting down to noon. Here are some pictures and a video I made from our New Year's Eve 2009 Countdown to Noon!

Getting Settled

After traveling all around for Christmas, we are finally back and trying to get settled. With all the new Christmas gifts, it took me several days to get everything put away. We had to do some re-arranging and moving around, but the toys have a new home. The main part of helping me find places was moving a lot of the "girl" toys up to Lillian's room. She got a new Disney princess storage unit from my mom for Christmas, so I put it together and got all of her dress-up stuff organized in it. It is really cute and the perfect size for Lillian. She keeps wanting to go up and see her "new princess room." Tory got her a cute sign for her wall that says "Princess" so that completed it. I'm hoping once I get Andrew's new room complete and him moved in, that they will both play upstairs more. I like having the tv in the playroom for morning and evening, but one of my goals this year is to have them play more and not watch so much tv, so if there isn't one in their rooms, maybe they will get used to that.

Andrew got his super cute sports bedding from Dad and Jamie for Christmas as well, so I put it on his new bed and it looks great. Jamie is still working on the curtains, so after those are done and up, I'll post pictures. Plus, I want to get a storage unit for his room to move toys up there too. Andrew is also excited about his new "big boy" room. He looks so proud when I tell him that it is his. He loves his new pillows shaped like sports balls.

This morning, Lillian went up to play with her dress-up stuff and came down all decked out and so I decided to take a few pictures of her and Andrew to share:

Christmas Day 2009

Christmas morning, we were at our house this year, which is nice so that Santa can visit our house on Christmas Eve! Lillian helped me bake cookies on Christmas Eve and we put some out for Santa before bedtime. The first thing she checked when she got up that morning was to see the cookies. She asked, "Where the cookies!?" I said that Santa ate them and she looked upset at me and said "More cookies!" I think she wanted to eat them herself.

Then I reminded her she better look under the tree and she was excited to see her new doll and tricycle. She climbed right on. Andrew creeped down the stairs and wasn't sure what was going on, but he was excited to start using his new vaccuum when he saw it.

Later, we left and drove to Shiner for the day to spend Christmas with Brandon's parents and siblings. It was a nice visit and there was way too much food! The kids were going ninety to nothing all day and with no nap. Andrew loved his new shoes he opened and Lillian's favorite gifts were her new dress-up clothes. (She has worn them everyday since.)

Needless to say, after 5 minutes on the road, I looked back to see this! All tuckered out on Christmas day!

Christmas at Grandma Teddy's 2009

Lillian helped Grandma open her gift from us.


Lillian opening a gift from Mamaw and Papaw

The kids enjoyed snuggling with Papaw!

Cousin Josie came to visit with her parents as well...my aunt Kathy and Uncle Randy.

We stopped and visited with aunt Mole at Chic-fil-a in Bryan on our way back to Round Rock!

My mom had her reconstructive surgery on Wednesday before we came, so she was trying to rest and recover from that. We took her to the doctor before we left and she is doing well. I know she will be so glad to get back to normal again. For now, she is having a restful Christmas at home.

Christmas with the Pearman's 2009

We had Christmas with my Dad and Jamie on Friday night and Saturday morning. We got there that evening and had some chips and dips with the kids outside while Dad grilled up some burgers. The kids played with the leaves. Kind of looks like more of a fall picture than Christmas!

Then, Saturday morning, Santa had come and we had Christmas time. Lillian lined up all of her stocking stuffers and poor Andrew had Lillian's Dorothy wig tried on him!

Then on to opening gifts....The kids had a blast with that and then we got to show Grandpa JD his surprise gift from all of us.....2 seats from Texas Stadium we had made into a bench. He seemed to love that being that he is a huge Cowboy's fan.

The kids' favorite gifts, I think were Lillian's baby Snow White doll and Andrew's busy ball-popper! Thanks Dad and Jamie, we had a great time and love all the great gifts! I'll have to take a picture when we get Brandon's basketball goal up.

Selective Hearing

Lillian never listens when we are asking her a question, but apparently her ears work...we were out in the yard today and we could hear the ice cream truck. She yells to us as she puts her hand to her ears..."Listen! You hear that?" We scrounged for some change and the kids got ice cream.

Cameron Park Zoo

Brandon took vacation this week, so we planned on taking the kids to the zoo to do something fun as a family. Although it was a cloudy day, it wasn't a bad day to go and on the plus side, there weren't many people there, so we felt like it was all to ourselves.

Lillian loved every minute of it running to each place saying, "Find more animals." The only part she was a little wary of was the snakes and then the nocturnal animals building since it was so dark...she didn't really want to look at the owls. Andrew was freaked out by almost everything...my little scardy cat. He would start screaming everytime we went inside a building...even if it was just fish! I think he thought we were going to feed him to the animals or something. Speaking of which, when Lillian heard the Lion roaring across the zoo, she asked about him, so I told her it was a lion. I told her he was probably hungry and if he could eat her. She said no! I asked if he could eat Andrew. She said no! I asked if he could eat daddy. She said no! Then she looked at me and grinned and said, "Eat mama!" ha ha...my little smarty!

Here are some pictures of our outing. I had to take one of the lion because anytime I've been there before, he has been way off and this time he was pacing back and forth in front of the window looking at us! I think he thought we were bringing lunch.

Stuck Inside

It was a nasty day outdoors anyway, so it worked out well to be stuck inside. Poor Andrew had a stomach bug today. He definitely wasn't himself. He was either laying on me or Brandon all day in our recliner. I don't think he ate a thing all day, but everything he drank came right back up at us. I don't know how many shirts I wore today or how many loads of laundry I did. To top it off, he finally was keeping things down, but the sickness decided to turn south. Andrew had pulled off his diaper to go up to the bathtub and of course had diarrhea up the stairs and also on our landing at the top of the stairs. What a stink! Yuck! Brandon got the carpet shampooer out to get that taken care of immediately. I hope he feels better tomorrow. I think Lillian felt a little jealous of us holding Andrew all day, but was fine. She had fun putting on her new cheerleader costume she got from Dianne this weekend and playing and watching tv in the other room. I guess we'll find out soon enough if any of us catch Andrew's bug.

St. Nick

We brought the kids back from their weekend in Shiner today for them to find that St. Nick had visited last night. Lillian was very excited to see what was in her stocking. Andrew on the other hand, would find one thing and run off with it and then I would have to call him back to look in again and see what else was in there. Lillian lined up her things on the floor. She got Happy Feet the dvd, some Little People, and some books. Andrew got a firetruck, Little People, and some books as well. I'm very excited to see their reactions to Christmas now after this! If you are curious about why we celebrate this day...look back to my December 2008 post about St. Nick's Day. And here is a link to website that talks a little about it.
http://wf-f.org/st.nicholas.html

Thanksgiving weekend

We packed up and traveled to Alto for Thanksgiving on Tuesday afternoon. On the way, we stopped at a convenient store in Madisonville to take a bathroom brake where the kids saw lollipops they had to have. Lillian held onto hers as we rode, but Andrew decided to chew through the plastic wrap and ended up with rainbow colors all over him!

Wednesday, we celebrated Thanksgiving with mom. I made this Turtle pumpkin pie I saw the recipe for in a magazine. It was really good and the kids loved it too.

Then we went over to Dad's on Wednesday evening and spent Thanksgiving day. The kids loved playing outside there. Lillian also liked sharing a book with Grandpa.

Then on Friday, we made a quick gift run to Jacksonville to pick up something on Grandma's list and they had a mule drawn wagon in the parking lot with free rides, so we took a ride around the parking lot. Lillian loved it. Andrew wasn't so sure. When we got home, Lillian was still excited about the mules and wanted to see the neighbor's horses, so we walked over and she fed it a carrot.

Video from Thanksgiving day: