christmas cookies

it is pretty often around here that we make cookies. landen loves to put colored frosting and sprinkles on sugar cookies. this time we had our neighbor friend Lacey and her mom come over and help us decorate some. they even brought over a bunch of christmas shaped cookie cutters. we made a big huge mess but had a big amount of fun!
they each had to have their own knife to spread the frosting because it is IMPOSSIBLE for a three year old to frost a cookie without licking the knife. we nearly made it through the whole adventure without spreading germs but of course the wrong knives got licked and put back into the frosting. oh well, no one was sick and we all love each other :)
didnt they do a great job!!

a little of this, a little of that

one of the joys of christmas with a three year old is they have no concept of the dollar value of gifts. that doesnt mean you get him something expensive and expect them to love it soo much more, but it means they can get something that costs $2.50 and it can be their very best favorite gift! one of his favorites this year was his shaving kit. he actually got two of them, but i have the second one packed away to bust out in a few months for a new exciting thing to do. he thinks he needs to shave every day just like his dad. joe showed him what to do, and he was hooked. he actually does a pretty good job. of course ive never tried to shave my face before, but he looks like he'll do good when the time comes. by then the razor will be a blade rather than just rubber tho.

i totally dont remember them having shaving kits to teach my how to shave my legs way back in the day. might have saved me some pain!even tho today is actually the day im doing all these blog updates, most of the pictures and stories go back over the last couple months. rather than trying to rack my brain about which event came first and puttin em all in that order, im just postin em as they come. today was one of those lazy sundays and we didnt go to my dads for dinner cause they are all outta town. the boys watched football after church then played a little wii. taylor was major messy eating dinner so i just took her shirt off and let her play while i made dinner for the grownups and attempted to clean my never ending mess of a kitchen. but to sum our day up after church. this is pretty much what we all did:
taylor discovered that a few of the cupboards dont have those annoying baby latches on them and she can actually open them and play. this one on the bottom is fairly safe, mostly just bendy straws.
the critters all laid around and enjoyed being warm and dry. today was the first day of what the weather channel says will be lots and lots of rain. thats all it shows for the next ten days at least!
the boys sat on the couch and played the wiil. since landen got indiana jones and batman lego for christmas thats ALL he ever wants to do. we limit him and only allow him to play when one of us can play with him which means taylor has to either be down for the night or taking a nap.
taylor also discovered that its fun to climb around on upside down things. like landens little lightning mcqueen chair for example
and cosmo just had to look cute :)

santa barbara cont.

i didnt realize that i had some other great stories and pictures to talk about during our santa barbara trip. and i have no idea if its possible to go back and edit an entry after ive already posted it. so we'll just add another one on top :)
while we were walking around on the pier some of the guys noticed a lonely pelican hanging out on the fence. now my brother and his friends are not the brightest bulbs around, but they do tend to bring a good time wherever they are. they all thought it would be a good idea to go introduce themselves to the bird. not sure if they gave him a name or not, but here he is meeting the gang.
i dont remember who's idea this was or which of the guys got close first, but it was scary! they totally were petting him and he was just chillin there. PS- do not attempt this at home!
we found this super cute hat while we were out walking thru the shops. landen just had to put it on and test it out and to my suprise he actually let me take a picture of it. soo cute huh!?!another kinda funny thing we saw was these blankets laid out off the edge of the pier. i guess bums would make these up and people walking by are supposed to throw coins into their buckets, and then at the end of the day they come collect their winnings. doesnt sound like a bad idea to me. maybe ill bring a sign and blanket next time we go. set it up in the morning, go play in the sand and waves, walk around the shops then come collect my money before the ride home LOL this first one says "Just plain hungry" and has it all set up like a dining place.

you cant tell from this picture, but all the other blankets are huge. like at least bigger than the size of a beach towel. this poor guy has this tiny little hand towel laid out. it was soo hard to even read the sign. but it does say "I know those other guys have bigger blankets, but im new at this". guess he was hoping to earn some sympathy points and get extra cash.

December catch up

during the month of december joe had quite a bit of vacation saved up from the year. and with his company you cant carry it over to the next year so you either use it or loose it. so we got to spend alot of time together as a family during the holidays. after the rush of christmas and visiting lots of family, we decided to take landen to play his first game of mini golf. i wasnt sure if landen holding a golf club would be dangerous or not, but he did really well!
we had to show him how to stand and how to slowly put the ball, but he had it down in no time. the course was really wet and had lots of puddles from a previous rain. but good thing he wore his rainboots!
he was kinda sad when he realized that his body wouldnt fit into the little mini buildings. we tried to explain to him that the ball would go in one hole and come out down below, but he just didnt grasp that concept. lol
we were also lucky enough for the month of december to have my brother Buddy and his girlfriend Chelsea stay with us for three weeks. Bud is in the air force and has been living in Texas for the last three and a half years. he tries to come home and visit about every six months and some visits are longer than others. but this was by far the best visit for us! they got to stay at our house so we got to see them and hang out all the time. landen hasnt spent much time with his uncle bud, but he LOVES playing with him.
while they were in town we did lots of fun stuff. of course they were also here for christmas, but i think that needs a blog entry all to itself. one great day while they were here, we all got in the car and drove down to santa barbara to enjoy some NICE california weather. the guys all built a really cool lookin sand castle, the babies played in the sand (taylor tried to eat it lots of times) and the girls enjoyed walking around all the shops when the tide started comin in. it was crazy to think we were all wearin shorts at the beach while back in texas it was snowing cats and dogs!
not exactly sure what compelled her to continuously eat the sand, but apparently it tasted very good. if i turned my back on her for one second she would have a mouthful. she was even lucky enough to find the primo of all hidden treasures in the sand beach, a USED CIGARETTE! yeah thats right, had to pull that one out of her mouth too!! EWWWWyou can kinda see the beginning of the mondo sand castle in the back on this picture. but i was just trying to capture dad and landen playin in the sand with the buckets. the water was waaaay to cold for landen to play in, but he still wanted to wear his water clothes and played in the sand and chased birds.

totally random, but better late than never

k so i finally got taylor to bed (she was having a very not normal meltdown tonight when i put her to bed. and now the boys are playing indiana jones lego on the wii so i thought id try to do a couple quick blog updates. i am FINALLY uploading some pictures from our TWO cameras (yeah i found the one that i nearly swore the carpet guys stole). i dont even know how far back some of these pictures will be, and guarantee they will be in no order what-so-ever, but at least they will be on here right :)
first up i found some super cute pics of my sisters baby Austin. i guess a while back i babysat him and he's the type of baby that always wants to be carried around. so i think at the time taylor was sleeping so i stuck him in the sling and just went about doing my stuff. he looks waaay different now cause these are like 4 months ago, but he was soo cute and bald!
he also loves to play in the bouncy chair. you just stick him in and he goes to town forever! his little legs are gunna be soo buff!!!
and do avoid too much craziness, ill do separate blog entries for the different types of pics i find on the new camera. gotta upload them now :)

lisa finds the best clips ever yet again!!

quick update (lots of info)

k so not sure when i did my last update of the new family photo if i explained much. in september we found out we were pregnant again and were crazy excited. yes taylor was only 6 months old at the time, and no it was not an accident. went in for the first appt and got an all clear that everything was looking good. a couple weeks later i got a really painful cramp and then some bleeding and went back to the dr right away. he checked me out and determined that i was carrying TWINS but that it looked like one was miscarrying. not much he could do about preventing the lose of the one baby, but we were grateful that the other baby was looking good moving around and showing a strong fast heartbeat. went back a week later and the miscarriage was confirmed as the sac was shrinking and empty. the other baby was still growing big and looking strong. i never had anymore cramping or bleeding, but the dr said sometimes it just reabsorbs back into your body and never causes a problem. well i went back for my monthly appt on tuesday and discovered that the remaining baby no longer had a heartbeat. he checked me with two different types of ultrasound machines and neither showed a heartbeat or any blood flow thru the baby. he had me come back today to double confirm just to make sure tuesday wasnt just a freak occurrence but we got the same results today. since then i have started bleeding but still no cramping at all. we decided to go ahead and schedule a D&C procedure for tomorrow. if you dont know what that involves look it up on google. this will be our second pregnancy loss, but this time it feels like two separate all in one just since the two babies were lost a month apart. my dr is fairly confident i dont have any fertility issues since i have two healthy kids, but he said he can check my hormone levels should we try again later. we are doing ok emotionally because we know its nothing that we caused and its all part of the big plan. nothing we can explain so there's not really any point freaking out about it. we are very sad to not be adding another member to our family this summer, but it really makes me appreciate the two kids i already have. even landen when he's being a monster beast! i think this will make me sit back and try to enjoy my kids more and not let them get me frustrated as much. we arent sure when we want to start trying again but we do still feel like there are more little babies waiting to join our family.
oh also on a side note, we found out missing camera. guess the carpet guys didnt steal it after all LOL. and we took lots of pics over the holidays so i promise to catch up majorly. i just might be outta commission for the next few days. maybe ill do it while im resting tomorrow and saturday. give me something positive to do and keep my mind off other issues. so until then
ADIOS