Tuesday, December 27, 2011

Christmas with the Kelleys

My brother had to work on Christmas Eve because the hospital he works at is lame, so we ended up doing our Christmas Eve celebration (tradition for as long as I can remember) the day after Christmas. It's slowly changing, as we all add our own little touches to it, but I look forward to it so much. We ended up hosting it at our house this year, to try to help my mom out a little since my dad had been hospitalized so close to Christmas. My house isn't quite set up for entertaining in the winter (in the summer we all just go outside on the back deck to eat) but we managed to get up and down the stairs without spilling food. :)




















Christmas with the Joneses

For lunch on Christmas Day we went over to Luke's parents' house. It wasn't quite as much of a madhouse this year as it has been in recent years, because some people weren't there. Raegan got a princess tent from her grandparents and a "texting" alphabet device from her aunt and uncle in Missouri. She mainly uses the texter as a phone or camera. It was pretty cute to watch her walking around talking into it.












This is Thomas, my mother-in-law's first great grandchild. Raegan was pretty taken with "Baby Thomnas" as she kept calling him.

Christmas at Home

For Christmas Eve, we kept it pretty low key this year. Since we weren't doing our traditional chili on Christmas Eve with my side of the family until Monday, we just kind of hung out on Saturday. We watched Rudolph and A Garfield Christmas and introduced Raegan to popcorn. She looooooved popcorn! :)

What can be better than A Garfield Christmas and popcorn?!!


Oh, Zane.


Snuggle times.

Christmas morning was really nice. Zane's mom didn't come to get him until 9:30, so we had plenty of time to open gifts and eat breakfast (I always make pancakes and bacon on Christmas morning). Raegan and Zane really enjoyed their gifts. Zane got a .22 rifle (he and Luke are really in to target shooting right now) and 9 months worth of subscription to XBox Live (so he can play video games with his friends, each at their own house), and various odds and ends in his stocking. Raegan got a Sesame Street playhouse, some extra figures for it, a huge Cookie Monster pillow, princess dresses (from Santa) and some puzzles, along with various odds and ends in her stocking. Raegan is really enjoying playing with her little Sesame Street figures a lot. It's super cute to hear her make them talk to each other. :)
















One of the most exciting parts to me (dork!) is that we did not use our credit cards for Christmas for the second year in a row. And actually, as long as we don't have to pull out of savings before Luke gets paid next week, this will be our first year of paying Christmas 100% out of pocket without even dipping into savings. We started shopping back in October, and I am extremely proud of myself for this accomplishment! :)

Friday, December 23, 2011

Koen and Ryan's Birthday Party

Since my nephews Koen and Ryan have their birthdays within a few days of each other, Zac and Deeanna decided to have a joint party for the two of them. Raegan loooooves "Baby Ryan" and she was super excited for the birthday party. I think she was a little overwhelmed while we were there, because it was a lot of people she didn't know. But she was pretty content sitting on Granny's lap.

Opening presents is serious business, yo.




Just chillin.


My brother is a scary beast. :)








I love how happy Koen looks in this picture!


Ryan made short work of his cupcake.




Fun in the Snow

We finally got a decent amount of snow this week! Hopefully it will all hang around until Christmas. I love having a white Christmas! Raegan and I came home from work/daycare on Wednesday to find Zane building a snow fort in the backyard. Raegan isn't too keen on touching the snow yet (even with gloves on) but she did enjoy scooping it into a bowl with a spoon, and trying to use the big shovel.

Snow fort in the making


Silly girl




Raegan loved using the shovel



Sunday, December 18, 2011

Candy Cane Yarn Wreath


This is my latest craft thanks to Pinterest. I found it when I was looking for wreath ideas. The link was actual to someone's Etsy site where they had this wreath for sale. I thought it was priced a bit much at $39, considering that it cost me about $9 to make, and I have enough silvery sprig and yarn left over to make another if I bought another wreath. It was pretty time consuming, because wrapping with yarn takes a lot of time and patience. I pretty much just pulled up some shows I like on Netflix and listen/watched and wrapped. I think I'm going to add some more spray to it, and hot glue it down, but I really rather like the finished result. Maybe I should get into Etsy someday, because when I went to link up to the original wreath, I saw that it had sold. :)

Potty training and other achievements

The biggest news in our neck of the woods right now is that Raegan is well on her way towards being potty trained. YAY! Best Christmas present I could ever get, let me tell you. She started two weekends ago, when she just happened to go potty when she was sitting on the little toilet before her bath. (That's been something that's been part of the bath routine for months now.) Luke and I made a huge to-do about it and gave her some candy for it. The next day she told me after we got home from work/Angie's that she wanted to "go potty, get candy." I said sure, and lo and behold, she went potty again. Now we are to the point where candy is an occasional thing (basically between the hours of "after lunch and before supper") and she's staying dry for longer periods of time. Today she stayed dry from when I changed her after nap (2:30) until right before supper (6:00), with two trips to the potty in there. And one of them was in a public bathroom. Hollah for getting over that hump! :) My hope is to pick up some underwear after Christmas and give them a try since I'm not work from December 23rd until January 3rd. Raegan's not having quite as much luck with going potty at daycare, but so be it. She'll at least be weekend potty trained before too much longer. :S

Raegan's really starting to get into pretend play. She makes her little squirt toys talk to each other in the bathtub, and I've even caught her having her little pieces of candy walk around on the placemat, talking to each other. It's pretty cute. She also likes to do things and say, "Look at me, guys!" which I'm guessing she hears at daycare a lot. Now at night when we say prayers before bed, I'll tell her it's time to say prayers and she'll clasp her hands together and say, "God is great, God is good, now we thank Him for our food. Amen." Then she'll list the people she's thankful for and say, "Please help Raegan sleep well, Aaaaa-Men!" Her favorite songs to sing are "Where is Thumbkin?" and "I'm Bringing Home a Baby Bumblebee." Well, those and "Pumped Up Kicks". Luke must have sang it to her with his own lyrics in it before (he does that with a lot of songs) because one day she just started singing, "Kids with the pumped up kicks, run run faster, boo boo brush your teeth." lol She still loves all things Elmo and Sesame Street, but she really wants me to let her watch Barney when she sees it on Netflix. (Mean Mommy - I don't like Barney, so we're not watching it.) Raegan just learned how to gallop this last week, and she is so darn proud of herself for being able to master it. Those are all the things I can think of at the moment, so I'll leave you with a picture:

Raegan loves listening to Zane's MP3 player. He'll let her stick the earbuds in her ears for a minute, and she just loves it.

Saturday, December 17, 2011

Cookies with Santa

I have done a horrendous job of keeping up with my blog this month. I have been so very busy with work, and Christmas, and just life. So for now, I'll put up some pictures, then later tonight or tomorrow I'll follow up with a loooong post about all the things Raegan has been up to lately.

Earlier this month Raegan and I went to cookies with Santa at the library. She is so very excited about the idea of Santa right now. Every morning we drive by a house that has a huge blow up Santa in their front yard. She starts looking for it about 3 blocks before we get to it, and she just loves it. So when I told her we were going to have cookies and see Santa, she was just tickled. First we frosted and ate a cookie and listened to a story. Santa came out at the end, and we got the chance to sit on his lap if we wanted. Like I said, she's excited about the *idea* of Santa. When we got to the point of actually sitting on his lap, she got super shy. I didn't really get much of a picture of Raegan with Santa, but I'm okay with that, because I don't want her to be scared of him. :)

Waiting to frost our cookie!


Working hard




Mmmmm.....


Raegan is getting so good at drinking out of a cup without a lid.


First glimpse of Santa coming in. :)




Like I said, the idea of Santa is great. Santa himself, not so much. :D