Happy 29th, Rob!

Happy Birthday, Rob!! Hope you had a great day. One more year and you'll be in the 30 club too! Love you lots.....

Galleria trip

A week before Christmas, we made our annual pilgrimage up to the Galleria. I go into town more often during the year (although that will be harder with two kids!), but Dean usually just comes with us at Christmas time. I love seeing Houston decorated for Christmas......ideally we'd go for an entire day/evening and drive around to look at some of the lights after dark, but I guess that will have to be put on hold until the kids are a little older!

So we went on a Thursday morning and thankfully Drew took a nap on the way there. That was such a relief.....he doesn't care for his carseat much, but he is getting better if you hold a pacifier in his mouth until he goes to sleep!

We walked through Nordstrom (they always have wonderful Christmas decorations), and then we looked in a few expensive childrens stores that we don't have in the suburbs! Those places have such sweet clothes, but they make me feel so poor (or cheap!)......the sale price on a cute little shirt might be $15 or $16 (down from $28), and I start getting tempted until I remind myself that I would almost never spend that much money on a single shirt for one of the boys at any normal store. So why should I do it there??!

Anyway, we had a good time, and Grant actually behaved very well. A year ago (when he was 13 months old), we started seeing our first signs of the terrible twos on our Galleria trip....he wanted to get down and practice his walking, and started throwing a fit in front of everyone! This time he was much better! Here we are in front of the giant Christmas tree at the ice skating rink (he was much more interested in the M&Ms he was eating.....which we had to give him to distract him from a Little Einsteins ornament he wanted from the Disney Store):
What a big boy! We got pizza for lunch and he ate it like a big kid!
Then Dean took him over to watch the Zamboni on the skating rink. He had a blast watching it! Things like this are "cool" and "awesome" to him now!
Probably my favorite place to go in the Galleria is Dylan's Candy Bar. It's magical.....so many fun things to look at. We bought some bulk candy (this was a healthy day of eating!), then I sat on a bench to feed a bottle to Drew. Grant had fun playing hide and seek behind this flower pot. We took about a dozen pictures of him before a security guard came and told us that pictures were not allowed in the Galleria. What?!!
The fun stopped after leaving the Galleria.....we pushed our luck and tried to go over to Highland Village (another shopping center close by). Grant got in trouble for not staying close to Dean in Pottery Barn, so they sat in the car while I quickly ran through another store or two. I hate to make a trip and not be able to see everything I want to see. But again, I guess that's another fact of life right now!

More next time on the rest of our Christmas.....

Happy New Year!

Here is a picture of our new Odyssey! If you had told me that I'd own a minivan (and be excited about it!) 3.5 years after getting married, I never would have believed you!

Grant really likes his new car.....it has a DVD player in the back, which we know he's really going to like! We're hoping to use it as a bribery tool ("If you act good in this store, you might get to watch your movie when we get back in the car"). We just don't want him to expect to watch movies every time we're in there.....
We had a very uneventful New Year's Eve. After Grant went to bed, Drew stayed awake with us and watched a bowl game. Then we watched the Fox News broadcast from NYC leading up to midnight. We ate dessert, drank apple cider champagne, and hung out with our little man!
And sad to say, we were turning off our lights right around midnight our time. Life gets much more boring once you turn 30 and have two kids!

Tagged

Tagged by Sara! Here is a picture of Grant late last September (just after we moved into our new house and probably just a few days after his falling-from-the-counter accident. This picture amazes me.....he has changed so much over the past 15 months! This is a picture of a baby who couldn't stand on his own, and now he has transformed into this sassy, sweet little kid! I hardly remember him being a baby anymore.....I'm glad I have videos (which maybe we'll have time to watch once the kids graduate from high school)!

Really quick, before I tag other people. I will post pictures hopefully soon, but we bought a minivan yesterday!! It's a used '07 Odyssey, and we really like it! Part of me can't believe we have two kids and a minivan.....wow! I really am old!

Okay, here are some people I'll tag (do it if you have time and want to.....don't worry about it if you don't, or if you've done it recently):
Leah
Corie
Sarah M.
Melissa M.
Kristen S.
Carissa

Instructions:

1. Go to the place where you store all of your pictures on your computer and open up the 4th folder
2. Open the 4th picture
   
3. Post the picture and give an explanation
4. Tag 4 people

Drew is 3 months! ......and an update on Grant.....

Our little guy is three months old today! He is making lots of noises and loves when people look at him....but he likes Mommy and other ladies more than he seems to like men! He hasn't quite laughed yet, but yesterday when I'd surprise him and make a funny noise, he'd smile and say "haaaa." He's still not on a great schedule with sleeping.....he's not nearly as consistent as Grant was at this age. He usually gets 6-7 hour stretches at night, but that means he sometimes wakes up at 3am to eat (depending on what time I last fed him). And until a few days ago, he'd usually get one good 1+ hour nap per day (plus some shorter ones), but for the past couple of days he's taken all very short naps! I hope this is just a stage!

Here are some recent pictures of my little sweetie!


We hung Christmas ornaments about 10 days ago, and Grant had a great time! He loved this school bus ornament we got last year.....he thought it was a toy and kept riding it around his railroad tracks. We had a few ornament casualties.....we're learning to put the more breakable ones up high, out of his reach! Grant is having fun this Christmas season. He loves pointing out (and naming) Christmas trees, snowmen, Santa, gingerbread houses, presents and other things when he sees them. He was talking with our neighbor Brynna the other night, and she asked him what he wanted Santa to bring him for Christmas. He said, "cereal bar." So he doesn't completely understand the concept of Santa.....next year I'm sure it will be a different story!

Here we are at Grant's Christmas party for school last week. It's always fun seeing him interact with other kids in his class.....and I was happy to see that other kids spit out their half-chewed up food too! Maybe that's where Grant learned how to do that??!Grant has now been sleeping in his toddler bed for seven nights. It's been a bumpy ride, but I think he's finally getting used to it. The past few nights he hasn't woken up at all! It was really funny.....the second night we tried it, Dean was downstairs about five minutes after putting him to bed. He heard a noise and went to find Grant playing at his train table (which is downstairs), very quietly! Such a sneaky little kid!