Cooley Christmas (Christmas, Act III)

And for the final act, we spent Christmas Day with my family. We really had an awesome time! The food was great (thanks, Mom!), and everyone was just in such a great mood. James and Samantha are ALWAYS thrilled to see one another. James fell asleep on the way down, as he is wont to do, and we had to wake him up when we got there.. he was sleeping HARD! He saw Samantha, though, and it was like a half a pot of coffee for him.. BOING! He was wide awake and ready to roll! They immediately went to tearing around the house like banshees.
Mom took a turn for the mushy by getting Dad a "Love Is..." book. They used to clip these comic strips for each other when they were dating and when we were little kids.. I remember seeing them on the dresser mirror in their room. Awwww.
Mark threw out the first pitch for the annual Wrapping Paper Battle (wherein, everyone takes their discarded paper, wads it up as tightly as they can, and tried to peg each other in the head when they're not paying attention.. very Christmasy, eh?). Subsequently, we all took turns trying to ambush him for the remainder of the afternoon. As is HIS wont, Mark mouthed off to Sterling again (I have no idea why he always thinks he'll get away with this!), and they started wrestling in the kitchen.
As a sweet ending to the day, James FINALLY got to dig into the gingerbread house he'd been eyeing all week, as did Samantha. This mainly involved scraping off icing with their fingers and eating that.. much to the chagrin of anyone who wanted some after them!
All-in-all, a pretty great way to cap off Christmas! Photos of this are posted under "Cooley Christmas".

Merry Christmas, ya'll!

Oh yeah.. almost forgot about the funniest gift of all. We gave Mark and Dominic a 3-piece grill brush set.. but we ripped one out of the package before we wrapped it. If you understand the significance of this, I guarantee you're rolling on the floor right now.

Christmas, Act II (our little family)

Christmas morning arrived, along with a crabby little boy. Who can be crabby on Christmas morning? James was... he was sOOOOO bummed because, because "I wanted to SEE Santa Claus! I thought I was going to see Santa!?". Poor little pumpkin, we had to explain that Santa only comes if you're asleep! We finally got him over his disappointment using diversion... "Let's go see what Santa LEFT!!!". So we went downstairs, and he walked right past the presents, up to Becky and said, "Merry Christmas, Becky!" and gave her a big hug! We showed him that the eggnog and cookies were gone, and asked if he wanted to open some presents (of course!). When he finally got to the big one, instead of tearing into it, he rubbed his little cheek on it and said in this voice filled with awe, "wow... this is the biggest present I ever saw!". He was even happier when he opened it!

Woodruff Christmas

We spent Christmas Eve with the Woodruffs / McMellons, at E and Jim's new house (newest baby = host). It was so nice! Little Miss Virginia is just the most well-behaved baby ever, and mostly slept through her first Christmas. The food was great, everyone had a wonderful time, and as always, did way more than they should have! Auntie E and Uncle Jimmy got James his first go-cart, which... careful, this may be shocking.. he LOVED!!! We all piled outside and hung out for about 30 mins while James drove around the cul-de-sac with the biggest grin plastered across his cute little cheeks. It was a wonderful Christmas, act I. Pics are posted in the photo album under "07-12 W. Xmas".

The ones that look like they were taken from waist-height were taken by James. He's become fascinated with the camera as of late, and always wants to take some pics himself. I think there's even a self-portrait!

It's beginning to feel alot like Christmas...

What a fun time of year! Two big things to share today (okay, 3.. and the third is either funny or scary):

1. James officially wrote his entire name last night! He was so excited he nearly fell over! We pasted it to some cardstock and proudly posted it on the fridge! Does he look proud or what?
2. We made our first gingerbread house today. Homemade gingerbread is yummy! James loved decorating and EATING the decorations the most. ... and licking frosting off of the house. Not too shabby, eh?


3. Ok, this is probably funny for you, a little scary for me. This morning, James came up to me and said, "Mommy, may I have a towel?", and of course my first question was "what did you spill?". He told me nothing, that he just wanted to throw it on the ceiling fan. I informed him that it was not acceptable to throw towels on the fan, and he asked, "may I throw Newkie on the fan?". (I know, everyone reading this is saying, "YES!!!!"). I told him no, we don't throw our animals on the fan, either! He paused, then asked, "Mommy, do you think peanut butter would melt on the fan?". WTF is this kid thinking??? I'm afraid to leave him in any room now with a fan, which is pretty much every room in the house! I guess it won't be long before I find something inappropriate circling my ceiling...

Digiscrapper!

I have gone digital, baby! For my birthday, Karey bought me some already much-enjoyed scrapbooking magazines, including one all about digital scrapbooking. WOW. I had no idea you could buy and download stuff online like backgrounds, brads, ribbons, embelishments, chipboard... all the cool stuff (and expensive!) you'd buy in the store, but in digital form! And it looks sooo cool! Here's my first attempt. Man, if I'd known about this 2 wks ago, you can be darned sure you'd have gotten an even better looking card than the ones we sent! Click on the image to see it larger, and to truly enjoy my masterpiece!

So what's new?

Not much... things are starting to settle down... finally! We had our first official Beer Wed Now Appearing on Sunday this week, and it was pretty fab! A smattering of Christmas gifts were exchanged, including a super-cool game that the Smiths got for James. It's like Jenga, but with little safari animals (AND, not made in China!... Lead-free!). We played it last night... family game night, if you will. It was oodles of fun, and here are some pics. BTW, Jim McMellon, our brother-in-law and a DOT engineer, believed that you could not stack all pieces, especially not as shown on the box.... typically DOT, right? We did it, here are the pics.


Also, we had our first Parent/Teacher conference today, and get this: they find him very active. Can you believe it? LOL! We kinda knew THAT adjective would work its way into the conversation! Semi-related, he can nearly write his entire name, too.. we assumed he'd learned at school, but they said they found him writing his name on the whiteboard the other day and were surprised.. they hadn't taught him that, either!

Finally, just some funny stuff: we were riding home from the conf when James said "I'm a mad boy". We asked why, and he said, "I'm mad at Daddy. Sometimes little boys just get mad at big boys", to which our big boy replied, "well, sometimes big boys send little boys to their rooms if they're going to be grouchy"... and that, as they say, was that.

Look who's been Elfed

So this is apparently all the rage this season.. it's going around work, and around our friends.. here's our elfing:

http://www.elfyourself.com/?id=1487079004

enjoy!

Reindeer Games

Just a quick post for two things:
First: Congrats Liz, Jim, and baby Virginia! Our new niece was born 1amish Dec 1, and she's just as cute as can be. We couldn't be happier for the new family!

Second, just a few pics from an impromptu photo shoot from this weekend when James and I were putting up Christmas decorations... what a ham! (albeit a very cute one!).