Cookies for Santa

Luke was on sprinkle duty - and he took his job very seriously!

This was one of my favorite cookies that he decorated. I really liked his "pile" technique with the chocolate sprinkles.

After decorating quite a few cookies, he began to ask if he could "taste" the sprinkles.

Of course!

Before I knew it, he was using the 1/4 teaspoon to scoop sprinkles into his mouth.

Some for Luke...

...and some for the cookies...

(please note: we didn't give away any cookies to friends or family - all the slobbery sprinkles that landed on the cookies were consumed by us and Santa. Just in case you were curious!)

and now, to taste the fruits of our labor!

mmmmmm! Finger lickin' good!!

Thanksgiving 2010

(a little catch up...)

Luke ate sweet potato casserole, more sweet potato casserole, one bite of turkey, a deviled egg, then more sweet potato casserole. :)

Halloween 2010

For some reason, even though this weekend was the official "Halloween weekend", I'm just kinda over it already. Maybe because we already endured Luke's Fall Festival at school, pumpkin patch/painting pumpkins at school, his class Halloween party, trick-or-treating at school, Tate Farms with the fam, trunk-r-treat at the Y, and a Halloween party at one of my co-workers homes. Don't get me wrong... I love Halloween... but enough is enough, right?

Even though I feel "Halloween-ed out", it was still another fun fall weekend! We carved pumpkins (finally!) this afternoon.

I tried to get Luke to touch the pumpkin goo in the middle of the pumpkin, but he decided that it would be good enough to just barely touch the goo that was still attached to the top of the pumpkin.

"EWWWWW!! YUCKY!!!"

I carved the first pumpkin, and Luke could not have been less interested in what I was doing. Once my pumpkin was complete and I handed the electric carver over to Andie, Luke immediately wanted to "sit in da wap" (sit in the lap) of dad and closely oversee his every move.

Here's the little stinker before we carved the third pumpkin.

Ok, now fast forward a few hours to "twick o tweet" time! Luke put on his costume (Russell from the movie "UP") for the third time... and for the third time we got tears and a series of "don't wike it! don't wike it! don't wike it!" as he tried to rip the handmade sash with all of the iron-on badges off of his body. Since this was the third time, I was a pro at getting a glo stick in his hand and escorting him outside asap to get his mind off of the sash (which you'd think was made of fire and nails).



Luke had a REALLY fun time "twick o tweeting" this year! Although he was super shy at people's doorsteps, he was very eager to go to the "neck house!" (next house). Once we hit all the houses on our little street, we headed back to our house to help dad and Mr. Mike (our neighbor) hand out candy. And by "help", I mean that Luke ate a sucker... then some M&Ms... then another sucker... then some gummi Starburst... etc. Big help!

This was the scene at our house:



Our pumpkins:



Luke doing what he does best:



HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!

ps - since this is a post about Halloween, I should probably include a photo of our costumes as an ensemble! Luke's "Russell" costume on it's own isn't nearly as impressive as seeing Russell, Mr. Fredrickson, and the flying house from "UP" all together!!

Tate Farms

How do you sum up the pumpkin patch in three photos?

1 - pumpkins

2 - corn crib

3 - slide

'nuff said!

Happy Mother's Day

...to ME!

A day that was made especially for eating breakfast cooked by my husband... kicking back while he does the dishes... eating lunch at the destination of my choice... and relaxing outside on a beautiful day (while Luke runs around like a crazy man with his dump truck)...

What a good day! Thanks to my husband for making it so relaxing!

Easter Weekend!

We had such a fun Easter weekend this year!! We went to Cheekwood Botanical Gardens for their big easter egg hunt. We actually took Luke to Cheekwood last year as well... maybe we have a new family tradition! :)

It is fun going out there - they've got some arts and crafts, face painting, balloon animals, the Easter bunny roaming the grounds, several scheduled egg hunts, and of course, plenty of room to RUN AROUND!!!

We went to the very last egg hunt of the day for ages 2 and under at 3:30 (after nap time!). This is what the "baby" egg hunt looked like:

It cracked me up - there were eggs EVERYWHERE!!

Here's the little guy scoping out the scene and preparing his egg gathering strategy.

Ok, now let me describe how the actual egg hunt went down.

3... 2... 1... GO!!!!

The small field immediately swarmed with kids, babies, and proud parents. We unleashed Luke and - let's be honest - he was pretty confused as to what he was supposed to do. We encouraged him to pick up an egg that was laying at his feet and put it in his basket. Yay! One down, plenty to go!

Next, Luke wanted to walk around for awhile... then Luke wanted to be picked up... then Luke wanted to play on the wide, grassy stairs for awhile. Needless to say, not at all interested in eggs! Finally, something caught his eye from a distance and he made a beeline across the field! Yay - watch out plastic eggs - it's go time!

Oh... wait... that's just a rock.

Sure, go ahead and put it in your basket.



At this point in time, we looked around and noticed that all the eggs had magically found their way into other kid's baskets! Poor Luke - you snooze, you lose! He was finally getting used to the scene and was actually looking around for some eggs now. Bummer!

A nice lady walked by us - saw Luke - and grabbed a handful of eggs out of her child's basket and threw them on the ground in front of Luke. So nice!! He was thrilled and very enthusiastically gathered his loot!

On our way out, we encountered the Easter bunny strolling around. Yeah, we had to stop and get a photo. I don't think that this photo requires any additional explanation. Instant classic.

Here are a couple more cute photos...

(lookin' tough):


While we were in town, the three of us decided to get some pizza at Mafiaoza's (our FAVORITE place), then stop at Las Paletas for some wonderfully refreshing gourmet popsicles. YUM! What a fun day!

Ok, now on to Easter Sunday.

I carefully assembled Luke's basket on Saturday night and put it out on the ottoman for him to "discover" in the morning. I was very proud of his basket - I strategically chose items that I knew he'd really like - some books, a small football (he's obsessed with Andie's big football), a big bouncy ball, two squishy dinosaurs (he loves the dinosaur book that he got from Aunt LT for Christmas), bubbles, and some Peeps to try!



Success! Luke did not disappoint with his reaction! He spotted the basket from across the kitchen and ran into the living room with a smile plastered across his face!

Now, for the big Easter finale, Luke tasted his first Peep!

Delicious! Just like the whole weekend!

My Valentines

Luke playing with his Valentine's Day goodie from mom and dad:

Christmas Card Outtakes

So, this is the photo that we used for our Christmas cards this year:



We wanted to do something a little bit silly involving tacky Christmas sweaters. I found Luke's sweater at a consignment sale months ago and thought it was hilarious because it was a tiny version of a classic looking Holiday sweater. It just made me laugh. Of course, when I actually put the sweater on him, I thought "awwwww! It actually looks really cute on him!!".

Anyway, I had been on a mission to find tacky sweaters for Andie and I and was coming up with nothing! Seems like it would be really easy to find those ugly things... I mean, if you just take a quick trip to Wal-Mart you can find lots of people proudly wearing them! I looked at Wal-Mart and Target first. Nothing! How could this be??

My next stop was Belk where I purchased mine. I thought it was pretty fabulous - shiny ribbon, glittery snowflakes, tassel on the zipper (the only thing that I didn't really take into account was that most of the tackiness of the sweater was located at the bottom - so it didn't really show up in the photo).

But still no sweater for Andie!

Since time was running out and I really needed to get the photos taken, my last attempt was Kohls. They really didn't have anything tacky in the male department, but I did find turtlenecks! I knew that pairing a turtleneck with a sweater would automatically increase the 80s cheese factor, so I just paired it with the busiest-looking sweater I could find.

ah-ha! done!

Although the outfits were not quite as tacky as I had hoped, at least we were ready for the photo session (and much closer to checking "order christmas cards" off of the list).

The photo session was pretty funny - Andie put the camera on a chair and set up the timer to take like 15 pics in a row. We kept Luke still on our laps by feeding him goldfish. He was just chomping down on crackers as the photos snapped away.

It was so much fun to look at the photos when we were finished! You are guaranteed to get hilarious photos when you have a one year old and two silly adults! Here are some of the outtakes:


(this photo was the one that we almost used for the card. I think that it is a cuter photo overall than the one we used, but Luke is looking away and also he's covering up my sweater - which Andie and I both agreed was the tackiest one of all)








(what is going on here??)