Christmas in Mississippi started with the traditional “box”.  Every year my grandmother puts a small Christmasy item in a box with $50.  She writes extremely helpful clues (like “loved by young and old”, “very Christmasy”, and “can be light or dark”…and oddly enough the clues sound exactly the same every year). Then we all write our guesses down…

and she sorts through them and announces the winner.  The winner gets unwrap the box and keep whatever’s inside…and the $50.  This year there were actually 3 winners (obviously the clues were a little more helpful this year than they usually are)…StephAnie, Uncle John, and Doug!

Doug did a great job snapping pictures while I helped the kids open gifts.  Logan loves his sweet Aunt Steph!

Our usual family photographer.

Steven tries to turn everything into a vehicle.

Grams is definitely a gift to our family!

It was great to celebrate Christmas with our Mississippi family!!!

We had a great time celebrating Christmas.  We were in SC on Christmas day and then went to MS on the 26th.  It was so much fun for the kids to wake up and see the gifts under the tree (Steven kept any gifts from being put out earlier…I could see me leaving the room for 10 seconds and coming back to him playing with every toy we had gotten for all 3 kids).

We had a delicious birthday cake for breakfast (and note to self: if you put candles in monkey bread when it comes out of the oven, your candles will melt.  Letting it cool usually helps.)

After breakfast, Omie and Pop Pop came over for the kids to open their gifts.

Steven got an airplane to ride on…thus beginning his obsession with airplanes.

After the kids opened their gifts, we all went to Brian and Louisa’s house for lunch and more gift opening.

Macy got ALL of the Strawberry Shortcake dolls…a 3 year old girl’s version of diamonds.

Beau showed off his cool new bike.

It was a great day with family celebrating the birth of our Lord!!

(Since we’ll be celebrating Steven’s birthday this weekend, I figured I might want to finish up posting about Christmas…you know, before I too many more holidays stack up.)

I’m not sure what got a hold of me, but I had an overwhelming desire to make homemade sugar cookies this year for Christmas.  Maybe it was that I knew I wasn’t going to be able to do my usual bakefest of neighbor/teacher goodies and there’s something that runs deep in my veins that forces me to bake at least once at Christmas…maybe it’s that (while I’m getting better…the 12 step program is helping) I still feel an overwhelming desire to recreate the Donna Reid show with my family…whatever it is, I HAD to make homemade sugar cookies this year…so I did.  And to my surprise, they were incredibly easy (I was expecting cookie cutter nightmares) and pretty darn tasty!  Adios Pillsbury!

(I have no idea why Macy and Steven wore matching shirts that day.  I promise they usually don’t!)

These are the cookies that Macy decorated.

Steven is talking a lot these days and it’s so much fun to be able to communicate with him. Most of what he’s saying is still in “Stevenese”, so unless you’re around him a lot (or happen to have taken a class in Stevenese) he can still be hard to understand. For example, if he comes up to you and asks for “Woanick and Mayonaise” he’s not telling someone named Nick to stop or hungry for a sandwich. He’s asking for Logan (Woanick) and Macy (Mayonaise…and, yes, if you ask him to say “mayonaise” it’s pronounced the exact same way). Stevenese might just be the cutest language ever.

Logan had his first “real” food last week. I skipped rice cereal and went straight to oatmeal cereal since he hasn’t had the most cooperative stomach. He loved it and did great with the spoon. His stomach wasn’t such a fan, so I was going to ease off to every other day, but all 3 kids have been sick last week and his stomach has been messed up from that so I quit completely for now. Hopefully we can try again next week!

What does it say about us if our 3 1/2 year old realizes that the letters in her name also spell YMCA before her father and I do?

Macy was in her 1st Christmas Program at preschool this year (she was sick last year).  Doug and I were both nervous since we’d never seen how she would act on stage…and got even more nervous as the kids started walking down the aisles and 2 kids saw their parents and never made it to the stage.  But she saw us, waved to us, walked past us, and stayed onstage for the entire performance.  She even sang some and I think did hand motions for one of the songs!  We were so proud.

* Disclaimer:  We moved Macy out of her room and crib and into Steven’s old room and a big girl bed 4 days before her program (what were we thinking?!).  She wasn’t falling asleep until MUCH later than usual, so she looked like she could have fallen asleep standing up during the program.  That didn’t stop her from getting every last drop of her ice cream out of the bowl afterwards though!

One day I asked Macy to sit on the floor and read a book to Steven because he’s been teething and was grouchy.  She sat down with the book and I told Steven to go sit by Macy because she was going to read to him.  I didn’t think about the fact that whenever anyone else reads him a story he sits in their lap and apparently, to Steven, Macy was just like anyone else, so he backed up and plopped down in her lap.  It shocked all of us.  We all burst out laughing…Macy was laughing so hard she fell back wards…and Steven was just sitting in her lap looking at us like we’d all lost our minds.

Logan has been a tummy sleeper for months now, but only because I put him to bed like that to help his stomach issues.  He had been trying to roll over for a long time and had gotten really good at getting far enough on his side to fall asleep, but on December 14 (please disregard the Halloween pjs in December) he made it all the way over!

He was pretty proud of himself.

*Side note:  The reason I haven’t posted about him rolling from his tummy to his back yet is because he hasn’t done it.  He refuses to roll to his back on his own.  If he gets tired of holding up his head, he’ll just fuss until he gets tired enough to lay it down and fall asleep.  I’m wondering what kind of crazy look I’ll get for this at his 6 month checkup.

Look who remembered to post the pictures that Brad took over Thanksgiving…(Thanks again for the pics B!)

This was the first time my grandmother met Logan.  She fell in love as quickly as the rest of us have and judging from his grin, it was mutual.

My grandmother also got a grin out of Steven.

Steven’s furry “cousin” Baylor was a huge hit.  I think Steven earned a little credibility with Baylor once he learned how to open the cage…to Baylor’s disappointment, Brad was close by.

“Quick Baylor, pretend to sleep…What?!  Someone was trying to open this cage?!”

Meanwhile, Logan was soaking up the snuggles…

Macy was completely entertained by Wesley (who was so sweet to his cousin).

Mom worked her magic in the kitchen.

Doug and Dad went flying.

And Steven…

well, Steven was busy acting like an almost 2 year old little boy.

It was a great Thanksgiving!