Deck the Halls

I have never decorated for Christmas this early before, but I just couldn't help myself this year. Lane wanted to listen to Christmas music, but I told him not until after Thanksgiving. So as soon as we ate our turkey dinner, the Christmas music started! The next day, we went out & got a tree. Here's E helping us decorate.

And here's my mantel. I love it! A lot of spray paint was involved. I spray painted the pine cone wreath silver & added glitter. It looks really good in person. I also bought those wooden letters from Hobby Lobby & painted those silver. I spray painted the pine cones gold. The gold angels don't show up very well against the brick, but that's what you see between the  letters. And I recently sewed another stocking for Davis to go with ours. Now we're complete!

Christmas Reading

This past year I have been making good use of our local library. Today I checked out 2 Christmas books: 

The Christmas Sweater by Glenn Beck and The Christmas List by Richard Paul Evans. Normally I wait until December to do anything "Christmas" (with the exception of 103.7 Lite FM playing Christmas music), but I knew if I did that they would probably be gone and not back until after the holidays. Anyway, if you're looking for a good Christmas book to read during your time off, I would recommend anything by Richard Paul Evans. I've read several of his books and they are all wonderful and heartwarming. Every year I read his book, The Christmas Box, so if you haven't read that one, it's a good place to start. Oh and another holiday indulgence that I've already started...Little Debbie Christmas Gingerbread soft cookies...Yum!

ChuckECheese

Lane just finished his ICU rotation and boy was it brutal (on him & us). He only had 2 days off the entire month. He would be gone by 4:30am and come back around 6pm, sometimes 10pm. If he was home before the kids were in bed, he was pretty much a zombie, so that did no good. Since he finally got his 1st full night of sleep and doesn't have to be into work early, we took the kids to ChuckECheese. Elliot had never been before. We got $10 in tokens and let her go to town. Of course she had fun, but I do think 99% of the games were over her head. We'll have to try it again in a year or so.

I just had to throw this picture in of my little man. Dressed up and ready for church. He really does look exactly like E did when she was a baby. I feel like he's finally starting to get into a routine with his naps. He's been sleeping in his room for the past two days, so that's exciting as well.

Elliot's 1st Hair Cut

I finally bit the bullet and cut Elliot's hair. I have attempted this twice before, but always decided against it before any cuts were made. Lately her hair has just been really stringy and very hard to even comb through. I knew it was time. She was such a wiggle worm. I'm lucky there's not a bald spot somewhere on her head. All in all, I have to say it looks pretty good. Hopefully I'll get better with each cut.

30 Minute Date

We invited Lane's parents over for dinner the other day and at the end of the night Lane and I were able to sneak away for a quick date. He's had this Starbucks gift card for over a year now, so we finally decided to use it.

I got the Salted Caramel Hot Chocolate and he got the Spiced Apple Cider. Both were really good.

So the date was only maybe 30 minutes. But it was still nice to get away for some adult time. I'm really going to try and do better to make "date nights" a regular occurrence. And I'm going to try and do better at documenting them as well. Every year I turn my blog into a book and one day my kids will have them. So I want them to know that it's important to make time for your spouse.

Temple in Person

I've been wanting to take Elliot to the temple for a while now and luckily Lane had the day off, so we took advantage. I know they've talked about it in nursery and we have a picture of it on our mantel, so she was really excited when she heard we were going to see it in person.The Dallas Temple has a special place in my heart. I grew up going there with our youth group, and Lane I got married there. It's such a beautiful building and of course very important to our church. 

I wish the weather wasn't so windy but what can you do. Here are a few pictures that we got.

In this picture, Elliot decided she was done holding Davis, so what does she do?...just lets go. And here he is mid air face planting onto the sidewalk. Poor baby! I was so mad, I let 2 curse words slip on temple grounds. Ya, I'm pretty sure I'm going to hell.

Visit from Alys and Sean

Lane's sister, Alys, and her family were in town from California. I wish we were able to hang out with them more, but with Lane's crazy schedule and them having to divide their time up between families, we only got to see each other 4 times in 2 weeks. 

The first night we had a little get together at our house with all the siblings and their families. It's rare that everyone is able to be in one place at the same time.

 Davis (3 weeks), Asher (2 months), Ayla (7 months)

 Lane's brother and sisters (minus Hunter)-Brody, Alys, Aly, Lane

 Of course everyone wants to play with the same toy.

 Attempted picture with the grandparents.

We met up again with them on Halloween at the zoo.

 

Is this crocodile not creepy looking?

 Elliot was brave and touched the snake.

 Harrison and Elliot

The zookeeper was feeding the gorilla and when he let him out of his cage, he ran straight towards Elliot and slammed into the glass in front of her. Lane said it was the funniest thing ever.

 They came over again to hang out and I thought it would be a good idea to make slime. Even though it was the easiest recipe ever (1 cup corn starch, 1 cup water, craft paint), I still managed to mess it up. The consistency was never quite right. Oh well. The kids still had a blast.

Later that day we went to the airport park to watch the airplanes.

 Pretty cool, huh?

 Elliot and Harrison really bonded. I'm so glad they had the chance to get to know each other a little better. Hopefully she'll remember him. We really enjoyed spending time with them. We wish they lived closer!

1 Month

Davis turned 1 month on October 7th. I feel like it was forever ago that I was in the hospital. His is doing great and getting bigger. I had Lane weigh him the other day and he was at 10 lbs. At 2 weeks he was 8 lbs, so I know he's getting enough food. Right now he's eating 5oz every 3 hours. I was trying to stretch his feedings out to every 4 hours, but he could never quite make it. In fact, he starts to get hungry right at 2.5 hours. I think he eats a lot. At night he will sleep for 5 hour stretches, so that's awesome. The hard part is getting him to go to sleep initially. He has such a hard time with it. In the evenings he has a lot of gas, so that makes it more difficult because he's uncomfortable and fussy for a while. Hopefully these issues will start to fade away soon. At this point with Elliot, we moved her into her crib and out of our room. But I don't feel Davis is quite ready for that. I had hoped to be putting him in his crib for naps so that he'd be used to it, but he's not having it. Every time he sleeps, it's somewhere different because apparently he's very picky. So that's my #1 thing to work on with him. Other than that, he is a great baby.

Here are a few pictures of him. The first one I took for comparison reasons a few days after he was born on Oct. 9th. The others were taken on Nov 9th. Can you tell that he's getting bigger?

I like this last picture because it looks like he's smiling. We're still waiting for the real thing.

Davis' Blessing Day

What a wonderful day we've had. A bunch of our family & friends came over for a brunch to celebrate the blessing of Davis. I forgot to take a picture of the food, but it was all really yummy! We had 2 breakfast casseroles, fruit, pumpkin chocolate chip muffins, and cinnamon crunch bagels from Panera. I'm so glad we had some leftovers! 

Then we were off to church where Davis received a blessing by his daddy. What a special experience. Lane gave a beautiful blessing. He always knows the perfect thing to say. I had both my mom and sister try to write down the key points, so hopefully between the 2 I can put it together.

Before we left, we got a few pictures with all the grandparents.

 Mr. Man-Isn't his tie adorable?!

 E wanted to hold her brother. He wasn't very happy.

 Quick family picture. Davis still hadn't recovered.

 Grandma & Grandpa

 Grammy & Poppy

Mimi & Papa