Twas the Night Before Christmas

Bret and Evan read Twas the Night Before Christmas practically every night in December. Now, he can practically recite the book by heart.

Christmas Eve

On Christmas Eve morning, Evan declared that Santa wouldn't bring him presents unless he left him a plate of cookies. So what did I do that morning? Whipped up a batch of sugar cookie dough! Grammy helped Evan cut the cookies...

While the guys devoured the appetizers..After dinner, Evan picked out and decorated the ones that he wanted to leave for Santa and one for his reindeer...and we put them on the adorable cookie platter Grammy gave Evan and GraceAnd Evan chose one of his presents to open. Its his own camera! He took approximately 200 pictures in 30 minutes.Then it was off to get fresh and clean before bed.

Phil's Visit and Grace's Tongue

Checking out Phil's new phone Just a few short weeks ago, Grace discovered her feet. Now she seems to be discovering that she has a tongue!

"Painting" Fun

Finger painting is always eventful with a toddler, and not quite the perfect activity when your house is for sale. SO, when Evan asked to paint, we compromised. I put different colors in big ziploc bags, and he "painted". On day 1, he drove his new favorite car around and made tracks. The best part was he was still able to be creative, and I didn't have to get paint out of every little part of our kitchen.Grace was also VERY into this activity. Once we move and pull out the high chair, I'm thinking she would like this activity....if I can be hovering to pull it out of her mouth every 3 seconds : )It wasn't raining, snowing or sleeting, so we went on a cozy stroller ride to see the wild Christmas decorations around the neighborhood. no reason, just another afternoon. just another photo shootits always interesting to get a good picture of two kids! wonder what grace is looking at?her feet! i'm pretty sure she is thinking, "my feet are awesome. what is the easiest way for me to get them into my mouth?"

Happy Anniversary

On December 16th, Bret and I celebrated our 5th anniversary. Unfortunately, Bret was in Ft. Wayne for the day, so we didn't get to see each other until early evening. I had a cake made that was similar to the top of our cake, and you better believe I put our topper on it! Evan only associates cakes with birthdays, so when I told him I got a cake for daddy, he automatically assumed it was his birthday. SO, when Bret got home that night, Evan tore into the garage yelling, "Daddy, Happy Birthday, its your birthday! We got you a cake!". Who wants to bet that this little boy will tell his Daddy what his Christmas presents are : )...it runs in the family, Aunt Kate had the same problem! Evan was the first to get cake, and he immediately ate all the icing off. He then proceeded to push his plate towards Bret and said, "Daddy, you eat this one, I'm going to get another piece of cake".

I CANNOT believe it has been 5 years already! In the past five years we have......

Lived in Broad Ripple

Moved to Cincinnati

Had a baby boy

Promotion from warehouse to counter to inside sales to onsite at Duke for Bret

Moved back to Indy from Cinci

Bought our first house

Promotion to outside sales for Bret

Had a baby girl

Promotion to stay at home mom for me

Promotion to Ft. Wayne Branch Manager for Bret

And, right now, we have an offer in negotiations for our house and are house hunting in Ft. Wayne

Sprinkled throughout the 5 years are A LOT of laughter and fun times. We have some challenges, but we have had more than our share of blessings too!

O' Christmas Tree

Since the realtor had come to take pictures of the house, Bret, the kids and I headed off this weekend to get our Christmas tree. We ended up going to the same place that we got our pumpkins, and Evan remembered that they had lots of farm animals. They didn't disappoint this trip either!hunting through the trees for the best one!picking out the perfect tree is exhausting for this little missit took it out of her big brother too...this is the picture I took of evan on the way home from getting his first christmas tree! posing in front of the tree. evan had a great time decorating the tree, and he was quite the pro considering he had helped Grammy and Packaw with both of their trees already

and his 4th and final tree. he calls this one his nighttime tree. can you see in the background who has found her feet? last night after her bath she had one foot in her mouth and was really enjoying this new teething option! it cracks bret and i up when she has on a sleeper that has something on the feet (like her reindeer sleeper)...she stares at her feet and wiggles them.

A Collection of the last weeks or so...

Its beginning to look a lot like Christmas...

It was so much fun to put on Christmas music and make Christmas cookies....of course there was no time to savor the moment with a nearly three year old. Bret and Evan might have torn through the dough and made all the cookies in 10 minutes or less....Apparently Grace's Bumbo is also a Booster for Evan?We are for sale!!! It was exhausting and stressful, but the house is officially for sale...now if we could just get someone to buy it!They are playing together!!!! OR, Evan is trying to play and Grace is trying to eat the toy

The Greatest Show on Earth

Grammy and Packaw took Evan to the circus on Saturday so that Bret and I could get ready for the couples baby shower that we were hosting the next day. Evan wasn't totally in love with the first half, but the 2nd half with the lions, tigers and ELEPHANTS more than made his entire month. They also bought him a big elephant that he has been carrying around, bathing and sleeping with and talking to ever since. He requested a big elephant from Santa Claus for Christmas, so I'm thinking that counts : )...after all, from what I remember, Grammy and Packaw know Santa really well! totally mesmerized... the big elephants!!

and the shower set up....no your eyes are not playing tricks on you, that is totally a hot chocolate bar : )

5 months! (and various other pictures)

We didn't have a 5 month well baby appointment, so this is all I know...she is 5 months old and HAPPY about it : ). Most nights she sleeps from 8ish to 6ish. She sleeps about every two hours during the day, and rarely (if ever) goes longer than 3 hours to eat during the day. She has the most amazing thighs ever. Her eyes will be brown, but they are taking their sweet time getting that way. She is a calm baby (except when feeling slightly under the weather) and is absolutely adored by her Mommy, Daddy and Big Brother. You can just feel the love...even though both kiddos are recovering from a nasty cold.
I don't know why, but this picture just looks like they are up to no good.Remember those nasty colds I mentioned? Well, for this kiddo, it meant breathing treatments. For these parents, it meant NO FUN! But, through some creative thinking, Bret and I developed a few different ways to get at least a tiny bit of the medicine in. Don't be alarmed...the mask was a request from E because he thought the "smoke" hurt his eyes. The real prize goes to Grammy and Packaw because they did TWO successful breathing treatments with Evan when he spent the night at their house. I might have only done one successful treatment if you added up all the mini sessions I did in one day!

We're MOOOOVING!

We are packing up and moving up again. Bret was offered and accepted an awesome promotion last week, so, now we are moving to beautiful Ft. Wayne, IN where he is the new Branch Manager for Ferguson's Ft. Wayne satellite branch.

We just started meeting with realtors to put our house on the market which is stage 1 of many with the relo company. I have literally spent the last 4 days organizing and cleaning the house from top to bottom. This task would not have been possible if my Grandma Shirley hadn't come to visit and entertain the kiddos while I worked like a mad woman. The funniest part came last night when Bret and I were re-arranging our furniture upstairs to help set the "stage" for our future buyers. We moved a dresser out of our room and into his room. This happened to be the dresser that had a TV on it. Evan watched us move this dresser into his room and then ran back into the master to the TV and said (no joke), "Oh YAY! I get a TV!". Apparently he thought the dresser and TV were a combo deal and both were being moved to his room!

stay tuned....

This week the Goverts will potentially have some pretty big news.....

Grace Meets More Goverts

Some of the Texas Goverts were up for Thanksgiving, so Bret, the kids and I drove up to his Aunt Linda's for a pre-Thanksgiving get-together. It was Grace's first time meeting her Great Grandma Rainey

Deep in conversation...

Cuddle timeEvan was also super excited because Aunt Linda is also a grandma and has a house FULL of toys like his Grammy. No video on this one, but Grace thought whatever E was doing was hilarious. No one can bring out the belly laughs in her like Evan. Although, Grandpa Jeff did get some good ones right before we left Aunt Linda's house...Samantha had the magic touch on getting Evan to relax and slow down right before we left...didn't hurt that she also had an iPhone complete with his favorite game, Angry Birds.

Snow and Racing Cars

Since our freezer was being overtaken by frozen meals (kind of obsessed with making dinners in bulk and freezing them) and milk for Grace, Evan and Bret surprised me with a freezer. I'm now kind of obsessed with the freezer and how spacious it makes our fridge's freezer look! You also don't have to duck and dodge when opening the freezer to avoid being hit by bags of milk that tumble out : ). Of course Evan benefited from this purchase as well because we turned the box into a giant racetrack for his cars (his obsession). like evan's shadow? tillie sticks to e like glue whenever he is on the move with a snack
it was snowing!

Grammy and Packaw's

While Bret was out of town last week, the kids and I spent some time with Grammy and Packaw. One of the first days we were there, Grammy and I took the kids on a walk. Tillie decided to turn our walk into a jog which of course was very intriguing to Evan who immediately asked to get out of the stroller and run with Grammy and Tillie. He ran off and on for a bit over a mile...is that normal for little guy that is just two and a half?

The next day, he went for a run with Packaw.....The home stretch.... Since Daddy was away, we sent him lots of pictures...

Evan being a goof ball like normal!! Why play with some of the toys out of the toy box when you can play with all the toys inside the toy box

Grace doesn't look as content in the picture as she really was...I came downstairs to find her cuddled up with Packaw and listening to Christmas music. This little girl LOVES music, and the entire week, if she started to fuss, Evan would say "mommy, she is sad. she needs christmas music. that will make her happy".