Holiday Greetings!

Christmas cards were never something we did growing up, so it really didn't even occur to me to do it until we got married and started receiving more and more of them. I always thought that they were hard to do, and also a bit pretentious. As I've started doing them, though, I've realized how easy they are and how great it is to be able to send current photos of your family to friends and family that you don't see often.

This will be our third year of sending Christmas cards and we've used Shutterfly every time. That's why I was so excited to learn about Shutterfly's promotion of 50 free Christmas cards to any blogger (ugh - I hate calling myself a "blogger", but I guess I am) who shares their Shutterfly experiences. I can say that they're incredibly user-friendly, reasonably priced and have some really cute styles. I've also used Shutterfly to create calendars (great gifts for the grandparents) and Six Month and One Year photo scrapbooks for Brooke (so much easier than physically cutting and pasting!). With Shutterfly, you can also share photos via a password-protected website. Many of the teachers at the preschool that I work at do this.

Using Shutterfly is simple - you upload your photos onto your Shutterfly account (again, very easy to set up), and they're permanently there. You can then use those photos for any current or future creations by simply choosing your style and dragging the images that you want to use on to the designated "photo" spot. They have many samples, but are very easily personalized to your particular taste. You can also use only one, or many photos. The only difficult thing about Shutterfly is choosing from their many styles. I'm still working on ours for this year. In the meantime, enjoy some samples with pictures of complete strangers:

Starlight Star Bright

Modern Cranberry Noir

One Year Later...

Today, while Matt headed to Champaign to prepare for the big IHSA 7A championship game (Go Tigers!), Brooke and I headed to Oakbrook Mall with the Westras and our friends Matt ("Plotke") and Lesley. This is a photo of Matt and Lesley with Mati and Brooke her first weekend home from the hospital. To fit my Queen of "That Would Have Been a Good Photo" role, we didn't recreate this today. But it would've been a good one, huh?

We had some time to kill and it was cold out, so we headed in to Neiman Marcus. That's a great store for kids, right? Actually, aside from the mean saleslady, the kid's department was a pretty fun place. The girls (in matching dresses from Matt and Lesley) liked this baby trampoline. Too bad it was $100! My child is not yet old enough to trick into begging me for things, Mr. (Ms.?) Marcus!

Thanksgiving

This past week has been a busy one for us. We headed down to St. Louis last Friday for Matt's company's holiday party (they have offices in Webster Grove and Glen Ellyn). Of course I didn't get any photos of it because Brooke wasn't around. Then on Saturday, we traveled out to Belleville, IL, to see the WWS Tigers dominate the Belleville East Somethings (is it really worth my looking up their mascot?). Brooke got to ride in the built-in carseat in my parents' minivan. She was loving it!


Brooke came down with another cold on Sunday, so we weren't quite as busy as I'd planned, but we managed to get in a lot of time visiting family. Brooke's become quite adept at pulling up and cruising, which lends itself even more nicely to begging with the dogs for "num-nums."


Brooke and Lexi had a little pajama party one of the nights we were there.


For Thanksgiving, we went over to my grandparents' house. This Thanksgiving we felt that we have even more to be thankful for. My Grandpa recently suffered a heart attack, but you wouldn't know it by looking at him. He's looking and seems to be feeling great! (This is where I should have a picture of him. Oops. Grandma will have to do.)

The girls played together a little more before heading home.

I hope that you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving!

Thankful

Today was a day that I was able to step back and really evaluate how blessed I am. Not because life is perfect, but because I have a healthy family that I love very much. I don't write this to gross you out, but as we enter into Thanksgiving week I realize how truly blessed I am and feel the need to express that.


I tend to always be looking to the next thing rather than enjoying the present, and there's nothing like having a baby (I guess technically a toddler now) to help you realize how quickly the present passes. I have such a hard time really enjoying what's going on now and it's something I'm really working on and praying about. I don't want to worry about Brooke walking. I want to treasure this time that she'll still cuddle with me. I don't want to be thinking about when I can clean the kitchen. I want to watch Brooke as she giggles at a ball rolling across the floor or Ozzie running outside.


I also tend to mask my true emotions in sarcasm. Certainly you're thinking, "I hadn't noticed that!" with a sarcastic intonation. But as much trouble as I give my husband about his passion for football and the team that he coaches, it really does awe me how much he's willing to pour into those kids. (Sometimes. Sometimes I just want him to get home.)

With that said, we're headed downstate this weekend to cheer on the Tigers as they play Belleville East in the state semi-finals. Brooke and I are just going to stay down there until Thanksgiving and I won't have access to a computer that lets me do the fancy things I do for this blog - like upload photos. So consider this my Thanksgiving post and I hope to come back late next week with lots of cute pictures.


"Be joyful always; pray continually; give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God's will for you in Christ Jesus." - 1 Thessalonians 5:16 & 17

Happy Thanksgiving!

Field Trip

This past week, my cousin, Amy, and her daughter Matilda came to stay with us and watch Brooke while I worked. (Thanks again, Ames!) Aren't they pretty?


We had fun doing a little shopping and hanging out, but we had a great time going to the zoo on Wednesday. (It's a good thing we had such a great time at the zoo because it's the only time I remembered to take pictures.)


Mati's only 2 months older than Brooke, but it's funny how a little independent ambulation and a whole lot more hair can age a kid.


I also feel the need to explain Brooke's outfit. It was a little chillier than expected when we arrived at the zoo, so I put her in the sweater that I had in her diaper bag that happened to be a little too small. Also, she's learned to take bows out of her hair, so that didn't last long. Not that it would have mattered. At lunch before the zoo, a little boy said, "Mommy, why does that boy have a bow in his hair?" Oh, well.


The girls conspiring against us.



Mati going in for a kiss.


We did a little impromptu photo shoot in the hay and pumpkins.



The week ended on a bit of a rough note as a stomach bug made its way around the house (to everyone but Matt - knock on wood), but we still managed to have a pretty good time.

Indian Summer

The weather these past couple of weeks has been AMAZING. Is it possible to have spring fever in November? Because I'm pretty sure I do.


Anyway, we've been trying to take every possible opportunity to enjoy the outdoors. Here are a few photos from the park last weekend and Brooke hanging out by the patio door (one of her new favorite places) before we went outside. And in case you were wondering, that's Ozzie's usual perch. He runs outside to do his business, then almost immediately runs back up to the door. One of these days we're going to have to break it to him that he's a dog.


It really is crazy what sunshine can do for the soul! Sunshine, and baby laughter. Speaking of baby laughter, I'll leave you with a video of Brooke on the swing.

Halloween Fun?

Because we already had so much scheduled for Halloween, and because it would be pretty embarrassingly obvious who would be eating any candy that we received trick-or-treating, we didn't buy a costume for Brooke this year.


We did, however, buy one for her last year. We bought it before she was born and before I had any concept of the sizing of infant clothes. It was a tiger costume (naturally) from Old Navy that was for size 0-6 months. It was still hanging in her closet so I had her try it on a couple of days after Halloween when she was feeling better. I know they aren't the best photos, but I thought they were too funny not to share.


I think she could sense how awkwardly small it was. It only lasted for about 5 minutes.

Hopefully next year Halloween will be a bit more enjoyable...

It's My Party and I'll Cry if I Want To...

Brooke had her second-first birthday party on Sunday. I'm not at all crafty or creative, but I was pretty happy with how the decorations turned out, so I'm going to go ahead a post a few photos. I wanted to display some photos of her for people to look at without making it seem like a shrine. My friend Michelle had the cute idea to hang them.


At both parties, I made cupcakes and brownies. While the cupcakes looked cute, the brownies (I must disclaim that my brownies are kind of popular) were a MUCH bigger hit.



I used the cupcake batter to make an extra large cupcake for Brooke to enjoy. You can kind of see it in this picture.


That was the calm before the storm. In an earlier post, I mentioned how great her party last weekend went. Let's do a 180 degree turn, shall we? To give you a little background, we noticed last weekend that she was getting a couple of new teeth in, but that didn't seem to bother her. Then, she woke up a little sniffly on Wednesday. Again, she wasn't the happiest she's been and wanted to sleep more, but she still didn't seem miserable. THEN, at her check-up on Friday, I let the doctor talk me into giving her some of her shots (She wasn't running a fever still seemed pretty happy. Plus, to this point, she hasn't be affected by the shots. How bad can it be, right?). My poor baby. It was the perfect storm of Bad Things on a weekend of what should have been Good Things. I felt horrible. Even when she had RSV and needed a nebulizer last winter she didn't seem this unhappy. You can see her Sick Eyes in these photos.


Anyway, she rallied as best she could. She really wasn't horrible - she just wasn't herself. She did okay as long as she was being held and didn't see or hear me, which is easier said than done when I was hosting a party and already have an abnormally loud voice. The cake seemed to cheer her up a little, but her appetite wasn't what it usually is so she didn't dive in as much as last week.

She got some great presents, including an indoor/outdoor baby play set (It advertises that it only takes 20 minutes to set up. I have a feeling I'll be posting about THAT later.), a rocking horse, and her first set of golf clubs, naturally.

It was great to be able to celebrate with our family and some of our close friends. A few of Matt's football players even showed up, which I thought was really sweet. It wasn't really a day for photo ops with the hostess, so there are only a few photos of her with other people.


She cheered up a little toward the end of the night. I think it's because she knew bedtime was in sight.

Maybe this will be the last birthday party horror story I have to share. I can dream, right?