Christmas Tree

My Mom was able to come out for Ollie's birthday. The day before his birthday we set up our Christmas tree (a new full size one, thanks Mom!). We also had a nice turkey dinner with all the trimmings. We had a lot of fun and were so glad that Grandma was able to be here with us! We've also learned that having a third person helping keeps things more orderly and less likely to break.

Ollie is old enough that he understands Christmas and Santa. He's very excited about getting some presents. Lily has no idea why we put a tree in our living room but she had fun hanging candy canes on it. She also wants to sleep under it. Two year olds just take everything in stride and nothing is odd for them. I'm pretty sure that she will be excited to get some presents from Santa.



Here's a finished picture. Yes, I know the ornaments are all clustered in spots and no, I'm not going to fix it.

Reading

Ollie and Lily just love books. All day long they bring me books to read to them. Another thing they really love is to snuggle in bed with me in the morning and read books. Ollie has been learning to read and will now occasionally read to Lily. Here's a super cute picture of them reading together.

Yarn

For some reason, my children love yarn. They are always using it for different things. Ollie just loves to use it to tie things together. He really enjoys tying knots. Lily loves to put it all over her and get tangled up in it. It's also great for pretending to be kitty's and trying to get the yarn from each other. One day I asked Ollie to clean up all the little HEB balls from my room back into his room. After about 15 minutes, I hadn't seen him come out of my room once so I figured I'd better check on him. Instead of just carrying them and making several trips he had attached them all to a piece of yarn so he could drag them behind him and only make one trip. I thought it was a great idea but it did take him much longer than it would have to just make several trips carrying them. Very inventive kiddo.

Thankful

Today I am so thankful to NOT be in Dallas with Lily getting her cast changed. What a huge blessing for our family! Instead, I spent the morning with Ollie at preschool and I plan on spending the afternoon playing with two cute kiddos. :)

Halloween

Ollie was Buzz Lightyear and Lily was a girafee. We had a lot of fun at the ward trunk or treat. We also went door to door this year. We have always just done the ward trunk or treat but this year Ollie informed us that he really wanted to go "door to door".
After a while Ollie got tired of carrying his pumpkin bucket and wanted me to carry it. Lily, on the other hand, held onto the bucket for dear life. I offered to carry it for her but she did NOT want me to. She is a sugar baby and was very interested in the candy. Ollie was more interested in knocking and yelling "trick or treat".

Blackmail

One day we will be able to use this photo to blackmail Ollie. He loves this little shirt that is Lily's. One day he managed to squeeze himself into it. Crazy kid!

New Glasses

When we went up to Dallas for Lily's surgery (thankfully cancelled), she also saw her eye doctor. These glasses are the result. Now she wears a contact in the left eye and then glasses to fine tune her vision. When we took her to get the glasses she was happy to try on a few pairs for us. We were concerned about her keeping them on so we paid extra and had them cut off the ear pieces and put these special ear pieces on. The next day I went to pick the glasses up. I put them on her for the drive home. By the time we made it to the second light she had figured out how to get them off. She definitately doesn't like her new glasses. There's nothing like trying to keep glasses on an active two year old. On the plus side- her glasses bug her more than her patch so she doesn't bother her patch as much.