Wordless Wednesday...a day early

Okay, so these are words, which kind of negates the title of this post. BUT from now on, I'm copying some other blogs that I've seen where they just post a picture or group of pictures on Wednesdays. Only pictures, no words. Now that I've explained that, there will be no more words on my Wednesday posts. And yes, I know that today is Tuesday, but we should be traveling all day tomorrow and I wanted to get these pics posted. How did we get such a cute child??

Early Christmas

Since we're going to be visiting family on Christmas, we decided to celebrate by ourselves a couple of days ago. While Garrett was napping, we put the presents under the tree and put together his train table. When he woke up...ta-da! He was excited to open the presents but not so sure what to do with them beyond that. :) Here are a few pictures of him opening and playing with a couple of the presents he got this year. Thank you to Aunt Chris for the car racing toy and the school bus. And thank you to Nana and Papa for the train set. Garrett has already spent much time with his new toys.

He loves the train set and the car racing set! He has a hard time deciding which toy to play with. 

PS: Please ignore the bed-head. :)

Christmas Cookie Time

It's been a stay-at-home kind of day today...we've got a plumber jack-hammering in our bathroom trying to fix a broken pipe, Russ needed to study and work on lessons, and it's a little too windy outside to play in the backyard (BIG branches fall off our trees too often in the wind!). So I decided to finally make and frost some sugar cookies with Garrett. He helped mix the dough, roll it out, use the cookie cutters and frost them too! He did pretty well, especially considering how much he loooooves frosting. :) I love my little man and how much he loves to "help" me.

This is his "Cheese!" face. :)

 Cutting out the cookies...

...putting on some sprinkles...

...and eating as much frosting as possible.

At least he was happy to share with his Daddy!

Rolling out the dough like a big boy

Yummy!!!

Evening Silliness

It's been a long time since I've posted anything here. Not because nothing has been going on, but because I've just been enjoying this season in our lives. Garrett is growing and changing every day. He's a copycat so we have to be careful what we give him to copy. :) He's becoming more independent as well. That's what these pictures are all about. He was already dressed in his jammies for the night but decided he absolutely NEEDED to put his jeans back on. He's gotten quite good at  helping with the getting dressed process, so before I realized what he was doing he already had both legs in the pants and was grabbing my hand for help getting them past his little tushie. What's a mommy to do? I helped him pull them up and he showed off his new style for the camera. He's also learned how to say cheese for the camera, which is pretty stinking cute, I think. Anyway, the countdown to Christmas continues and it's only 2 weeks until we're back in the midwest to celebrate with my family--yay!!!! Happy Almost Christmas Everyone!!

And we're halfway through November...

...HOW did this happen? It was just summertime. How did we get to being only 5 short weeks away from my favorite holiday? (That would be Christmas. In case you weren't tracking.) We've been so busy with school, church and friends that the days have flown right by. Here are a few random pictures from a normal day in our household. Garrett like to eat his snacks in unusual places sometimes. :-)

Trick or Treat!

Garrett did great his first time trick or treating. We only stayed out for about 1/2 an hour since it was getting dark and he was getting tired, but he liked picking out candy from our neighbors' bowls. If only I could have gotten him to say "Arrrrrr". His Grammy and Aunt Hillary were there to help us celebrate her (Aunt Hillary's) birthday and they also brought along some yummy caramel apples and jack-o-lanterns. (Side note: I tried looking up the spelling of that word and found about 10 different ways to spell it!! So I just picked one.) The messy face pictures are of Garrett enjoying his first ever Snickers. Thankfully, it was a mini one, because he does NOT need that much sugar in one fell swoop. :-)

Pumpkin Patch 2010

We made our annual trip to the pumpkin patch today and it's amazing the difference a year makes in the life of a child! Last year he was a crawler so we had to carry him or pull him in the wagon the whole time. This year, we would have had a serious melt-down on our hands if we had tried to contain him that way. There were cut-outs to see (many of his favorite cartoon characters were there), a hay-bale maze to run through, pumpkins to pick up, and a bounce house that he actually attempted this year. I'm just gonna post all the pictures, adding a comment here or there, but mostly this post will be pictures. I can only imagine what trouble he'll get into NEXT year at the pumpkin patch!

 Visiting with the Little Einsteins and Clifford

 Hi Mommy!

 Having fun in the hay-bale maze.

 A farm boy at heart.

 More friends from the Disney Channel and PBS.

 Boo! I was showing him how to do this, but he still refused.

 He loves finding people's noses...apparently the scarecrow needed some help too.

 This was the first time he's been brave enough to get in a bounce house and have fun!

 Hay rack ride!!

 He got so excited when I said Nemo was there. Seriously, he loves this fish.

He wasn't a big fan of riding in the wagon, but after getting out to pet the horse he was more than happy to "help Daddy" pull the wagon along. He's got his parents' independent streak already, oh dear!