What, Christmas was a month ago? Oh well!

Christmas Summed Up - Part 1

What's that you say? Christmas is over? But who doesn't want to see photos of my little bug's FIRST Christmas?! Come on, you know you want to!!Helping Momma decorate. He was in charge of the cookie tins. Which he did an excellent job of spreading out all over the floor.

9 Month Picture! Yep, this was back on Dec 7th...but look at that face!! That is happiness right there.

Riley and Daddy getting ready to cut his first Christmas tree! Ok everybody, let me just tell you how COOL this Christmas tree farm was! This guy has two draft horses that pull this wagon and he gives wagon rides to everybody to go cut their own trees. And the bigger kids he even lets ride ON the horses! He offered to let Riley sit on one of the horses but me being the paranoid mom I am (and mostly remembering when I was a kid and there was a runaway draft horse team that ran right past me at the county fair-SCARY), I said, um, no thanks! But we did take a ride on the wagon.

Oh and did I mention the tree cost us all of $15? Oh yeah...sometimes it pays to live in the middle of nowhere :)


Riley and his buddy the snowman. He loved this thing. He would get upset when he knocked it down.

By the way-LeAnna-notice the boots. They're John Deere. Shhhhh, don't tell anyone. ;)

New Wheels!

Yep, that's right, I'm a high rollin' new wheelin' chick! Nope, not brand new, but new to me.

6 1/2 years ago I bought my 2nd car, a dark green Alero. 4 doors because we were getting married soon and would be having kids in another 2 years or so(or you know, 5 1/2 years. Close enough, right?). It was a good car, sure it had its issues but it never left me stranded. Well, unless you count this time about a year ago. And if I had been thinking straight on that snowy Saturday morning, I could now still say that "no, my trusty Alero never left me stranded". :) Oh well, close enough. Yep, it was a good car. The car I drove the 4 hrs to my parents almost every weekend for months with Henry the puppy sleeping in the backseat when I was planning our wedding. Drove away from our wedding in. Drove all over the state visiting friends, attending weddings, baby showers, and so on. Drove to the local hospital at 5 am one warm March Saturday morning...and the following Monday drove back home from a different hospital 2 hours away with our precious baby boy. Yep, that car had been through a lot with us. But it was getting old, it had warning lights on. Lots of them...on a regular basis. And 140,000 miles. And it was 8 years old. It was time to move on.

And move on we have! No, I am not a minivan driving soccer mom yet. I hope to not have to do the minivan thing (will not say never b/c everytime I say never to something, it comes back to bite me!), but even if I do, I'm certainly not starting now with just one kid! So after lots of looking, waffling back and forth, thinking...we just went to the local dealer last week, saw a couple used but not old cars they had, test drove one and bought it that day. Funny how we think and think and debate for a year and then bam, buy a car in one day. And not even one we'd been originally considering! But we're now proud owners of a zippy cute little '09 Jetta. Black with black interior, and only 25,000 miles. (and we've already put almost 700 miles on it in less than week, wow!) LOVE this little car! Its actually bigger than my Alero was on the inside and the trunk...oh the trunk, how I love it. Stroller fits in like a dream and what's that?! There's room to spare?! Joy! Hmm...you know you're a mom when: you get this excited about trunk space, of all things. Yes, how life changes. But on the outside its all cute and stylish. And boy does it have some "zip" to it! Its such fun to drive! Love that I get to be a "cool mom" and not a mini-van driving soccer mom (no offense to my mini-van driving friends-its just not my thing) Also...did I mention the heated seats. Heated seats in Ohio winters are nice. Very nice.

So that's been my excitement this week!

Also, in 7 weeks my baby boy will be turning ONE. How is that possible??? I'm one part sad that my baby won't be my "baby" much longer, one part excited that my little boy is growing up and we have so much fun to look forward to still and at least two parts SO proud of my big "almost 1" boy :)

2010

Christmas was GREAT. We had a wonderful first Christmas with Riley and I have lots and lots of pictures to share. But we'll do that in another post. I have a tendency to not blog at all because I want to do these big posts with pictures and everything else and I never find the time. So then I put it off and get so far behind and feel like I have to update on everything but again..no time. But no more! I don't usually do New Years Resolutions...mostly because I just forget about them until a few days into the year and then it just seems silly. And then I can never come up with anything that seems "resolution-worthy" But I'm giving it a go this year, so....
2010 Resolutions (or more like general goals to shoot for, lets say):

1)On weeknights, get everything ready for the following workday-that includes my lunch, Riley's lunch, the diaper bag, my pump bag, and lay out both Riley and my clothes.
So far I've been able to get about half of this done every night. Its progress, I guess.

2)Keep up with my house. Put stuff away as we use it, clean and organize as we go, throw things out that we just plain don't need, have "a place for everything and everything in its place", that type of thing. This was something I started to try more of when I went back to work and while I've gotten better at it, I'm still not where I want to be and I've actually sort of slacked on it here lately. But with a very mobile little boy (who is going to just get into more and more stuff as we go!) its become more of a necessity than a "this would be nice" thing.

3)Blog more often and not wait for the "big posts" to get written. I love the friends I've met in the blog world and love keeping up with you all. I know I love to read even the little posts without mass amounts of pictures and big deep thoughts, so why do I feel like no one would want those posts from me? So here's one to start us off! :)

Hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas and New Years-I'm loving catching up on all the Christmas/New Year posts!!