New Years Resolutions

I stole this idea from Amanda.  I think about things I should do in the new year, but I typically never do them.  Maybe if I put them in writing I will actually do them!  With that said (and if you hop over to Amanda's blog, they are going to be almost the exact same as hers, haha, great minds think alike!)

1.  First and foremost, this is my number one priority.  Going through grad school with Carl working full time and me working very part time, we have some debt.  We've played around with a budget and actually stuck to one for 2 months and then fell off the wagon.  This year, we will stick to a budget and pay off debt.  I would love for the only things to have by the end of 2012 is our mortgage, my school loan, and Carl's school loan.  Luckily, we don't have a car payment, so this shouldn't be hard.  I've started reading Dave Ramsey's book (thanks Ashley).

2.  Keep our house cleaner.  Don't get me wrong, our house is by no means "dirty".  But I don't vacuum every day like I should.  Our office isn't very organized (I know... something in my house not organized with my crazy OCD).  We have a small house with a lot of stuff.  So I want to make better use of our space!  I get rid of stuff all the time.  Currently I have Hunter's changing table ready to give to the thrift store, I just wanted to make sure none of our friends needed one (so if you do, I haven't set the pick up yet... but I will next week.  Message me if you want it!).

3. Run a 5k.  I started the Couch To 5k earlier this month, but haven't kept up with it.  I was feeling really good running (the first day was awful) and Hunter was enjoying riding along.

4.  Be more crafty.  I already made some leg warmers out of an old sweater with an idea I found on Pinterest.  I have a Valentine's Day wreath I want to make.  I just want to do some fun things and show Hunter that we can make cute, cheap things!

5.  Finish the kitchen remodel.  Really, I just have to paint the walls.  How hard could that be?!  After those cabinets, the thought of picking up a paint brush makes me feel sick to my stomach.  I just have to get over that.  Our kitchen looks funny and I need to fix that.

6.  This one I need the help from Carl.  Finish getting everything else in the house ready so we can eventually sell it once he is finished with school.  We need to tile our back bathroom (I say we, I really mean Carl), put a fresh coat of paint in the bathroom, paint our bedroom, and probably re-carpet all the rooms.  The carpets could probably wait until right before we put the house on the market.  And then we have to get the yard and flower bed ready.  Need some curb appeal.

There.  It is out there for anyone to read.  These are my goals for 2012.

Richmond Children's Museum

Kelly and I took Emma, Hunter, and Alyssa to the Richmond Children's Museum to play and see the authentic Santa.  On the way, Emma entertained Hunter with a book before they both fell asleep.



The line for Santa was crazy long and Hunter and Emma were going a little stir crazy.  Kelly stayed with Alyssa and the stroller in line and I took the two to the 3 and under section.  It is a lot bigger than the toddler area in our children's museum and they had a great time.

Hunter enjoyed the chicken egg part (just like the one that is similar at our museum).

Kelly messaged me letting me know it was our turn to go into the Santa area.  We didn't know that there would be another line inside that area.  But that line went pretty fast.

Sitting with Princess Amanda

With Santa

He went right to Santa!  As we were standing in line, a little kid was screaming on Santa's lap and Hunter kept saying, "No! No! No!"  I told him he didn't have to go to Santa and that I would sit with him.  When it was our turn, he reached out his hands to Santa and sat there without screaming.  I thought he was fine, but when I went to pick him back up he had little tears rolling down his cheeks.  Poor baby.

This was our picture I purchased.

After Santa, we let the kids play where they wanted.  It is a really nice museum with lots of open, free-play centers.

 

And this is a video of Hunter watching the video of him and Emma in the car.  Hilarious!

Past Few Weeks

A few weeks ago, my work PTA did Cookies With Santa.  I made sure the day the fliers went home with students I payed for a spot.  It is usually sold out early the next morning. I asked for the first time slot, so I had an IEP meeting, picked up Hunter, and came back to work early (to get a good parking spot).  Since we were so early, we went to the OT/PT room and played.  He really enjoyed the swing.

However, he did not enjoy Santa.

My little sister turned 21 on Dec. 15.  We went out to dinner to celebrate.

I tried to correct the red eye.. it probably looked better with the red eye on Mel, haha

Hanging out with Ms. Sarah

He loves sitting in the Melissa & Doug boxes

This is Hunter's favorite sippy cup.  Kelly gave us a few sippy cups to try out when we were switching over from bottles.  This just happened to be one he loved, purple top and all.  He wouldn't leave the house without it, so we went out to lunch with Ms. Sarah today with his orange and purple cup.

Christmas Town- Lights

I know I've said it before, but I just want to re-iterate... I'm terrible at editing pictures and I took these with my iPhone (so they are not going to do the lights justice).  So here they are, unedited and taken with an iPhone:

It was absolutely beautiful!  Next year, we are definitely getting in the line for the skyline before it opens!

Christmas 2011

On Christmas Eve, we let Hunter open a present.  This was a tradition we did in my house (although, when we were younger, we opened a gift that had our pajamas) and something Carl and I both wanted to have for our family.  We had him open the Melissa & Doug Pound and Roll Tower.



He played with this for at least 20 minutes:

Santa came to visit that night after Hunter went to bed.  Santa brought Hunter Fisher-Price's Play My way Customizable Play Center.  Santa forgot the sink that goes with this play center, but Fisher-Price was kind enough to rush ship us a whole new table (without us having to send back the old one).  It should be here within the next few days.  He also got Hunter a few books.

Dreaming of Santa

We bought Hunter Melissa & Doug (can you tell we love that brand?!) Band in a Box and Clay Play.  I got both on super sale.

Carl bought the family the iPad.  Hunter loves seeing the peek-a-boo games on the iPad.

We went to my parents' house for my dad's famous brunch.  Delicious.  The kids opened gifts in a few nano seconds.  Ryleigh kept saying, "I'm all out of presents."  Hunter opened about 2 and was over it.  We packed the rest in the car and opened them at home.  We taught my dad how to play Angry Birds (I think Hunter is a lot better at it than he is) and Hunter passed out watching Peep.

We headed home for a bit, then headed off to Carl's uncle's house.  We had a good dinner, opened gifts, and had a great time with everyone.  Hunter was showing off his goofy personality most of the night.  He even put on antlers (until we took out the camera).

Thank you everyone who made our Christmas (especially Hunter's) so awesome!  We are so very blessed to have such wonderful people in our lives.  We were all very spoiled!

What We've Been Doing

Relaxing and enjoying time together.  I'll get around to posting about Christmas and all the other fun things we've been up to!

Merry Christmas!

I hope everyone had a great Christmas!  We certainly did!  Hunter was very spoiled by everyone.  More to come later...

Please don't mind the extra 's' on our last name... I didn't realized Shutterfly added an 's' on this card.  Oh well.... just look at the cuteness on the picture, haha.

I know the feeling...

This is definitely how I felt after work on Wednesday (when this was taken)...

18 Months

Hunter is 18 months today.  I just still can't believe we have a "baby" who is a year and a half.  I know I say this every time, but he just amazes me.  I love watching him learn new things and problem solve.  He has such a silly personality and he loves to make us and himself laugh.  If he thinks something is the slightest bit funny, he does this fake, over the top laugh and looks at us to make sure we laugh too.

He has definitely taken an interest in the TV.  We limit the amount he watches, but sometimes Mommy just needs to cook some dinner and it holds his attention (for 10-15 minutes).  He likes Peep, Dinosaur Train, Elmo, Baby Signing Time, and Kipper.  If they laugh, he laughs; if one of the characters gets hurt, he gets sad.  He is getting good at reading facial expressions.

Hunter has been playing with toys appropriately and loves all his little animals and cars.  Cars are probably his favorite toy and then little pull along toys.  Oh, and any toy that he can turn on and make lots of noise. Ha.  He has been playing a lot with his puzzles.  He will take a given piece and put it in different slots saying, "No.  No.  No.  Yeah!"  It's cute.

He built that tower of blocks (to the left of him) all by himself.

At The Little Gym, he has been loving the balance beam and climbing on everything.  He loves the warm up (walking, running, jumping, rolling, etc.) and the group activity (using some sort of manipulative).  He loves his "Ruh" (Miss Sarah) and likes to be the first one in the gym.  We were going to move him up to the Beast class in January, but I think we will stay in Birds because we have made a lot of great friends in there.  No need to rush, we will move up in the summer.

He loves his friends and we talk about them.  He likes to name them in the car when we are driving home from Mrs. Cathy's house.  He is labeling everything and we've really been working on "What's that?" when he doesn't know something.  His receptive language is great and he loves using sign language.

We went for his 18 month check-up today.  I had to fill out a form asking me all these yes/no questions regarding his behavior.  As I was reading it, I knew it was looking for signs of Autism.  It is safe to say that, for now, Hunter is not showing any signs.  Maybe after those 2 year shots... only kidding, I know vaccines do not cause Autism.

He is 26 pounds, 2 ounces and 33.15 inches... a little over the 75th percentile for both.  I let my dad know that he is no longer "short and fat" haha.  I mentioned his legs again, this time not for the bowing, but because he is turning his right foot inward.  Our pediatrician watched him walked and agreed there is a need to see an orthopedist.  The referral was written for "in-toeing".  I requested a certain orthopedist, and he said that was fine, but typically people see the partner so-and-so.  I told him that was fine as long as it wasn't Dr. X... he said he caught my drift.  We go for that appointment in January.  Luckily, this doctor is in the same building as our pediatrician (it is a huge CHKD building) so we won't have to go to the main hospital in Norfolk.  Even if this doctor says he will grow out of it, I will feel better that we went and had it checked out.

Christmas Town

Living Social was running a deal last month for Busch Gardens' Christmas Town.  It was over half off of the tickets so I jumped on it!  I didn't want to pay $50 for us to go, but I was willing to pay $24.

It was BEAUTIFUL!  They did a wonderful job decorating.  We really didn't do much while there except for looking at lights and letting Hunter go on rides.  We did see the Elmo Show which Hunter, I think, liked.  It was long enough to get the point across, but short enough to keep his attention.  They did a wonderful job with that.  I We wanted to see the penguins and also go on the skyline to see the lights from the air; however, the wait was an hour for each one and it was getting late by then.  Next year, we will have a plan!

Here are some pictures and videos.  I will post some of the decorations in another post.  Sorry the quality isn't good, I used my iPhone and I am not very good at editing pictures.

Having a snack while waiting for the whole park to open.

Dancing on stage

Visiting the Clydesdale.  He loved petting him, until he moved, haha.

Once the horse moved, he did not like him anymore.

Watching Elmo

This was how he looked the whole time.

On his first big boy ride... LOVED IT!

Train ride

Next year, we are buying a ton of lights for our tree so it can be this bright

Another ride... when I came to get him out, he told me, "No!"

And another...

And another.