~ChRiStMaS 2o11!!!~

MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!  We had a wonderful Christmas this year! Kali really enjoyed opening her presents (technically, ripping into the wrapping paper) and was spoiled by everyone!
We made cookies for Santa on Christmas Eve and Kali picked out the ones that Santa was to eat...there were about 10 of them! LOL!!!  I'm sure Santa was fat and happy after all those cookies!
I got video of her walking down the hallway, and her first view of the Christmas tree and the presents from Santa! It's adorable (just look at the subject).

Cookies for Santa

SANTA WAS HERE!

So adorable!

Opening the first present Christmas Day

Loving her new Power Wheels!

Look at all the presents!

Giving Tigger some Love!

Thanks Aunt Trin

Relaxing in her new recliner chair

Junior and all his loot

Testing out the 4wheeler

Christmas night, watching Bubble Guppies in her new chair with Bunny.

Her new favorite chair in the house!

Family picture Christmas Day!!

Me, Kali and my Dad

We had a wonderful Christmas!! We hope that everyone else did too! Can't wait for this new year and to see all the great things in store for our family!!!

Happy New Year!

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas!

Thanksgiving weekend, we put up our Christmas tree. I normally wait until the 2nd weekend in December, but we had the time and it was nice to have some good family time.
At first, all the nice ornaments were all at the top:

But my OCD wouldn't allow it to stay like that.  So now we have more ornaments at the bottom.  Kali only tries to play with one or two, but normally won't pull them off or anything.  It's kinda nice to have the tree up, makes the house more festive!!!  I'll have to take more pictures of all the other decorations we have up.

Then, as yearly tradition, we attended the Christmas Parade with everyone.  It was great!!!  Last year, Kali was too little, and it was too cold to bring her out.  This year, she was totally into all the floats (and the BANDS) and it was actually pretty comfortable out (gotta love FL's 75 during the day and 50 at night weather!).  



Enjoying some french fries while waiting on the parade.

Sitting in mommy's lap for the parade!

I loved this by the way!!!

My little reindeer!!! :-)

Then on Sunday, we went to the park for some pictures for our Christmas card.  It was a lot of fun, and we got some cute pictures for the card!

Kali playing in the leaves.

This was the first family picture we took, and it was great!!!

Definitely going on our Christmas card! :)

I love this one too.  Her little "Cheese" cracks me up!

Another one that was the best on the first take!

The park is decked out for Christmas, and had these little houses set up.

So we laid out blanket down and brought our little Christmas tree and parked it in front.

I think this is another contender for the Christmas Card.

Kali and her bunny!
She adores this bunny.

I brought it in case she started having a melt down during pictures.

Normally, Bunny doesn't leave the house.

And then she found it in the stroller.

This is the way we usually see her with Bunny.

Holding on for dear life, and running away from us. LOL!!

I saw this pose on Pinterest, and thought it was adorable.

So we had to try it.

Kali seemed to like it (although we always put her upside down like this).

 

Another fun one.  We were swinging her by her arms, but couldn't get the best picture.

So then we just picked her up and took the picture.

I love her smile, cause she was having so much fun!! :)

Playing in the fence.  It's a little blurry (so can't be used for the cards),

but it's so cute!!!!!

Waving Bye Bye!

My precious Baby!

I love her so much!!!

So greatful for another year with this adorable, outgoing, wonderful child!

After we did pictures, we went to the mall to see Santa....yea, Kali was NOT having Santa.  I was holding her, and if I got too close to Santa, she would start crying.  It was funny, but sad.  We tried 3 times, but it wasn't happening.  So, we're going to try again later this week.  Maybe if we got with Jen and her boys, Kali will see that Travis and Trevor can sit with Santa and it will make her sit with him.  Otherwise, we're going to have a family picture with Santa while Kali sits on my lap! HAHA!!!  But every family has some of those pictures, right?! :)

Thanksgiving and Black Friday Shopping

This year, I decided to host Thanksgiving at our house since last year (our first Thanksgiving at our new home, and Kali's first Thanksgiving) we were at TJ's brother's house in Birmingham.  Originally it was going to be us (TJ, me, and Kali) my parents, and TJ's parents.  But TJ's sister and brother in law, were able to come down and join us!  So, we had a full house and some yummy food!
My parents brought the Turkey and my dad's pumpkin and apple pies.  TJ's parents brought some sides of baked beans, deviled eggs, stuffing, green beans, and pecan pie.  TJ's sister brought a sweet potato pie (I'd never had one of those before and it was delicious!!!).  And I made a sweet potato souffle, corn, ranch potatoes, and rolls.  It was all so good! And the best part of having Thanksgiving at my house?! THE LEFT OVERS!!!!! Kali and I just ate Thanksgiving dinner all over again for lunch today. Yummy!!!

It was also great to have everyone over! There are a lot of things we're thankful for this year, and having a wonderful family that loves us and adores our child is amazing! We're surrounded by some of the best people, and I tell Kali every night everyone that loves her and how lucky she is (and remind myself how lucky I am to have her and have all those people in my life as well).

After dinner, I prepared for some Black Friday shopping! My best friend, Jen and I go every year. We were kinda hesitant about it starting so dang early this year (9pm at Toys R Us and 10pm at Walmart), but we headed out anyway.  We got to Toys R Us at 8pm, and the lines was ridiculously long.  We decided to stay in the nice warm car and wait until they opened and the crowd went in before attempting it.  We walked up to the door about 8:50, and found that they were only letting about 30 people in at a time.  Which is actually smart on their part, but that meant that we were going to have to wait in line for 2 hours before even getting inside and then fighting the checkout line.  We decided that nothing we wanted was THAT important, and headed to Walmart.  After searching for a parking spot for 30 minutes (people were parking on the side of the HIGHWAY just to go in there), Jen let me out at the door to scope out what the inside was like.  It was a freaking MADHOUSE!  It went from ridiculous at Toys R Us to insanity at Walmart.  I got stuck by the pallet with the $5 barbies and thought that I was going to die when they started ripping into it and barbies were flying!  I eventually had to ditch my cart just to try and get out of that section and find Jen (who finally found a parking spot).  We got the few things we needed and went to the Lawn and Garden section to check out.  Then we headed back to Toys R Us and got the few things we needed there (like Kali's Power Wheels! Whoop Whoop) and stood in the checkout line for ONE HOUR. Ridiculous I tell you!
We stopped at Target last, and it wasn't nearly as bad as I anticipated.  We were home by 3am and I was asleep by 3:30a.

I was able to knock a few people off my shopping list, and Kali is officially done.  But I'm not sure that I'll do Black Friday shopping next year if they start it so early again.  There were people there that normally wouldn't go if it was at 3am like normal.  But since it was 9/10pm, they figured they could attend and go home and sleep afterwards.  It just wasn't worth that amount of crowd and chaos for me to do again.  But I always enjoy shopping with Jen, and it made for a good story ;-)

NOW, I'm cleaning up the living room of all Kali's toys and putting some of them up to prepare for the CHRISTMAS TREE!!!!!  I think we're going to start decorating this Sunday.  We've had such a busy couple of months, that we never really get a full day on the weekend to ourselves.  So I'm preparing for it to be like that this month again.  And taking advantage of the fact that we have nothing planned for Sunday and going to decorate.  I'm kinda excited to see how Kali is with the tree. Last year, she was only 2 months old for Christmas and the tree really didn't mean anything to her.  But this year, I bet she's going to love the lights! YAY!!!

Hope everyone had a wonderful and Happy Thanksgiving!  Christmas tree pictures are soon to come! :)