Sledding With a Toddler

As many of you experienced parents know, sledding with a toddler is not all of the laughter and rosy cheeked excitement that many of us remember as kids. Once I heard that we were getting a nice fresh snow this past weekend, I began to formulate grand plans of taking B sledding on campus. I had recently purchased a couple of different types of sleds at Goodwill (BTW, great place to buy sleds for cheap) and we were going to pack them up on Saturday morning and meet a couple of friends out at the slopes. Well, we ended up changing our location to that of some friends that were meeting us and this new location was a little walk from the car. I had opted to dress B in his snow pants on site so that he would be a little more comfortable in the car. Some might call this a rookie mistake...he was a little chilly when I put on his outer layers in the back of the car. I know this because he actually said - in the clearest little toddler voice - ccccccooooollllllddddd. Poor little guy. But I pressed on and got him all bundled up and pulled him out to where our friends where sledding. We went down the hill once together, climbed back up, got the other two sleds out to try and then went back to the car to warm up. This is when we decided that we were done for the morning and that we would call it a successful sledding day and head home. Total fun, rosy cheek snow time = 10 minutes...tops. From now on, I think we are going to stick with the bunny slopes in our back yard.

PB Knock-offs

You might say that I have Pottery Barn taste with a thrift store budget...or that might just be how it actually is. For some reason, I just hate to spend the $ on something that I can make or replicate myself. The following pics are a couple of my recent finds that are PotteryBarnesque. I bought some old sweaters at the local Goodwill and sewed pillow covers out of them. Cozy! For the mantel, I've been picking up some things here and there and have come up with this combination. I also threw in a picture of some recently hung photos....since we actually have some pics on the wall now! The white D isn't finished yet...still trying to decide what color to paint it.

Christmas 2010

Our Christmas this year, involved a little less time off and a little more travel. With my job, I don't have as much vacation time or flexibility as when I did working at a University. But we made it work and got to see family. My parents came in to visit a couple of weekends before Christmas and we ended up taking advantage of my Dad and his mad electrical skillz. We changed out almost every light fixture in our house which has definitely updated those rooms. He was also able to install an outlet so that we could use our dryer that we had purchased right after we moved to OH. They ended up leaving a little early due to an impending snow storm since they had to drive all of the way back to SIL.
Since we were leaving for CHI after I got off work on Christmas Eve Eve, we decided to have our Christmas on Wednesday night. Nothing too exciting just a relaxing evening at home. B was pretty excited about his new movies. He loves his VeggieTales! We were in Chicago visiting family from Thurday night to Tuesday morning. It was a great visit minus my being sick and GG being sick. I'd like to say that we rolled with the punches and were able to adapt to a new gameplan last minute. :-) It seems that I didn't take a awful lot of pics over Christmas. These were the only ones on my camera. Sorry, if you were missed!

Advent

This Christmas season we have tried to be more intentional with our family time leading up to Christmas. We started off the season with a list of family activities in our Advent Calendar that we could all enjoy together during this wonderful season of anticipation. B is still very young, so planning activities has been pretty challenging. Also, Jeff has been traveling, so we missed some days. But overall, we are doing pretty good with taking time to sit down as a family and enjoying our time together during such a busy season. Below are a few activities that we have done recently.


B decorating wrapping paper.


B and I decorating Christmas cookies.

Big Boy...Little Bed

We have started the transition to a toddler bed...pray for strength...

Ladies Craft Night

I hosted a ladies craft night at our home a little while ago and totally forgot to take pictures of everyone and their neat projects. The theme was reusing/repurposing picture frames. I had several samples of different ideas that you could make your own to fit any size or style of frame that you had lying around. One of my favorite ideas was a butterfly display that had caught my eye several months ago. I chose a plain 5x7 wood frame that had no glass and painted the frame white. I then glued black, textured cardstock onto the cardboard backing and used a white chalk pencil to chart out where I was going to put my butterflys. I punched out 19 small butterflys from a variety pack of black/white printed paper and arranged them on the grid. For a little pop of color I used one bright yellow butterfly in the arrangement. This will be lovely little piece of artwork for our gray walls in our bedroom.

Gobble Gobble!

I apologize for the slim pickings in the blog postings of late. Got a lot on the 'ol list that needs checked off. Anyways, we had a quiet Thanksgiving Day here at our house with just the three of us...well actually two of us since B fell asleep before we even got to eat lunch. I made a simple turkey breast in the crock pot, some sweet potatoes, stuffing and gravy and called it a day. After lunch we took our cue from B and took naps. Then we got up and did some Christmas decorating.
On Friday, I had to work. Jeff and B had a "Daddy Day" all planned. They went to a model train store, then to the Holiday Tree Festival, home for nap, and then we did a little Christmas shopping.
The rest of the weekend was spent at home, catching up on cleaning, laundry, and "to dos".









That was one sad lookin' Santa. He just did not have it together. I think B knew it too...he didn't want to have anything to do with sitting by him.


Oh, and I meant to post these numbers a couple of weeks ago but never go to it. Here are B's 18 month stats:

Weight - 32lb 10oz, 97%
Length - 35", 97%
Head - 19.5", 90%