Christmas outakes

You would think that if you took 150 photos of your 3 children that at least a few would be worthy of your annual Christmas card...right? Ha! We told Ty and Jesse it was their job to look at the camera and smile. Let's see, there was this smile by Jesse...

Oh, and this smile by Jesse...

Then we had to take a break to sniff our noses...

Then we took some time to stick out some tongues...
Who knows what Jesse was doing here...

This one's so you know that Ty made funny faces too... So it came down to this one....it's mostly cute

Or this one....a little silly and Tracen doesn't have his really cute smile on, but since I'm not so good at head swapping in Photoshop, what do you do?

In the end I went with this last one. I thought it was a little silly but cute.

Computers hate me

Me and computers and Christmas time just don't mix. Two days ago my computer was working and yesterday it wasn't. Hate that. This is the second computer I've had die during the holidays. The last one was only 2 years ago too. So luckily my dad bought a 3 year warranty on the computer when he got it before I inherited it. So it's off to never never land to be fixed, hopefully, although I have to say I have never been impressed with Best Buys ability to fix anything, so we'll see.

And just for my future reference, Tracen went to his 6 month appointment on Monday he is officially 22 lbs 8 ounces, 29 inches long and his head is 18" around. This keeps him above the 100% on height and weight. His ear infection appears to be gone now. He absolutely LOVED the paper on the bed at the dr's office and pretty much had it shredded in the amount of time it took the dr to leave the room and the nurse to bring in the shots. For Christmas we're just going to buy him a roll of that.

Belated Veteran's Day

Tyler's class went to the Vietnam War memorial on Veteran's day. His teacher, Mrs. Milianta, took a picture of him next to the his grandpa (Vaughn's) block. Ty is such a thoughtful kid. Ever since then he's wanted to go back and get all the kids picture taken there so he could give it to his Grandpa for a belated Veteran's day gift. We finally made it over there the other night. It's a really neat memorial. We took the boys pictures and they did some rubbings. Then Ty made a card and everything for Grandpa.

Tracen by grandpa's name

The cutest 6 month old you ever met

I can't believe my baby is 6 months old!! Where does the time go? He's so much fun to have around.

6 month stats:

1. 21 pounds something ounce (yes I know he's huge!! I had to go to the chiropractor from carrying him)

2. He sits up like a champ

3. He rolls only when he feels like it

4. He absolutely LOVES paper and plastic. Hamburger wrappers happen to be his favorite. He'll smash them, wave them around and chew on them while the rest of us eat our burgers.

5. Poor kid got his first ear infection and the antibiotics took a toll on his digestive system so at 6 months we're dealing with his first diaper rash and it's a doozy.

6. He smiles and giggles and laughs, it's very cute.

7. He gives the best most juiciest kisses ever

8. He sports a very cute faux hawk.

I don't know what the deal is but when I put him in his chair to feed him he likes to hang his head off the right side it. I sit him up over and over, and he's good at sitting up so I don't know what the deal is. But he loves to hang upside down which makes it hard to feed him. Here he was enjoying squash for the first time. He loved it.

Our normal life

There's nothing too exciting to report around here but I wanted to post some pictures anyway so I'd better think of something to say. Tracen, who used to sleep through the night, doesn't lately. This is hard on his mother who loves to sleep. He got sick a week ago, he's had this runny nose, congestion, cough, throwing up thing going on. I should note however, he only throws up on me...no one else. I had one of the ER docs check his ears just to be sure last week and no infection....yet....he'd kept running a low grade fever all weekend so Sunday I decided I'd take him to the dr the next day. Then Josh texted me at work and told me that there was "stuff" draining from Tracen's ear...oh joy. So he brought him in and had him looked at again (there's got to be some perks for working there right?) sure enough he'd ruptured his ear drum. So now he's on a good old pink antibiotic. He did smile and giggle yesterday that's a first in a week. AND I learned he's old enough to have benedryl. I'm hoping that it helps his congestion AND his sleep. I threw in the picture of me and Tracen because I'm never in pictures, not because it's a great photo of me...because it's not :)
Tracen learns new things everyday. This is a great one, he can stick out his tongue. He'll be ready to use it on the playground someday I'm sure. He also has figured out how to sort of move in the general direction that he desires in his walker. His favorite destination....the garbage can. He loves plastic so he plays with the garbage bag and tries to stick it in his mouth until he gets caught by his mom who thinks it's disgusting!

This is from a while back. It makes me laugh. This is Jerry and Jesse playing Twister together on Ty's birthday. These two are good buddies for sure.

Tyler absolutely LOVES to play the piano. In fact, I have to kick him off of it occasionally. It's like a magnet though. I tell him "Ty no playing the piano until your room is clean (homeworks done, etc)" but if he even walks within 5 feet of the living room it's like a huge magnet and he just can't resist the temptation. He's been in piano lessons for about 2 1/2 months and he's through his first set of books and well into the second. He also has a great ear because he can play the tune to several primary songs. He's just sat there long enough and played with it until he's figured them out.

So this picture's sideways, sorry. Jesse is doing well in piano as well. He doesn't have the magnet problem that Ty has however. I'm thinking he'll be the one I have to pull out the "girls think boys who play the piano are cute" card on. I'm hoping by that point it means something to him....wait no maybe I don't. Anyway, right now girls aren't a good excuse to keep playing.

The boys have their first piano recital December 14th. Ty's super excited about that of course. I've got to round up my video camera by then for sure. It's around here somewhere.

Funny kid

"If I were a turkey, at Thanksgiving I would run away"

This is why we love Jesse so much. He's hilarious. It's also the reason he's the subject matter in a good majority of the quote of the days. When we went to vote the first graders had papers up in the gym Jesse's said What does the president do all day? His answer was "he protects us," and "Why should adults vote" to which he commented "so the new president can say new things"

More time...kazookeylele

This totally made my day and made me LOL!!

Time on your hands

So what do you do when you have a sick baby who won't let you put him down? You find lots of interesting....and not interesting things on the internet. But no worries there are lots of things out there to occupy your time when you find you have too much of it. This is hilarious it's from www.yearbookyourself.com Don't you think Josh looks so hot?? :) His worked out better than mine.

I can't wait until Tracen is feeling better and I can go back to normal life! Besides that it's so hard to see my sweet smiley little boy miserable.

Tyler's Baptism

Ty was baptized tonight by his dad. They both did a wonderful job. Tyler has been so excited to get baptized. He's been telling me all week that he is more excited to be baptized this week than to have Halloween. I'm so glad that he wanted be baptized. He had several friends get baptized tonight as well, Rachel, Trendee, Karsen and Dane were all baptized tonight too. We're so grateful for all the family and friends who came to be with Ty tonight...Thank you!! Some of you came from a long ways away and we're so glad you did!

What I eat

Tracen's decided if I'm not going to feed him solid food he'll just have to find his own. I mean the kid's starving to death, can't you tell (I do feed him cereal, but I don't count that in the "solid" dept). So this is what he had for breakfast:
Now he's really starting to chow down:

And then for dinner...they were a little harder to get to for dinner, but he just folded himself in half and started knawing away at his pj's

Trick or Treat

You gotta love the expression on his face!

We took a shotgun approach to Halloween this year. Jesse continued his ninja stent from last year, Ty was a baby and it was quite the deal and Tracen was the only one with a new original costume...he was a $3 skeleton from walmart (but he was a dang cute one). Thursday we finally got our pumpkins carved/drawn on. Yes we are on top of things! We went down to the Hallelujah Night Festival put on by the Calvary chapel. It was lots of fun. Then the boys went with Jesse's friend Billy to trunk or treat at one of the churches. Then we ran out to Grandma's house and then I was beat so we went to bed. Josh, lucky guy, got to work the Howl (college dance) until 3 a.m. wohoo.

carving pumpkins:

Scary bunch!

You have to blow this one up and check the drool hanging off his chin...it's priceless.