Thanksgiving wrap up

You know what would be awesome?

If I had taken more than 24 pictures over the holiday weekend.

Or if I had even bothered to remember to bring my camera to the event on my family’s side.

But as it stands, this is our Thanksgiving wrap up. We went up to East Texas on Tuesday night and stayed through Saturday morning.

Landon got some good quality time in riding the horse trailer with his Grandpa Wood.

He helped me make some ornaments for the community service project that the Girl Scouts are doing tonight.

He played a little baseball with a paint stirrer and the tennis ball that hangs in his great grandparent’s garage.

Aaaand we made our annual trip to the Christmas lights you drive through.

On Saturday morning we headed home briefly and then to Lake Jackson for my family Thanksgiving. And here's where I'd have pictures of Landon getting all excited about broccoli at the Japanese steakhouse, or getting freaked out over the big fire. But not only did I not bring my camera, no one else did either. I guess I'm going to have to be more on the ball for Christmas.

Pumpkin Patch. Year 3.

I guess the tractor bit the dust, because it wasn't there. But this year, we better understand the "stand here", "sit here", "do this", "do that" commands. Oh, and this year we wore our costume.

And we re-measured.

Here's 2 years ago:

1 year ago:

Aaaand this year:

As you may or may not remember, we couldn't be bothered to look up last year:

And like I said, this year, we follow directions a tad better:


All in all we had a good time.

Egg Hunting is the New Normal

Over the past few days Landon participated in 4 Easter Egg hunts (that doesn't include the one from the previous weekend). So this morning when I finally got him ready for school as we walked towards the back door he said "Hunteen uggs?" "No, sweetie, we're done hunting eggs this year."

He was so tired last night that he fell asleep on the way home, at about 7:30 ish and didn't wake up until I went to wake him up this morning. I guess that's one way to get out of a bath.

Why having a regular camera instead of a bazillion dollar camera worked out for me this time.

Saturday was my company's annual Easter Egg hunt for the kids. This is the first year we've actually made it there. So naturally I decided to try to sabotage the whole thing from the very beginning.


Last week I got sunburned so badly while sitting at a cookie booth that I became a leper by Thursday. So obviously, I totally forgot about sunblock for this little event when we left the house that morning.


We stopped at Target and couldn't find our regular sun babies stuff in the aerosol can [killing the environment too! Bonus!], but we found some other stuff that said it had the same attributes.



When we got to the Ranch, I changed his clothes and then didn't read the directions on the sunblock and sprayed him down with it. Head to toe. [Don't spray on face, spray on hand and rub on face.]


Not 5 minutes later he was complaining about his eyes and his entire face was beet red. My guess is that with his sensitive skin he had some kind of allergic reaction to it, I took him into the bathroom to try to wash it off his face [FAIL, it's waterproof, and you can only use so much hand soap on a toddler's face before you're just adding to the problem, since it will burn his eyes too]and fight loudly about whether or not I was trying to kill him with soap and water. (Clint said he was glad there weren't too many people walking by because it did sound like I was beating the crap out of him the way he was screaming.)


He still looked pretty bad, but it was fading, so we went on in to the party. First stop was the Merry Go Round, where he was the first one on and everyone else got on RIGHT AROUND him, therefore deserve to have their pictures on the internet. The thing is, the other half of the merry go round? Completely empty. If I had a better camera you would see he was still weird looking here.



They had this cute little boat thing, you had to be under 36 inches to ride. He loved it. Also still weird looking here too, but luckily my camera doesn't pick up on that...now if I can just teach it to not pick up on my muffin top and double chin, we'd be in business.




From there we went to check in and get a cookie and then it was time for the Egg Hunt. No candy, but plenty of little toys in the eggs. After all the eggs had been picked up, he was bouncing around his basket and dropped one and a little boy picked it up for him and put it back in his basket. Landon had no clue he'd even lost that egg, so he gave the kid a weird look for putting an egg in his basket.



And here's where we begin to make progress. He WANTED to sit on the Easter Bunny's lap and ACTUALLY sat on the Easter Bunny's lap. Awesome. Maybe he'll be ok with Santa this year. You honestly probably don't want to know what the tongue sticking out on the side of his mouth was about, but we gave him some Benedryl shortly after this shot.




From there things only got better. We went and stood by the moon bounce until he decided that, yes, he'd like to give that a try. When he first went in there were a bunch of kids inside and he sat right inside by the door for quite some time. He did eventually crawl to the other side when prompted by both me and Clinton peeking through the netting. Maybe he needs another 6 months or so to get his balance together enough to like the moon bounce.



Last time we had the opportunity to try out a petting zoo he freaked out, but this time was okay with the goats, and super excited about the bunnies!





And the last major attraction was a pony ride. We managed to get him on the stubborn donkey who needed someone pulling him AND pushing on him to get him to move. But he loved every second of it.


After visiting each of the attractions [actually we missed the obstacle course because it was off to itself kind of] we went back to the playground, where they have a little plane. Landon got on the plane and sat between two girls. Two girls were up front. Clinton and I were just beyond shocked at how social he was the entire day. It was awesome. I know I say awesome a lot, but there just aren't any better words for it.



From the plane thing we went to the sandbox where he was intent on making a castle and that's when we noticed how red he was getting. We argued back and forth about whether he should drink something [us] or not [him, clearly he was too busy to be drinking stuff]. At which point we decided to be the meanest parents in the world when we made him leave the sandbox in favor of not being sunburned, since he had no sunblock on anymore. We were just going to go in the building with the A/C to cool him down and drink some lemonade, but he had a fit about a cookie, so we knew it was time to make an exit. [FYI - that's not a sunburn on him, he just gets REALLY red when he gets hot.]




All in all, it was a good day and major progress was made on all fronts.

Christmas Present Ideas for the Crafty

Last year we had Landon paint mats and gave frames with pictures to each of his grandmothers and great grandmothers. I don't have a picture of these on this computer, but I chose 2 or 3 coordinating color paints and used his hand like a sponge to sponge paint the mats. (If you received one of these and we told you he painted them, then he totally painted them, I'm just kidding about using his hand like a sponge.)

It took a long time to think of the project for this year and I sat on it for a long time, thinking it might not be as big a hit as I wanted it to be. But it was, so here's my secret, feel free to use it and if you have something crafty for me to do this year, let me know, I'm totally out of ideas for now.

If you have even the minimal amount of skills on a sewing machine, you can totally make these:

That's a handprint wreath appliqued on an apron. This particular one has the handprints of all my mother's grandchildren. That's several prints per child, it's not like I'm hiding extra children or my sisters are bunnies or anything. Big hands in the back, little hands up front. It tried to do it with just 2 fabrics and there wasn't enough contrast, so you do need 3 fabrics minimum.



And had I not fallen in love with buttons that cost $4 for 2, I might have added some berry buttons. But once I fell in love with those and realized that 2 bunches of buttons that would eventually fall off would cost more than the total of each project I decided that no, I wouldn't do that. And then, I couldn't allow myself to even consider a lesser button and therefore opted for no buttons/berries.



I'm not sure who liked it more. My mom, who I gave it to and then promptly took it back because I hadn't gotten it embroidered yet. Or my mother-in-law who opened it and then I demanded that she not only embroider her own, but also her mother's and my mother's. I suppose Mema may have liked it best, since she not only got to keep it, she didn't have to do any work on it. And yes, I did price getting it embroidered by a non-reciever, it wasn't a bad deal, but do you think I finished them in a timely manner so that I could have that done? Of course not. And do you really think I could have had it done before I did the wreath? No, because then they'd all be getting these in 2012 and they'd still say 2008. Just ask all the fabric I bought in 2006 to make fabric bowls that's still in my sewing closet.

If you're lacking in the sewing department, I think you could totally paint this and it would still be cute. You may need to drug your child so that you have control of his hand, but it could work. Not that I advocate that or anything...maybe your child is more compliant than mine.

I'm still thinking about what we'll be doing for 2009, but part of me thinks it should involve something like this:

For the record, this is my favorite art work that Landon has brought home. It's the first one that I really feel like he had done on his own for the most part. And yes, it took me about 3 minutes to realize what it is.

Sugar high

I spend roughly 50% of yesterday baking and/or cleaning the kitchen.

Landon spent roughly 25% of yesterday asking for tastes of batter. "Waas sat?" "Brownie batter?" "I tayse it me?"

Anyway, I set him up with 4 cookies, pre-iced, and some stuff to stick on them to decorate them. Which he did pretty well. He decorated them and decorated them, I had assumed that once he got one done, he would eat it, but he actually didn't. He had to be told he could eat it. And then he pulled each decoration off and ate them, and he had to be told he could also eat the cookie.

Anyway, in the hopes of being able to post him saying Merry Christmas, I asked him a few things about Christmas.

A Virtual Christmas Card

Merry Christmas from the Wood Family.

2 Down, 20 or so to go

When you ask your toddler to help you decorate the Christmas tree. Sometimes you get this:
But when you run out of non-ornaments which are clearly too gigantic to fit on the tree, and he moves on to helping with the glass balls, you will end up needing this:


And then you will have to move all your breakable ornaments to height of about 4 feet.


And then if you wait a week and buy him his own tree, with his own unbreakable ornaments, you will be rewarded by a) him actually understanding how to decorate his tree and helping, and b) finding out that just because they do not shatter, doesn't mean that they are unbreakable, just pull the string real hard, it will totally break, Mom.

Something I should have posted last week.

We had my company's children's Christmas party on the 6th. It was a big hit, and I only wish I had more pictures of it.

If you ask Landon, about the party, he will talk in length about the "pock-own." Apparently an inadvertant highlight of the day.

Nevermind the train! You can ride! While eating a cookie!

And the snow!

And because we are mean inattentive parents who just stood on the sideline and watched, while our son figured out on his own how to play with snow, he made friends with an older Asian woman who loosened the snow for him. (And her own grandchild.) In all honestly he wasn't that keen on the snow to begin with. But man on man, did he love the pock-own.

Fifteen posts

1. Thanksgiving was great.

2. Landon just went cousin to cousin wearing them out. First Taylor.

3. Then Ashley.

4. Landon learned about water towers and now there is screaming yelling excitement when he sees one until we confirm. "Yes, that's a water tower."

5. Clinton got hit on twice in one trip to Wal-Mart without me.

6. We ate Thanksgiving on Thursday with Michelle from the Biggest Loser and since I had no clue who she was until she and Clint's cousin (who (whom?) she's dating) left, I had no idea that I should have gotten some kind of photographic evidence.

7. Operation finish Christmas shopping by Dec 1 is almost complete. I have 2 more to buy and I feel like I can get them done today.

8. Scarlett hurt her foot on Saturday morning, it seems better now, but it freaked me out beyond anything and did you know that vets in small towns are all "you can call our on call doctor, but only if you're established and only if it's life threatening." Jerks. And also, how do you know if it's life threatening or not? Our vet gave me dosage info for aspirin and benedryl in case it was some kind of bite - although we can't find a penetration or bite mark of any kind. This morning she seemed pretty much back to normal.

9. There was Heron watching.

10. Joshua and Brianna built a lean to kind of looking tent with string and a tarp and sticks. Well. Joshua started it, and abandoned it when it wasn't doing exactly what he wanted and Brianna changed the design and finished it, so no real teamwork on purpose, but kind of accidental teamwork.

11. There was hammocking.

12. There was outdoor movie watching. Or depending on who you are, outdoor movie barking or outdoor movie climbing around on a chair until you get too loud and your dad makes you go inside.

13. Between Scarlett's hurt foot, and the cold driving everyone inside at what would be Landon's bedtime to be where Landon, and let's be serious - because I go to sleep when he does, and I would be trying to sleep, we decided to make a break for it and wake up at home Sunday morning.

14. We went to get Landon new shoes and future shoes. And me some pants, when we found out that Steve and Barry's is filing for bankruptcy so I need to hurry up and spend my gift card.

15. And we stopped in to WalMart and nearly bought some candy for our advent calendar when the fire alarm went off. We headed out because we didn't want to be those people who were all "Well, were going to leave, but decided it was probably nothing and then we ended up with these 3rd degree burns."

Pumpkin Patchin' it

We woke up Saturday morning and went to vote, thinking that 7 am on a Saturday would be considerably less crowded than noon on Sunday. There were 16,432 people there. I know. I counted. Or maybe it was closer to 150 and I estimated. Whatever. Lots more people than I have ever seen at early voting. But the lines went fairly quickly. So that's good. Landon would like to re-air his PSA from February. He's pretty politically active, so it's very important to him. He doesn't really care who you vote for, as long as you make an informed decision. (He also may or may not have spotted a man dressed like my father and got all excited, but then it wasn't him.)

Landon and I then headed down to LJ to go to the pumpkin patch with Grandma, Aunt Kathleen, and Zoey. Last year we accidentally were in LJ during the pumpkin patch time. This year we went on purpose.

For comparison's sake, here's last year's picture.

And this year's on the same tractor (with Woody from Toy Story...who he will be for Halloween.)

He was considerably less cooperative this year than last, something about realizing he has a mind of his own and terrible twos. The shot where I had him next to the measuring stick last year, you know, the ONE that would give a really good comparison between years...last year he had no idea what was going on, so he just stood there.

This year? Nope, there are much better things to do than stand here. In fact, I'm even going to block the year. I'm sooooo out of here.

We coaxed and coaxed and coaxed and finally got someone to look through the hole.

To which Landon's response was to also look through a hole.

Uh, we had dried off the tractor seat for the next kid. With his butt. That was our good deed for the day. Whether we did it on purpose or not. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

And when we finally got him on the correct side to look out the hole. This is what i got.

Next year maybe he'll look up.

Cookin'

What else is a holiday for?

On Friday I tried The Pioneer Woman's Pineapple Skewered Shrimp. I actually, also marinated some chicken the same way and the chicken was better than the shrimp to me.

On Saturday, Clinton tried quiche again, only to discover that he does actually like it, despite his many years of protests. La Madeleine, here we come.

And then yesterday we had a small BBQ, for which I made this cobbler. Except, I made it in 2 pans. And I didn't have pineapple in the cherry one, and I made a black berry one for the other half.

We also smoked some ribs and chicken quarters and sausage. And invited a few people over. And then I took absolutely no pictures.

Landon got to play in the pool for a few hours with some kids who were a little older (3 and 5 1/2). They taught him a little trick of going over the wall between the hot tub and the pool. He practiced it a lot. I'm sure we'll be seeing it for the rest of the summer.

Mother's Day Cards

We sent out mother's day cards to our mothers and grandmothers.



We had him sign them like this:

He's all about symmetry, so when his one hand produced a print, he tried to make the other produce a print.

But it wouldn't.

He finally gave up and just admired his pink hand.

His pink hand, which took another good 4 or 5 hours, multiple wipes, hand washings, and a shower to finally fade.