Christmas... Rural Retreat style

This morning Mommy, Daddy, and I tracked it on down to Rural Retreat for our first 'bout of Christmas spirit. I got some really sweet gifts including a super hot rocking horse and a book with my name in it! I'm practically famous! It even has my best bud's names in it too (Brett and Jackson... YOU'RE FAMOUS TOO!!!)

I wasn't nearly as interested in opening gifts as Mommy and Daddy would have liked, but we got a couple of cute shots.

And just look at these blocks! They are super awesome! I love them so much! Thank you Grandma and Grandaddy... I love you!

The milk saga

Will Mommy ever learn? When I'm super quiet... I can't be up to anything good... duh!
Yes... that would be me LICKING my milk off of the floor! I'm now nominating Mommy for the "Mother of the Year" award! :)

Drawer Schmrawer

Give me 1.3 minutes by myself and just look what I can do.

Piggies

Rachel here. Seriously... seriously! Reese and pigtails... two of my favorite things in the whole world. Now if only I could get a shot of her face at the same time! :)

You may just wet your pants...

Send your own ElfYourself eCards

The saddest tree you've ever seen...

Rachel here. Bryan and I were giddy with excitement to decorate the house this year for the holidays for Reese. The outside of the house is tackily decked out with lights, light up trees, and even those god awful deer. Bryan risked his life to climb all the way onto the tippy top of the roof, which he had never done before, for his baby girl and her Christmas lights.

The inside has twinkle lights EVERYWHERE. Her playroom is completely outlined in lights with a cutie little ceramic light up tree we put out when I was little.

Then there is the tree. We have hundreds of ornaments easily. We decided, however, with a 1 year old that it would be smart to have some parameters when choosing those ornaments to adorn our tree. 1. All ornaments must be unbreakable. The odds of her pulling the tree over were far to great to put on Uncle Aaron's precious Star Wars ornaments. 2. No hooks. That rule alone... humorous. 3. Then there was the tree itself. SOFT. Not one of the trees with the nice branches for sticking ornaments on for us... no... we got one of the trees that are nearly IMPOSSIBLE to hang ornaments on. Now it was easily $30 cheaper than the others, so we'll go with it. Considering these 3 key rules, we had about 25 good ornaments that looked really sweet on the tree. We were both very happy with it.

This is how our tree looks today. Currently there are no ornaments on the lower third of the tree. Reese likes to go up to the tree, carefully pick an ornament off and then hide it once she plays with it. It's really quite funny. I have yet to find them all. She's also managed to break 2 of our unbreakable ornaments. She makes me smile. :)

Her face

Rachel here. I didn't quite realize how hard it would be to get Reese's face on camera once she learned to walk. She's literally ALL OVER THE PLACE now, and it's very hard to capture her smiling on camera. She'll sit still long enough to watch Cookie Monster on TV, but that's about it. Needless to say most of my pictures are blurry, are of Reese staring at the television, or are of the back of her head. I managed to catch some cute photos of her though the other day. Unfortunately she was still wearing her breakfast and she has a mean runny nose... however, beggars can't be choosers... so I've learned. :)

Santa

Rachel here. My how things change! Reese with Santa last year:

And Reese with Santa this year:

Santa sure knows how to keep it cool under pressure! This experience was hysterical to say the least. We took our time introducing Reese to Santa. She was waving at him and smiling. We taught her to say "ho ho ho" to him... we thought we were golden. The second she touched his lap... all hell broke loose. The photographer got a few funny shots... she felt awful that Reese was upset. Honestly if you don't have a picture of your kid totally losing their cool with the man in the red suit... what fun is it going to see him?! We picked her up and Santa gave her a candy cane. She was IMMEDIATELY cool. She was all of the suddenly full of smiles! :)

A day with Daddy

Daddy wanted to get some Christmas shopping done on Black Friday. Mommy MADE Daddy take me with him. Something about her needing to keep her wits about her or something... IIIIII dunno! Anyway... Daddy was in charge of everything... even dressing me. Although he did make me wear jeans with my dress Mommy supposes it could have been worse. I, however, knew people would be staring... hence the distraught look.

Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving was filled with lots of family and yummy food. We hosted Thanksgiving this year, and were blessed enough to have it with the Pattison brood! Cortney and Krista did a great job of entertaining me for the majority of the evening, which was a treat for Mommy who was able to have a conversation with ACTUAL ADULTS! Oh imagine! Last year I feasted on breast milk... this year... the options were endless! I even ate stuffing! Can you believe it?! Unfortunately I was too stuffed for pumpkin pie, but Mommy let me have a little the next day with my breakfast... CLASSY MOM! Oh and I FINALLY got a 4 generations picture with my Great Gma Pattison. I think I may have fancied her a bit. :)

Trapped in a box

I'm obsessed with anything that has to do with containers. I love putting things in containers... taking things out of containers. Here happens to be one of my new favorite past times...

Mischief

HELLO ALL! I'm baaaack... and feeling MUCH better now thank you for asking. It was pretty yucky there for a few days, but all turned out well. Mommy knew I was feeling better when I returned to my mischievious self. I've spent the last week getting into trouble and making messes as usual. Mommy has since put a gate up around that set of drawers to keep me out... THE NERVE!