Wedding Bells

Aunt Lauren got married a few weeks ago and I got to be the ring-bearer. Mommy found me a 5-piece tuxedo for $20 at a consignment store (that lady can find anything at a deal) and I got to walk down the aisle holding a pillow....I'm not sure what a pillow had to do with anything, but that's how grown-ups roll...you just have to smile and play along.

Here's our cute little fam :) - Tyson didn't get to be in the wedding...too bad for the little guy.

Here's Mommy, Aunt Lauren, and Aunt Jill. In case this fact hasn't come up in the blog yet, Aunt Jill is my 3rd favorite person on this earth (next to Mommy and Daddy, of course. You can't bite the hand that feeds you :)). She's been my fave since the cradle.

Aunt Lauren was BE-YOU-TI-FUL!

January at our house

"Mom, come look what I did!" Cole had somehow managed to put and hold in place 4 tinker toys into the grooves on the mantel.

Cole decided to make a cozy little sleeping area for him and Daddy complete with pillows, blankets, and his burpie laid carefully on his pillow so he would be especially comfy. Then Daddy pulled out the harmonica and everyone wanted a turn :).
Who's that cool dude? Cole Dent, you say? Incorrect. "Mom, I'm Mr. Raf!" Cole is obsessed....no, that word is not too strong....obsessed...with drumming and thus with our drummer at church. He uses tinker toys (if you have a 3-year-old, invest in some! He plays with them more creatively and for longer periods of time than any other toy) as drum sticks, or a wooden spoon if I'll give him one, or sticks if we're outside, and he plays on my metal mixing bowls or on a box or on the floor or on other tinker toys...anything. This week he got especially creative and made himself a cymbal with tinker toys and an old DVD. I hear more times a day than I can count, "Mom, Are you ready?!? Are you ready for me to play?!? I'm Mr. Raf!" And he beats and beats and sings and beats. When the obsessions started a number of weeks ago he would say, "Mom, I'm the man in the corner at church!" He still tells me sometimes, "Mom, I'm in the corner! Are you ready for me to play?"

Not to be outdone, Tyson tries to keep up with the cool factor.

Success!

2 Peas on a Pod

Cole and Tyson are very different, but they share a common LOVE of books and reading. One morning I turned around to find them like this - they had pulled their chairs together by the window and each were looking at a book. So sweet!

Don't they look like they play in such harmony? Alas, the last month has been one of much gnashing of teeth. Cole is determined to show Tyson he's bigger, stronger, and in charge. And Tyson just gets loud - when there's no food on his tray, when something gets taken away, when you don't hold him, when you don't read the book he wants to read - he just yells, squeals, whines, and hollers...LOUDLY. I regularly am saying, "Cole, GET OFF of him! If he's crying that means GET OFF!" But Cole enjoys the power assertion of being able to sit on Tyson. Get ready, my friend. Tyson will soon be bigger than you, and he's much more assertive. He's gonna eat your lunch soon!

First Time making Christmas Cookies

To be more accurate, this was the first time I've helped cut out any kind of cookies...you may see why. We had to make cookies for the Tutoring ministry at church's Christmas party. Mommy is a forward-thinker, though, so she gave me my very own special dough to cut out....totally separate from the dough she used to make the actual cookies for the party. Smart lady.

I was so engrossed in my cookie-making that I wouldn't look up for a picture. By the end I had worked and reworked and so heavily floured my dough that it was just shards and bits, so I went to dumping the bits of dough into the cookie cutter instead of pressing the cutter into the dough. There's more than one way to skin a cat...

Sounds like a mess, you say? Yes, but that's what 3-year-olds do. Momma likes to think of it as part of my education - my play is my work. And you can always wipe a table and sweep a floor, but you can't get back the sweet days of a 3-year-old!

Christmas Parade!

Nana invited us to the Brandon Christmas parade that goes right by her house, so we bundled up and got ready. It was at night which was really exciting, especially when all the police motorcycles came roaring down the road with their lights flashing.

My lap was a perfect spot to store candy...perfect for me to eat it from as well.

Here's my Momma and Daddy....awww, aren't they cute?

And here's Nana and Pop-pop. My Nana got married this summer to a wonderful man named Kerry. His wife went to be with Jesus just like my Grandpa Dennis went to be with Jesus, and now God brought them to each other. God is a good God.

Simplifying life - freezer cooking....with kids

Momma here. After reading stay-at-home Moms who blog about the wonders of freezer cooking (basically making a bunch of one thing at one time and freezing it in meal-size portions) I decided to give it a go. I have almost entirely given up casseroles (this alone has simplified my cooking world and kitchen mess immensely). But this freezer cooking thing, I'm a believer! I did a freezer cooking afternoon in December that looked like this. It took me 2 1/2 hours and I made:

3 meals of Southwest Chicken Soup

4 meals of Marinated Chicken Tacos

3 meals of Honey Mustard Grilled Chicken

3 meals of Herbed Chicken

3 meals of Popcorn Chicken (our version of chick-fil-a chicken nuggets)

PLUS, in that same timeframe I chopped up enough ham for a month's worth of breakfasts for Thomas (i make him 3 omellettes at a time and he re-heats them each morning) plus bagged the rest of the ham into several-day portions for sandwiches and such. That's 16 main courses (all i have to do is bake them or put them on the George Foreman grill) and the ham in 2 1/2 hours. I did it again in January, no pictures that time, and made over 30 meals of 10 different recipes (chicken and beef that time) in 2 afternoons (i make 3 meals of each recipe usually). I kid you not, this is so easy. All I used was a bowl for each marinade, a whisk to mix it up, 2 plates for working on the chicken, a knife, and a cutting board. I cleaned up in literally 5 minutes and had all that to show for it!!!!! I do it now with waffles, muffins, oatmeal, fruit, pancakes, cookies, turkey (cook the turkey, debone it, bag it up in meal-size portions), all kinds of things. It really has made dinners so much easier. In January I left some of the chicken unmarinated, but I did prep it into cubed chicken, some tenders, and some breasts to use for the recipes that can't be prepped ahead of time. Even this saves so much stress in my late afternoons.

What do my children do while I'm doing this? I do most of it while they're napping, but when they wake up it might have looked like this IF Thomas had been home:

But since he wasn't (notice that beautiful turkey stock jarred up on the counter behind Tyson), it looked a little more like this:

and this:

But it was worth it! My deep freeze is stocked with a wide variety of chicken and beef from pre-seasoned and shaped hamburgers to Sweet & Sour Chicken to Southwest Rubbed Chicken. It took some work up front to sort out my recipes and get a stack of freezer-friendly ones with a variety of flavors that we like, but it's AWESOME!

Whhhhheeeeeeeee!!!!!!!! Cole's first zipline experience

One of the sweet "cherry on top" features of our house is a zipline that our neighbors built across the back of 3 of our yards. They even have a child's harness for kids like me. I finally got up the nerve and one day I just HAMMERED Momma to let me ride that thing. So when Daddy came home from work they hooked it up, hooked me into the harness, and then I chickened out.

Tyson's no chicken, though. He would've gone in a heartbeat if they would've let him.

So Mommy rode with me :). It was fun, but I only needed to do it once.

I was much more interested in pulling it back up the hill than riding on it again, but I conquered my fear! I rode it once :)

My First Trick-or-Treating experience - Rowr!

I'm not into dressing up in costumes, so Mommy decided the closest she was gonna get was to put me in my tiger pajamas for Halloween. We went to the Fall Festival at church where I got my face painted like a tiger, ate a hot dog (have I mentioned I could eat 3 in one sitting?), and played games for candy. I had a ball.

But that wasn't all! When we got home (Tyson still needs to get to bed on time, even on Halloween), Daddy took me out Trick-or-Treating in our neighborhood for a few minutes, and I hauled off all kinds of loot.

Happy 3rd Birthday, Cole!!

Mommy decided that since she's not gifted in party planning and has a tough time doing it, she would instead focus on making us a cool cake on our birthdays and let that be the main event. I really love trains, so she found a video for an easy (yes, this really is easy, she says) train cake on YouTube.

TaDa! Will I like it? Yes, I do. If she's not careful with me, the drool will get on the cake. I did have a party too, complete with 2 cousins and 2 other friends and pizza....oh, how I love pizza...

I got some fun presents for my birthday. The pistol is from when Mommy was a little girl (she had 3 brothers, you know), and the holster was a consignment sale find for $1 - but when you're only 3, you don't care where it came from or how much it cost. Bad camera angle on my face, you say? No, that's the face I use when I'm being disagreeable. I didn't want my picture taken so I gave the "stink-eye" accompanied with a low growl. They're working on me, but I'm pretty set on it.


And my favorite gifts, a baseball glove (thrift store for 50c), baseball (you don't want to know where it came from), and baseball tee ($5.00 consignment sale)! Mommy says you should really know where this stuff comes from so that: A. you won't think I'm spoiled, and B. you won't think you have to spend $100 to make a 3-year-old happy. Look at that smile!

Tyson, which way did the ball go?

Chuck E. Cheese - special birthday outing with Daddy

Daddy started taking me to Chuck E. Cheese on my birthday when I turned 2. Here we are heading out for our father/son outing on my 3rd birthday. I have a cool dad.

Interesting note, the game below was my favorite on my 2nd birthday. And guess which one was my favorite on my 3rd birthday....same one.

This year I was big enough to climb in everything.

In an effort to keep the birthday spending in check we didn't eat at Chuck E. Cheese, but Daddy did take me out to Sweet Tree to get some frozen yogurt afterwards. It's his favorite place so I tihnk he may have had ulterior motives....

But I'm cool with that. Look at the portion I got. Momma would never have allowed that madness.