Cookies for Santa

Just testing them out....and no I did not let Warren eat one. He wanted to so badly.

Christmas kisses.

Sweet kisses from our boys.

Yes. Boo is one of our boys.

8 Months.

Dear Warren,

Saturday you turned 8 months old. So much has changed for you in the last few months. You are ALL over the place. When you turned 6 months old you were rocking back and forth up on all fours just trying to figure out how in the world to get moving. Well after a few weeks of rocking on your hands and knees you got the hang of it and were crawling by the first of November. Since then you have just gotten faster, started pulling, up and taking steps along the furniture. You are very determined. You keep trying everything over and over till you get it. I love that about you. You don't cry when you don't get it, just keep trying.

You are still a very happy baby and I couldn't ask for anything better. You have had some trouble with some ear infections the last couple months, so during those times you were a understandably a little fussy. I also know you are teething because you feel the need to put everything in your mouth and just gnaw on it.

Your daddy and I love to hear your belly laugh. You get a big kick out of watching your brother do silly stuff and he loves to make you laugh. Bath time is your absolute favorite though. You and your brother will play forever in there just laughing and splashing. You two make huge mess every night at bath time....but it is worth it to me to hear you two cackling together. I love it.

You would really prefer us to just hold you all night while you slept which I love to hold you when you sleep, but we are working on getting you to sleep better on your own. You usually fall asleep around 9:30 or 10 in my arms. That is "our time". It is when Wyatt is in bed and we just get to cuddle. That is my favorite time of the day. You usually wake up around 6:30 0r 7 with a 2 2hr naps during the day. (10ish and 3ish) You eat oatmeal for breakfast, baby food for lunch, and rice cereal for dinner.

Oh and your vocabulary....is pretty much "bah" and some other undefinable noised. The only sound you are saying consistently is "bah".

Love,

Mom

A Visit with Santa

This Santa must have been a little grouchy...he never smiled. Although Wyatt was pretty excited to see Santa and went without even looking back. Warren was just happy to be held.

Its Christmas Time

I absolutely love this time of year and sharing this season with our boys makes it even more enjoyable. I have to admit I am struggling with getting Jesus' birth importance across to Wyatt...we battle so much in the marketing of Christmas. We are trying to establish some family traditions for our family that will help teach that. I love that we get to celebrate Jesus' birth the whole month of December, but I feel responsible to make sure the boys (well Wyatt at this point) knows WHAT we are celebrating. Anyways...enough of that.

We put the tree up almost two weeks ago. Celebrating Jesus' birthday is much fun with little ones....it is also interesting while trying to decorate the tree. At least they are cute little helpers though.

Warren so badly wants to eat all the ornaments.

I bribed him with a candy cane to get a good smile.

And here is the beginning of our tree decorating....Warren wanted to unravel the ribbon and lick it.

After a few tries we got the ribbon up.

Wyatt got to put the star on the tree this year....I know he is rarely ever fully dressed.

The finished product...with a few ornaments missing. I keep finding them all over the house. Matter of fact if you look real close in this picture you can see one under our dining room table. I don't know if it is Warren or Wyatt doing this...but is quite funny.

Weekend Project

Our New Backyard(well 1/2 of it anyway.)

We have had some storage issues since we moved to our house in Greenville. So we decided to put up a storage shed. This is how we spent our weekend.

Wyatt had to get in there and show them how to do it....

Following the instructions like a real man.

fThe finished product....great job guys. Thank you Jason!!! We couldn't have done it with out you! You too Rebecca!

Just a little trim for Warren

Is what I thought I was going into the beauty salon for today. I think he got a lot more than that. I am not going to go into the whole story, but let's just say the beautician's idea of a little shorter and my idea of a little shorter were MUCH different. She was in the middle of her first swipe with the buzzers before I even knew she had started cutting. I have shed a few tears today, I feel like I just cut off his defining characteristic. We will be growing this boy's hair back out to as close as it was before, but I know it will probably never be the same.

Here is my baby boy before he was attacked by the buzzers.
Yep all that beautiful long hair is now in a little ziploc bag.

Warren's new look

Wyatt making Warren smile for me.

5 months

I took these pictures a couple weeks ago and just haven't had a chance to update my blog. Here is our littlest man at 5 months old. He is so very precious. He almost always will flash his big beautiful smile anytime anyone looks at him. He is growing so very fast and trying so very hard to crawl. He is not crawling, but can manage to get clear across a room via...scooting, pushing, and rolling. He is also sleeping through the night on most nights that is. He is loves to be held and requires lots of attention that we are more than willing to give. One of the things we love about Warren is just how he takes everything in. He always looks at every thing like "woa...that is soo cool." His eyes are always so wide open as he explores this world.

When things get quiet at our house...

you know Wyatt is doing something he probably is not supposed to be doing.

This is where I found him...totally in his element. He is naked ( a personal preference of Wyatt's), drinking milk (an addiction I think), and twirling Warren's hair (a comforting habit). Life is good. I am just super thankful he didn't decide that Warren wanted out of the crib!!!

Pictures by Papaw

During our visit to Oklahoma last month Russell's dad took some pictures of the boys for me. He did a great job. Taking pictures of a two year old and a 3 month old is NOT easy. It requires a great deal of patience...thanks Rick! This first one is my favorite of them together even though Warren isn't looking. don't know why I like it so much, I just do. He took a ton, and narrowing them down to my favorites is hard, but here are my favorites!
Wyatt is 2 1/2 and Warren was 3 months in these pics.

This one really captures a little bit of Wyatt's personality...I love it!

What a pretty boy he is!

He is still flashes that beautiful smile of his ALL the time. He is such a happy boy!

A Trip to the Tulsa Zoo

Me and the boys before our day at the zoo. Warren was in the middle of a sneeze!

Wyatt was excited about seeing the lions.

Don't remember what they were looking at, but it is a cute picture.

My monkeys!


The best part of the whole day was the train ride. We waited till the end to ride it....he was sooo excited as you can tell in these pics:

Family Update--It's a long one!

There have been a lot of changes in our family’s life that I have not really had the time to update on here. Russell and I have felt God moving us on from our ministry at Central. After a chance meeting with a pastor of a church in Greenville, TX and an invitation to come candidate for a position we felt led to resign our position at Central to seek God’s direction in our lives. We resigned not knowing for sure what the future had for us…but just trusting God. After a couple weeks of visiting Family Fellowship in Greenvile Russell accepted the High School youth pastor position. We are very excited about what God is doing! Saying Goodbye to our students at Central was difficult, but knowing this is all part of God’s plan seems to make things a little easier. His plan is always better than mine. So as far as the details we are trying to sell our house and Russell is commuting to Greenville everyday. We will be living in staff house that will not be available for a couple of months so having our house is a blessing right now. Our last Sunday at Central was actually July 12…so we have had some time off to enjoy together as a family. We have tried to make the most of our time by visiting family in Oklahoma, and spending time with the boys, and lets just say Russell has had his share of fishing this last month. I am really behind on my posts….so I am going to try and play catch up this week. So here are a few pictures of a little day trip we made to Splash Kingdom in Canton, TX:
(these are in the opposite order I meant to put them in)