Christmas in Effingham

This year we headed down to Effingham the Sunday before Christmas through Christmas morning. We had the pleasure of dealing with the wonderful midwest weather throughout the week. On our trip down, the wind gusts were terrible and the temperature was below zero. It was almost whiteout conditions at some points because of all the snow blowing across the interstate. But, we made it there safely, and that is what is important.

Monday night Rick's grandparents came over. We had dinner with them and opened up the first round of gifts (although by the time we got around to opening Evan was already asleep so we opened it for him, mean parents that we are!). Tuesday we were able to do some last minute shopping and actually had time to relax and watch a movie. Christmas eve night my in-laws hosted the big family get together. Evan was a little shy and overwhelmed at first with all of the people there, but after awhile he was comfortable with everyone. He also received his first gift of the season from Rick's aunt Dede. We were curious to see Evan's reaction to a wrapped gift, and we were pleasantly surprised. He tore into it like a pro! It was an adorable bowling set that he had a blast playing with all night.

Christmas morning Evan opened the gifts from Rick's parents and siblings and a few small gifts from Santa (the rest of the "Santa" gifts were delivered to our house). He was really excited about opening his first gift, which was a race track. The problem then, is that he just wanted to play with that and not open any other gifts. After some convincing he opened the rest of the gifts and enjoyed every minute of it. After a yummy brunch, we packed up the car to head back home to Chicago.

Evan happy to be with grandma and papa

Auntie Lisa and Evan in his spiffy Christmas oufit from Rick's grandparents

Evan and Aunt Dede playing with his new bowling set

Opening the first toy on Christmas morning

Playing with his new cars
Santa Evan

Our Christmas adventures are to be continued in another post, or maybe 2...

Babymaker

I am copying this idea from Carrie's last post. It's a feature on Volkswagen's website where you put in a picture of 2 people and then it shows you what their baby would look like. Pretty interesting...

Message from Santa

A friend of mine emailed me a link to this website. You enter in your child's name and some other information and then they give you a personalized message from Santa. It is very cool!

http://portablenorthpole.sympatico.msn.ca/home/

Just Call Me "Mommy"

One day last week after school, Evan all of a sudden started calling me "mommy" instead of "mama". It was so cute (and still is), and he had this huge smile on his face like he knew he had just done something great! He has been talking much more lately and has finally become more consistent in using 2 word phrases: "mommy up", "Nemo on", "dada help", etc. He has also been asking a lot of questions: "Where'd it go?" and "Where's dada?" It's great that we can finally understand most of what Evan says now. He is also beginning to sing along with songs. When I read to Evan and rock him before bed, I usually sing a Dixie Chicks song to him called "Godspeed". During the chorus you can hear him say some of the words to the song. He was also singing along to a Kidsongs video at Rick's parents' house.

Speaking of Nemo, it is Evan's new obsession. I used to LOVE that movie, but now, not so much after seeing it for about the 100th time. After the New Year we are definitely going to start limiting how much time Evan spends watching television.

One picture for this blog entry: Who is Evan emailing in this picture? Or maybe he's looking up which toys he should ask for from Santa?

First Piece of Art

Evan was very crabby last Sunday afternoon, and I was trying to find something to keep him occupied. I decided to break out the art supplies for the first time, which were some of the gifts I had received at my baby shower at school. In those supplies were a paint smock and a set of dot painters (like the kind you use when you play BINGO). Evan loved them! We now have our first piece of artwork hanging on the refrigerator.

My Handsome Guy

Last Sunday we went to our church dinner dance at the Odyssey Country Club. Since we were all dressed up, I figured it would be a nice opportunity to take some family pictures. I'm not sure why I paid for professional Christmas pictures when these turned out almost just as nice! On a sidenote, Evan did great at the dinner. He sat for almost an hour and a half with little fussing while we ate dinner and watched some presentations. We did take him out of the room while the presentations were finishing up, and he had a blast going up and down the stairs for the balcony and loved how his feet and voice echoed when he was upstairs. He was laughing so hard!

Decorating the Tree

Last weekend we dragged out all of our boxes from the crawlspace and put up our Christmas decorations. Evan really enjoyed pusing and pulling the boxes into our family room from the crawlspace. He wasn't really impressed with the bare artificial tree, but once we took out the lights and ornaments he was much more interested. Evan's favorite part, though, was hiding in the closet that leads to our crawlspace. He kept going in there and insisting on closing the door.

An Attempt at Being Organized

I've always thought our house was a good size for us. That was until Evan entered our world along with all of his "stuff". Several years ago we bought a foosball table from Rick's cousin, and we have had it in our family room since then. Although it was fun to begin with, most recently it has been collecting dust and taking up a lot of valuable space. We decided it was time for it to go. Over Thanksgiving, we took it apart and moved it into the garage. (By the way, it is For Sale if anyone is interested!) With the table now gone, we have converted that space into Evan's little corner. For Christmas, my parents bought Evan a little table and two chairs, which we have already put together and set out for him. He loves it! I also bought some shelving cubes to help with organizing his toys. We also have inherited my old toy box and are using it for some of Evan's bigger toys. For his upcoming birthday, we bought him a play kitchen, and that will be the final thing to go in that area. It's amazing how moving out 1 thing can make such a difference!

The "Before" picture - minus all the toys we were storing under the table

Evan "helping" us put the shelves together

Enjoying lunch at his tableI don't have a picture yet of the completed project. We just put the last set of shelves up tonight, but I will post one some time in the near future.

Playing with Friends

Over Thanksgiving weekend we visited with some of Rick's hometown friends. We saw Dave and Debbie and their little girl, Allie, who is 13 months old, and we met Jeremy and Tara's little guy, Creux, for the first time. It was so much fun seeing all our kids together! Evan and Allie did play with a few toys together while Creux watched from the sideline. I'm sure it won't be long until they're all running around together and getting in trouble!

Creux snuggling up with his mommy

Allie and Evan playing together