Our Little Photographer

Santa brought Ethan a digital camera, which has proved to be one of his favorite gifts. I thought I would share a few of his pictures. I thought some of them were somewhat artsy looking and some were just cute :) He took all of these on his own.

I liked the way the coloring and lighting came out.

A nice picture of daddy!

I just really liked this picture of my niece Alex.

I also thought this was a sweet picture of my niece Lilliana.

This is just a really cool shot, it's my brother-in-law Anthony.

This is my nephew Ian, I thought Yoda looked really cool here.

This almost looks like he set it up and I thought it looked neat.

Just a cute picture of Micah.

This is a self-portrait of his feet :) Very cute!!

I think the lighting in this shot is really cool.

This is our cat Shadow. Again the lighting is really cool here.

Rollovers, Elves & Stuff

Just a mish mash of stuff here...

So, a few weeks ago, Matt and I had a car roll over into our yard for the 2nd time! Several years ago at our old house, we had a car roll over into our front yard on a snowy night. Luckily, the guy was stopped by the pine tree in our front yard and missed our house. He was fine after the accident. Matt and I were both pretty scared thinking about the fact that he could have easily slid right into our house. In the end we were thankful that nothing bad happened other than that car being totalled and we hoped to never see something like this again.

So, fast forward to about 1:00 am on Dec. 6. Matt was just bringing Micah up to bed after his feeding, which woke me up. All of a sudden, we heard a screech and then thud, thud, thud. At that point we knew that a car must have just flipped over, we just didn't know where. So, Matt ran to one of the front windows and found a truck flipped over in a pine tree off the corner of our house. So, he called 911 and while he was doing that, I saw the driver running from the car and then down the road. Come to find out the guy was probably drunk, skidded on the snowy road, over corrected, blew through our neighbors mailbox, then rolled over in our yard and landed in the tree. He ran, probably because he was scared to be caught drunk driving. He was later brought back by his friends, after the police quickly identified who the car belonged to (shows he was most definitely drunk). We had about 6 various police cars, an ambulance, a fire truck and 2 news channels out in front of our house. It made the first story on the news that morning on both channels and our house was even on one of the channels' news story! We were lucky again that he missed my car which was parked in the front yard, our house and that the mailbox that flew into our yard missed both my car and our house. The only damage was that the car was totalled, the neighbors mail box was blown apart, our yard was pretty torn up and the pine tree had all of its bottom front branches torn off.

This accident, only gave us more reason to someday move off of a busy road. Our first house is on a 50mph road and this one is on a 35mph road. But, our road goes from 50mph to 35 in front of our house, then to 45mph all in about a 1-2 mile stretch. We really never thought we would see this happen twice in our front yards and we really hope we will not see it a third time!

I had my diabetes blood test a week ago and all is good! The levels were all normal, so I will just get tested every 1-2 years to make sure it stays that way.

We recently got a Wii and Wii fit for Christmas. Matt found a great deal on Black Friday. This is basically the only present for Matt and I, but that's ok because we really enjoy it. If any of our friends have a Wii, we would love to have our Mii's visit you and we would love for yours to visit ours. It really does make it more fun to see our friends on our Wii games. So email us and let us know if you'd like to share. You can reach me at the email on the right or if you know my other email address.

Also, if you have a blog and I don't have you on our list (which is really short), I would love to add you. I love reading blogs, even of people I don't know. It is just fun to see what others have to say about stuff and what kinds of things they post. Again, you can just email me your blog address and I'll add it here :)

I had some fun making this little Elf card, so I hope you enjoy it and Merry Christmas from all of us!! If the video doesn't work, here is the address for it... http://elfyourself.jibjab.com/view/krJohEt3h0qXYHmEthtL

Send your own ElfYourself eCards

Just some pictures!!

Thought I would share some pictures...

Micah finally calmed down when I put this cloth on his head, he then slept like this for awhile!!

Finally got him smiling!!

I love how he is smiling with his left eye.


Ethan was just laying around on his bean bag chair.

He loves posing for pictures!

So excited waiting in line for the train ride at Children's Wonderland.

Ethan loves to organize things in a line, it is amazing how perfect he can get things lined up. When we were in Cleveland, Aunt Joyce let him play with her nativity characters and I told her to watch, because in a few minutes he'll have them all lined up and sure enough he did. Here are two examples of his lining up of toys. He has also lined up all of his trains from his train set before, I just didn't get a picture of those.

These are some of his bath toys and letters,

along with some of the "buildings" he created.

I went into his old playroom to find his hot wheels all lined up, the few that are not in line are because it was the middle of the night when I found them and I accidently kicked a couple.

2 Months Old!

It is official, Micah is now 2 months old. I can't even believe how fast time has gone. It seemed like it took forever to get Micah here and now that he is, time is flying by. I took him to the doctor on the 8th and he weighed in at a whopping 12 lbs. 7 oz. and he measured 22 1/2 inches. It turns out that he is in the 50th percentile in both weight and height! So, he is growing at a great rate and we couldn't be happier. The doctor once again said that he looked perfect and very alert, so that was definitely more good news. He had a shot and was such a trooper and only cried briefly. It was very loud, but brief :)

Ethan and I have both been pretty sick this week, so we have been trying to keep Micah healthy. Matt has been very sleep deprived, since he has been getting up with Ethan and one night he also got up with Micah, because I was so sick. Matt never really got over his cold from a couple of weeks ago, so hopefully, that will keep him from our sicknesses! Ironically, this is the first week that I have felt good physically, since having Micah! What a week to get sick!

Here is Micah's 2 month pic, isn't he just the cutest little Santa??

The Wonders of Christmas

Christmas through the eyes of a 4 year old is such a wonderful experience. Lights are the most amazing thing, Christmas trees are an amazing sight and Santa is the guy in the red suit! Ethan is so excited about the Christmas season and it has been so much fun watching him get so into everything. As we drive around at night, we hear things like "wow!!" or "look!!" with each new set of lights he sees.

We finally had a chance to put up our tree on Sunday night. When we plugged it in, we heard this little gasp as he saw it all lit up. He was so excited to help me decorate the tree. That has always been my favorite thing to do at Christmas, I love putting decorations on the tree. I can remember decorating the tree as a kid, many times on Christmas Eve. I also remember when my mom started to go to a themed tree and wouldn't let us help decorate anymore. It really upset me when I couldn't help to decorate, so when I got married, I became the official decorator and I promised that I would never to a plain and simple tree with a theme.

I love putting all kinds of decorations on the tree. Over the years, we have acquired a lot of decorations. I have bought some, Matt's mom gave us some from when Matt was a kid, we have received a lot as gifts also. There is such a variety of decorations on our tree and I love it! Ethan has acquired my taste for having a variety of decorations on the tree. When we decorated on Sunday night, he was in charge of the bottom of the tree and I was in charge of the top. He did such a great job this year! Of course, this is the first year that every single decoration made it on the tree. Our tree is covered and it has never looked better, I just love it and so does Ethan.

While decorating, he dropped two ornaments that broke. One can be fixed, but the other was glass and shattered. He got so upset about it, because he really wanted to put it on the tree. We had to explain that sometimes that happens and it's ok and that we still had a lot of other decorations, but he said he was still sad. Then after the tree was decorated, Chloe, our cat, knocked a decoration down and out came a burst of tears. He got so upset that she knocked down a decoration. As you can see, he really loves decorations and our Christmas tree. He has been asking us to put it up for months now :)

Matt put some lights on our stair rail and Ethan just said "Wow!!", when he saw it all turned on. Last night, I pulled up to the house with Ethan and he said "Look!!", when he saw the brand new lights that Matt put on our bushes while we were gone. He was so excited about it.

I took him to the Manor House, that we have named the Christmas House. The house is a mansion in a local metropark and it gets decorated each year by different people and organizations. Each room is unique and never the same from year to year. Ethan loved it and especially loved the trains at the end of the tour. I'm taking him to Children's Wonderland on Wed. night, which is exactly what it sounds like. It is a lot of fun and they even have Santa there. We'll eventually take him to the zoo for the lights at the zoo and I'm even working to plan a trip to Frankenmuth, MI, which is a great place to go at Christmas time. I'm having such a great time watching Ethan enjoy the different aspects of Christmas.

I have to charge my camera and then I will try and add some pictures of our tree, especially some of the parts Ethan decorated. It really is cute to see how he decorated the tree :)

Thanksgiving Fun

We had an extremely busy, but fun Thanksgiving weekend. We spent Thanksgiving day with Matt's mom, uncle, aunt and grandpa. While there, we were looking through some baby pictures of Matt's brother Adam.  We realized, that even though most of you voted that Micah looks like Matt, that he actually looks a lot like his Uncle Adam!  Some of the pictures were like looking at Micah, it was pretty strange.  If we get a chance to scan some I'll try and show you :)  

Then on Friday, Matt got up at about 3am to head out with his friend Jim to go shopping. They had such great luck in all of the stores, that they were back by 8:30! Most years, Matt doesn't get back until closer to noon. That afternoon we headed to Cleveland to visit with Matt's aunt, uncle and cousins that live there. We spent the night and stayed all day on Saturday.

While there, Ethan was able to finally play in the snow and go sledding for the very first time! Aunt Joyce pulled him around the yard and pushed him down a small hill in their yard. After that, Uncle Gary came out with his skis and pulled Ethan around the yard, they even went down the hill a couple of times!! Ethan had such a blast with them! He loved sledding and I can't wait to take him again when we have a good enough snow here.

On Sunday, we celebrated with my family. We had about 6 people missing from the get together, because my sister Erika and her family were out of town and my mom was in Italy. My mom actually comes back today and I can't wait for her to see how big Micah has gotten in the past 4 weeks! He looks so different already :)

I hope that you enjoy the pictures and the video of Ethan sledding down the hill.