Thanksgiving

We had a wonderful Thanksgiving this year. We went to my dad's for Thanksgiving lunch and then headed over to my Mom's for Thanksgiving dinner. Both meals we wonderful and it was so nice to be able to visit with family all day long. The boys had so much fun playing with their cousins. We always have a blast when we get together. Here are a few pictures from Thanksgiving with my dad, unfortunately I didn't take any pictures at my mom's.

My Dad with his 8 grandkids

Jude and Papaw

Cutie cousins Maya and Lily are the best of Friends!

After Thanksgiving dinner was over we headed home and got the boys into bed. Then I met up with my mom, sisters, and a few nieces at Toysrus to get our Black Friday shopping started! I usually get started around 3:00 or 4:00 AM but this year Toysrus opened up at 10:00 PM so that is when we got started! My plan was to go to Toysrus and then go home to bed and go back out around 4:00AM. The lines at Toysrus were so crazy that I didn't get out of there until 1:00 so I just decided to stay out. We headed over to Walmart where my mom got in line for a TV. My sister Tracy and I went to Steak and Shake with our niece to get some food and some energy. It was so much fun! I then dropped them off at Walmart and I headed over to Target where my sister Katie had been waiting in line since 1:00 AM to get a TV. We got our stuff at Target and were out of there by a little after 5:00. That is when I decided to call it quits and went home to bed. They continued shopping for hours! We got some great deals but more importantly we had so much fun together! I look forward to this each year!

The boys in their $4 jammies!

Eli loving his new jammies!
Cute as can be in his new jammies!

My Big Boys

The boys are both currently in size 5 diapers :-) 15 months and almost 3 and they are wearing the same size! Eli has been in size 5 diapers forever. Over the last few months we have really been noticing how he is growing tall and slim. Jude on the other hand is growing round! He has such a round belly on him! It goes nicely with his big round cheeks!

Jude and Eli in size 5 diapers

Skinny mini Eli

Big guy Jude

Holiday Cards

Sending out Holiday cards is one of my favorite things about Christmas time. I love getting them and I love sharing them with my friends and family. Unfortunately this year we had decided that we weren't going to be sending out family Christmas cards in order to save a little money. I recently stumbled across a friends blog and found a great way to get 50 free Christmas cards from Shutterfly.com!!

I am so excited about this! Shutterfly has awesome holiday cards! I have already been browsing through their selection to find some ideas for this year! I love how they offer cards with more than one picture on them! I can really get creative now! Look at how neat this is!

It is also a great place to find photo gift ideas too! They have adorable calendars and awesome photo mugs! So get over there and check them out! Bloggers don't forget....Bloggers get 50 free holiday cards from Shutterfly....sign up: http://bit.ly/sfly2010.

I am so excited to get started on my holiday cards and what is better than 50 free!

Jude is 15 Months

My sweet little baby isn't much of a baby anymore! He is 15 months old today and he is all toddler. He is so much fun to be around and always has a smile on his face that is very contagious! He loves to laugh and we can't help but laugh with him. His favorite thing thing to do right now is to look at books. He will sit with us and look at a book, then get off our lap and go get a different book. This can go on for an hour. He loves to point to different things in the books. There is one book in particular that he loves to find a cat on a specific page. We look at that page over and over he yells "Dat!!!" It is so cute. He is also starting to try to say more. He can say backpack and that has to be the cutest thing ever!
Jude is a really good eater, you can tell by the size of his belly! :-) He has such a round little belly that his 12 month jeans are getting a little snug. He eats his fruits and veggies ok, but he loves loves loves pasta! His also a really good drinker. He finishes his cup of milk with each meal and has more throughout the day. Hopefully this will continue and he won't become a picky eater like his big brother.

Happy 15 months Jude!

Such a happy little boy!

He loves loves loves his butta!

My sweet little Bubbers

Such a Big Boy!

Eli is still doing pretty well with potty training. My cousin gave us a bunch of leftover pull ups she had so I decided to give them a try. I explained to Eli that they were for big boys who were learning to go on the potty and that we had to try really hard to keep them dry. He thought they were pretty cool, and I think it may have helped that they had Buzz and Woody on them! Each morning he has to try and go potty before he can put a pull up on. Some mornings it takes a little longer to get him to try and their has been a couple days that he hasn't wanted to try in the morning at all. If he goes he gets his sticker and marshmallows and then we set the timer for 1 hour. If he doesn't go we set the timer for 15 minutes and then we try again when the timer goes off. He has been doing really well with this. He really likes listening for the timer and he gets excited when it goes off and he runs over to his potty. It is still me reminding him to go but this is definitely progress. Yesterday was the only day that he refused to try all day so today while we were at Meijer I let him pick out some new stickers to use for his potty chart. That did it. He went potty 5 times today! I am so proud of him!

We are still really working on going poop in the potty. It is pretty obvious when he has to go, but the majority of the time he refuses to go on the potty. We try bargaining with him and offering him different rewards to get him to go on the potty but most of the time nothing will work. Tonight while we were at church we could tell that Eli had to go. We asked him if he wanted to go sit on the big potty and he said no. I offered to take some books or toys with us and he said no. Finally we told him we could stop at Meijer on the way home and pick up this little Reindeer that he has been looking at for a few weeks. He finally said he wanted to go try. He sat on the potty and he instantly went poop IN THE BIG POTTY AT CHURCH! I was so proud of him! This is the first time he has gone on a any potty besides his little potty seat. We don't plan on rewarding him like this all the time but I am really hoping that since he has gone on an actual toilet now he won't be afraid to later on.

Eli with his reindeer friend

Eli with his potty chart on November 2ndEli with his potty chart tonight

He is doing such a great job!!!

Meet My Family!

This past weekend we got together with my side of the family for family pictures. We were nervous about doing outside pictures in November, but the weather was GREAT!!! I love that we have such a big family that is still growing! We have so much fun when wee get together!

Here we all are!

My mom and her 5 kids

My mom and her 15 Grandkids
My brother Kory and his 5 kids

Jake, Jessica, Kory & Olivia, Alex, Kory

My sister Katie and her family

Girish & Sunjay, Katie & Maya
My sister Tracy and her family
Lily, Isaac, Tracy & Bosco, Chris, Luke, Grace

All the grand daughtersThe big girls

Sydney, Jessica, Alex, Kayla

The Little Girls
Maya, Lily, Olivia, Grace

The Little Boys
Jude, Luke, Eli, Sunjay

Making Progress (Hopefully)

Potty training is NOT easy!!! We have been letting Eli take the lead and it is going slowly. I ask him all the time if he wants to try and go and the majority of the time his answer would be no. If he would want to try he would sit on his potty for up to 45 minutes sometimes before he would go or want to get off. On average he was going in the potty 1-2 times a week. We were offering rewards if he would go on the potty. He would get to put a sticker on the sticker chart and then pick a prize out of the prize box. (We got a box of a bunch of little toys from McDonald's or burger king off of EBay for like $3) Finally this week something has changed and we seem to be moving forward a little. On Tuesday for the first time Eli went on his potty twice in one day! I was so proud of him but wasn't thinking it was really anything. Then on Wednesday he went potty 4 times and he even pooped once on his potty!! I couldn't believe it! He was pretty excited about it too. Thursday he went twice again and on Friday he didn't go at all but he has already gone twice today. I can see that it is going to be more difficult on the days when I am watching the 2 year old because he is too busy playing, but I am just thrilled that we finally seem to be moving forward. It is still mostly me asking him to go rather than him telling me he needs to go, but he usually goes within 5 minutes instead of 40 minutes! Since I think he is starting to to get it a little we have switched our rewards. He still gets a sticker on his sticker chart but instead of getting a prize every time now he gets 5 mini marshmallows instead. I know we still have a ways to go but I am so proud of my little boy!

Eli with his sticker chart

Eli loves the Marshmallow rewards!

While I was emptying the potty one time Jude tried to sit in the base and got stuck!

Family Pictures

Back in August I entered some pictures of the boys in a photo contest on Facebook and they won!!!! We won a free family photo shoot for 4, how perfect!! We met the photographer, Amber of Cupcakes and Champagne Photography at a park and she was able to get some wonderful pictures! I am so thrilled with how they turned out! I love the ones that she got of the boys together and I am so happy to finally have a GREAT family picture to hang in our house. The only framed family picture we have right now is from Eli's baptism, that means no Jude. I can't wait to get these printed and hung up in our house! Here are a few of my favorites:

I love my little family of 4!!

Sweet Elijah Kent 2 3/4 years oldMy sweetie Jude Michael 14 monthsBrothers and FriendsA few more by the waterI love these 2 boys so much

I don't think they could be any sweeter
More fun family photos!I love Eli's blue eyes
My sweet baby boy
Fun in the leaves My absolute favorite!

I am so excited about these and can't wait to get them printed and hung up in my house!!! I am so glad that we won this photo shoot. Part of the prize was the CD with our pictures so the only thing we have to pay for is to print them off wherever we want! I couldn't be happier about this!