Ducks and Parks

I'm sure you're wondering about my MANY posts today, but like I said, redundancy. It's time to catch up and what better way than to blog. Over the Christmas break we went to this cute duck pond by my parent's and a fun little park. These are both places that I remember frequenting as a child so it's fun to see the kids enjoy them as much as I did.

Grandma and Grandpa with the kids feeding the completely freaked out, hungry, and pretty much ugly ducks :-). These ducks looked like bargain ducks for sure. Who knows why they don't fly south for the winter?

What's supper funny is that Hannah was absolutely in LOVE with these crazy, overly aggressive ducks. She chased them, yelled at them, and otherwise terrorized the beastly animals. She seemed to be in her element lol. Greyson on the other hand was TOTALLY freaked out by them. They were WAY too scary for him so he hung back behind Grandpa and had to be held for a while. He's our little sweet, sensitive boy, and I love it!

Hannah is quite the fan of hanging from bars after perfecting the art at gymnastics every week.

Greyson was quick to follow suit :-)!

We had such a great holiday, and there are SO many more quick posts to come to try and capture some of our fondest memories. Enjoy the day, and go back up your pics and video. That's my last reminder...

Day 1 Potty Training Down!

With my recent loss of all things pictures and video related, I am absolutely committed to being better with my blog. I've lost everything (as far as I can tell) video related from Greyson's 18 months and all still shots from before the last 6 months. I don't print, I don't backup (except to my now totally fried external hard drive - curse you hard drive!), and I'm beyond sad about it. I am, however, incredibly grateful for what has been recovered thanks to the help of James and my fabulous friend's husband, Bryan Turner. Getting back the birth of our daughter and so many other precious memories is something that I will always appreciate. With all that being said, I hope anyone who reads this goes and makes an extra back up of everything picture related right now. I am going to be the crazy Mom with like 50 backup copies of everything from now on. My middle name is officially redundancy -- that's my plan, and I'm sticking to it.

I decided that it was time to get our little girl potty trained. After a few BIG messes in her bed due to some tricky diaper removal and Picasso work it seemed the only logical thing to do. I had put this day off for a few weeks, but I decided I needed to stick to my guns. We're trying the 3 day method, and it's going pretty well. I started by rolling up all of the rugs which turned out to make a fun "boingy boingy" for the kids. They can turn ANYTHING into a toy. Here is the big girl before we got started. You may notice that she's not wearing any pants! That's part of the plan although I'm pretty sure Hannah was SUPER excited about this part. I gave her about a hundred cups of chocolate milk and juice probably ruining her teeth forever, but it kept her needing to go. We had LOTS of accidents, but we also had about 6-8 wet successes and 1-2 very small #2 wins.

She's such a big girl. We thought about going out and getting her a girlie potty, but this baseball potty was collecting dust out in the garage. It worked GREAT!

It's pretty cold here right now so I added some leg warmers to finish the look. You know me and my need to accesorize ;-)! She wet these ones about half way through the day and insisted upon picking out new ones to wear. This girl knows a good leg warmer set when she sees one. Anywho, today was hard and intense, but it was worth it. If I can get through day 1, then I can get through the rest. I'm sure there will be lots of accidents, but we are having fun celebrating the success! Take care, and oh yeah -- go back up your pics guys!

At Least I Should Do Christmas

I was actually inspired to post a nice little reminscent look back at my sweet little boy, Greyson, yetserday evening only to discover that my entire stock of pictures and video from the last 4 years have been lost to a faulty external hard drive. While I work desperately to recover everything older than 2 months I guess I should at least post something about our fabulous Christmas.

We kept our regular Shelton family tradtions and had breakfast for dinner on Christmas Eve. We make Great Grandpa Robert's special homemade waffles, and we serve them on Grandma Shelton's Christmas china. It's a nice way to include them in our holiday memories. We want to make sure our kids know James' side of the family, and it's important that we find a way to honor them throughout the year. We open one gift on Christmas Eve which is always our special Christmas jammies that we wear to bed so we have fashionable ensembles for Christmas morning pictures ;-).
Of course we have lots of little helping hands to open our presents, too :-)!

Christmas morning was a blast, and the kids were ecstatic about all of the wonderful things Santa brought for them.
They were quite the unwrapping professionals. Hannah just kept going from box to box opening as fast as she could. It's funny to see how different the our kids can be. Greyson was very careful and slow at this age with gift opening. He wanted to play with each toy before moving onto the next.
The first thing Greyson asked about when he came out was "Stinky the Garbage Truck." Santa usually doesn't wrap things, but I guess he got extra ambitious this time around and decided he would wrap it.
Hannah jumped right into feeding her new baby, and she was in heaven!
After opening gifts and eating some homeade doughnuts, we headed over to Grandma and Grandpa's house for the Christmas feast and round two of gifts. It was chaotic and crazy, and the kids had SO much fun! Hannah was especially proud of her "Princess Dress" that she twirled around anytime someone showed an interest. I just love that girl!
She helped put the finishing touches on the tree before we opened gifts. It was such a wonderful day, and it's so fun to watch the kids get more into the Christmas spirit each year. We attended a New Year's Eve service (briefly as the kids were not really wanting to sit), and we want to make that an annual tradition. We hope you all had a wonderful holiday, and Happy New Year!

Forget Catching Up

Just because...I'm still going to publish this post. This is the night that I decided I wanted to travel back in time to Greyson as a baby and the night that I figured out that I couldn't due to my hard drive failure. I still want to share even if I don't have my pics...

Forget the catching up, forget the apologies. I just feel like reminiscing for some reason about my little baby boy that once was so tiny and seems so very big all of the sudden. I don't know if it's the impending birthdays, the beginning of a new year, or just how big he has been acting lately, but I miss my little baby. He seems like such a grown up big kid. I can feel the toddler and preschool days flying by, and I'm not ready for what's next. I know it's inevitable -- I want him to grow up and be independent -- but things are going WAY too fast. I see Hannah at this age, and I remember back to Greyson at that age. We were snuggling away on the couch while Mommy was on bedrest waiting for his little sister to arrive. He was barely talking, and he was just a big ball of hugs and kisses. Hannah is definitely not the non-talker, but this post is not about her. In honor of my flashback to Greyson as a little boy I feel I should put some growing up shots of him on here. I started this after Hannah was born so there's not documentation of Greyson as a baby except in his baby albums. Enjoy the ride! I know I will...

Fall is Fabulous!

I know it comes as a shock, but you may not have noticed that it's been like a thousand years since I have been on here. I don't know what is wrong with me, but I take 100% responsibility for my absolute lack of enthusiasm for posting. This was supposed to be a sacred keepsake of baby book type memories for my kids where I could put cherished pics and cute stories. I won't promise that I'll get better or that I'll be more diligent, because it hasn't worked out too well for me so far. I will say that here is a post, and hopefully I'll get caught up soon. We have been on a whirlwind of fun Fall outings since school has started. Here is a small glimpse with more to follow somewhere in the future. Enjoy!

James and I decided we wanted to take the kids bowling for the first time at Main Event here in Lewisville, and it was HUGE hit. They had this great ramp which pretty much made everyone a perfect bowler so YAY Main Event :-).


Even Hannah had to get in on the action

As we progress (ever so slightly) in gymnastics, Hannah felt that she needed a special outfit to enjoy her bouncing, tumbling, and such. She showed off for Daddy the night before her next class.
She is quite the bouncer. She LOVES the bars, but she has gotten SO much better on the trampoline during our short time at ASI. It's so fun to watch!


Scarlett and Hannah had to have matching outfits of course, and one of their favorite parts is getting stamps on their feet after class. It's the little things that make life so fun, huh?

I left the room one day only to return to Daddy and Hannah having a tea party in the living room. I'm sure this is the first of MANY in our future.We made our annual trip to the Garland Labor Day parade this year, and the kids had a BLAST. It's the perfect size parade for this age, and they LOVE getting beads and candy.



We took our first trip to Sandy Lake Amusement Park with the kids. James remembers going there a lot as a child, and he swears that they have the EXACT same rides. That's a bit scary to think about. Hannah wanted to ride EVERYTHING, and we had a fabulous time!

This is just one of those memories that I want to remember. Greyson LOVES taking a bath in Grandma and Grandpa's sink. It's hilarious that he still fits in this thing, but the sink is HUGE! He has been bathing in Grandma's sink since birth, but they did upgrade to a larger sink recently. I'd like to think that they did it so he could keep playing with his measuring cups while Grandma gives him a bath :-).


Greyson's second season of Blast Ball started, and it was interesting as always. Greyson loved playing in the dirt more than he liked hitting the ball so that was always a challenge.

He had his biggest fan cheering him on as always.


I had one of those days when I wanted to pull out Greyson's old Halloween costumes and give them a try. Greyson still fits in last year's costume since we got such a big size, and Hannah tried on Greyson's 1st costume when he was a skunk. Let's just say that Hannah doesn't like being a stinky animal. She was LIVID, and of course, being the excellent mother that I am, I took out the camera and got some pics before taking off the offensive item. Here is Buzz (aka Greyson) attempting to comfort the very mad stinky skunk. HILARIOUS!
I don't like this Mommy!
She does like wearing the Buzz goggles though.
Greyson decided he wanted to put on his zebra costume from when he was Hannah's age -- it totally still fits ;-)!

We traveled to our favorite pumpkin patch up in Argyle with some friends from our Mommy group. The have this great train that you ride out to the patch. It was a big hit!



Anders and Greyson loved playing on the seesaw.



This was the best shot I got of the kids together. That's pretty sad. They were NOT in the mood for posing, but this gives an excellent picture into most of my day's adventures. I am a referee 24/7.
I decided to send the kids out to the backyard on a nice day to enjoy the outdoors while I prepared dinner one day. I walked out the door to check on them (I leave the windows open so I can hear any screams so don't freak out), and this is what I found. They are such the nudists, right?
We went to another fab pumpkin patch out in Celina with the Mommy's group another afternoon. They had a petting zoo and everything! We hadn't been back to this particular patch since we went a few years ago with Cody. It was EXACTLY the same, and we had a great time!
I thought he was going to let this goat kiss him, and I seriously think he would have if I hadn't told him not to do it.
These sheep were serious!
Hannah just kept shouting, "DODDY! DODDY!" In her mind, they're all dogs!

Until next time...