Crazy:

That would define the last few weeks, my schedule, my house, and me.

Amongst the things posted below on what we've been doing, I'm also getting ready for a trip to CA/Disneyland next week, completing all of my Christmas shopping, attending family dinners, showers and get togethers, scrapbooking like crazy (I've done over 100 pages in the last 3 weeks), baking, and the usual running a household and dealing with kids. Of course in order to fit everything in I've been averaging 6 hours of sleep a night so I'm exhausted and cranky. I'm definitely not winning any Mother of the Day, Week, Year, or even Moment awards right now. However, I have caught up on expenses, bills, wedding flowers, cleaning, scrapbooking, and the blog. Whew! It feels great! I'm going to be a lot more pleasant now. Jeff, no comments from you on that one.

As I sit here wrapping up all these posts Emily is outside working hard on the yard. She is such a good girl and looked so cute out there I had to snap a few pics. She had fun raking, sweeping, and picking up the leaves. We're not used to having to take care of a yard, however it's definitely worth it. We've loved having a place to play and relax.

Oh, and Jeff helped with the leaves too.

11 Months

Jacob has grown up so much the past month. He babbles all the time - my favortie being mama. He also has a name for his sister ... well, I guess it's actually more a sound - "Ah!". Either way, it's what he always uses when he wants Emily. He's learned how to 'say' and understand no, although that doesn't necessarily mean he listens to us. He'll shake his hand back and forth several times whenever he doesn't want something or if he hears us tell him no.

Jacob also loves to dance and climb. Any tune he hears he will either start doing squats or sway back and forth. He will climb onto anything he can find - toys, furniture, people - just to be a little bit higher. He especially loves climbing on his sisters bed. She's not such a big fan since he messes it up and can then reach her 'special' stuff. He found one of Emily's babies the other day and just loves it. He is so sweet with it and will give it loves. He'll also feed it a bottle too - although the bottle ends up in his mouth more often than the baby's. Jacob also loves being thrown on the love sac. He loves wrestling around with daddy and Emily. Jacob is such a fan of drawers and cupboards. He is constantly opening and closing things. On 11.08.10 he went into the bathroom and closed the door and opened one of the vanity drawers - successfully locking me out. I was in quite the panic because there is NO way into that bathroom. Fortunatly after 10 minutes he decided to heed my please of "close the drawer!" and I was able to get him out without cutting the door down.

Jacob has always loved to stand and I've always been impressed with how strong he is. He has been able to stand himself up in the middle of a room for a good month. He's recently started doing it with no hands - just pushing straight up with his legs. About the end of October he started taking a few steps here and there. Then little by little he became more daring and started walking between furniture. The first week of November he perfected his steps and he was officially walking by the time he was 11 months. It is so cute to watch him toddle around and he's getting faster and faster every day. Wer'e so proud of him and what a good boy he is. He is such a joy to have around.

Jacob learning to walk. The 1st one he isn't as steady and can't go as far (and I love how he hugs the baby at the end). The 2nd video was taken 2 weeks later.

Throwing a fit - guess who he learned that from?


Jacob found one of Jeff's reff whistles and learned how to blow it. Fortunately he hasn't figured out how to do it loud.

Chicago

A few years ago Jeff and I were talking over finances and goals. When I asked Jeff what he'd like to do in the next 5 years the only thing he wanted to do was 'go to the Notre Dame game.' So that's exactly what we did. We flew out to Chicago on the 11.11.10. We enjoyed wonderful flights without entertaining, feeding, quieting, and jockying kids and all their gear. We had intentions of spending Friday downtown, but with such crazy weeks (or I guess I could say months) leading up to this trip, we decided we needed the rest more than a whirlwind tour in the cold. So we slept in, watched a movie together, read, napped, and of course I did plenty of scrapbooking.
On Saturday we met up with Jeff's family and all traveled to South Bend for the game. There was a LOT of red in the airport, on the flights, at the hotels, and even at the restaurants and it was fun running into random people we knew as we wandered the campus and stadium. The weather wasn't too bad - until game time. Then it just poured for the first half. We planned well though and stayed pretty much dry. Although the outcome - and even the whole 2 hours of the game - wasn't what we had planned or anticpated, it was still an incredible stadium to visit and an enjoyable trip with Jeff's family. We got to see Jeff's brother's from out of state, relax and at least try to catch up on missed sleep, reconnect with each other, wonder numerous times why anyone would want to live in Chicago, miss our kids (which was a good thing for me), and of course eat plenty of deep dish chicago style pizza. Thanks for all your generosity at the game Dave! And a big thanks to mom, Jenn and Stacy in helping with my kids.

Now let's just all hope the team decides to finally show up this Saturday.

New Car!!!

With our upcoming drive to CA next week we realized that fitting the 4 of us and all the gear needed for 10 days was going to be impossible in the Altima. So we bumped up the purchase of a van a few months and bought one on 11.06.10. Emily is VERY excited for it. She especially loves that she can open and close her door with the push of a button. We ended up getting a 2010 Dodge Grand Caravan and we're all pretty excited about. New car days don't happen very often and they sure are fun when they do. I'm still adjusting to the size difference and I'm so unfamiliar with the dash. I guess we'll all get acquainted real quick when we spend 12 hours in it on Friday.

PS The dealer we got it from (Henry Clay Motors) is running a special on oil changes right now. $5 - no strings attached. They're just trying to get their name out there. So if you're due for an oil change, definitely the place to go.

Eagles

We went to a couple of Matthew's football games this year. It was so fun to see him play and he had a great year. Emily always loved playing around with her grandparents and cousins at the games. Thankfully on the cold night game Jacob was able to stay home with Gma Holbrook. Thank you Arline!!

Our poor attempt at getting a pic of Matthew with all the grandkids.

Emily took all the pictures that she is not in


Here are some of my favorite shots of Matthew. Here's to hoping he can play some college ball so we can watch him again!

Artist in Residence

Emily has always loved to draw and color. She has spent a whole afternoon coloring before. She uses crayons, colored pencils, markers, chalk and of course her favorite, paint. I've got a whole stack of artwork from preschool and another from all her home projects. It's been fun to see her skills develop over the past year. It was so exciting when she learned to actually draw something and not just scribble. Her first people were lopsided circles with eyes, nose, and smile and circles as big as the head stuck to it as arms and legs. Then they evolved and now have arms and legs with the circles as hands and feet. Her latest addition has been hair and makeup (coloring the face in). She's also expanded and started drawing rainbows, snails, flowers and gardens, pumpkins, swings, and a few other things. A couple weeks ago she took some chalk outside and spent a good hour decorating the patio. She ended up drawing all of her Holbrook cousins, her family, and a couple grandparents. I of course couldn't let the pending rain wash it all away and had to snap a few pictures to preserve it.

Halloween

Or as a friend so aptly put it: Halloweek

10.22.10 Emily had a preschool field trip to a pumpkin patch. They read stories and sang a few songs in a teepee, picked out a pumpkin, and then chased each other all over the paths.
On 10.27.10 Emily had her Halloween parade and party at preschool. She was so excited to wear her Cinderella costume and be all fancy. I was impressed with the variety and quality of so many of the kids costumes. They were all so cute!

10.28.10 we had our ward trunk or treat. After tasty soup and rolls we all headed outside for the main event. Jacob was so excited to hold his little bag and would get mad if we took it away from him. Emily was a proud big sister and would always help Jacob get his share of treats.

Heather was still in town with her girls so they came to the trunk or treat with us. I love the top picture of the 4 of them - Maggie was NOT happy that Jacob was touching her!

10.30.10 we finally got around to carving Emily's pumpkin. She was very adament about making sure we had it carved for Halloween. Of course Jeff did most of the work. But she did help design the face, scoop some guts, and was on hand for the unveiling of the insides. I always love kids faces when they see the inside of a pumpkin.

It was a rainy halloween - but we made it work. We went up and down our street on 10.30.10 and got quite a bit of candy and some soggy shoes. Emily's candy bucket had water all in the bottom of it and we had to lay her candy out to dry.

Our little dinosaur - Jacob crawling was the cutest!

On 10.31.10 we had our annual Halloween dinner with my family. I'm not sure how long we've had this tradition, but as far back as I can remember my mom would always put it on. We began the night with snapping pictures of the kids in their costumes. Matthew and Chris dressed up as well (Matthew was Aladdin if you can't tell). Then we played Halloween bingo and Jackson & Jacob got some hilarious glasses as prizes. The menu of course was completely disgusting but the food was delicious. Thanks for planning another dinner mom!

First Snow!

10.25.10 we got our first dusting of snow. Emily was SO excited. She immediately wanted to run outside and play 'in' it. (If you hadn't noticed - she's still in her pj's). I told her she could put her coat on and at least go see it up close for a few minutes but there definitely wasn't enough to actually play in it. She of course had to eat it. What is it with kids and eating snow?

Cornbelly's

Emily LOVES mazes. So we thought she'd have a ton of fun at a corn maze this year. On 10.19.10 we met up with Brad & Heather and Gma & Gpa Holbrook at Cornbelly's @ Thanksgiving Pointe. I was amazed at all the stuff they have to do there. We totally could have spent all day - and maybe even multiple days - messing around on all the stuff they have. The kids had fun dressing up, dancing, bouncing in a bounce house, climbing on a carriage/horse, sliding, swinging, jumping, doing the kiddie corn maze, duck races, watching a pig race, and just playing with each other. It was a lot of fun. Special thanks to Dave and Arline for the special treat and for taking the kids home to bed so Jeff and I could actually do the adult maze.

Emily asleep in the backseat as we drove down

Ella!

Brad and Heather came into town on 10.17.10. Emily was SO excited. She absolutely loves her cousin Ella and couldn't wait to play with her again. We had Sunday dinner together and the girls disappeared in Emily's room for a while. After a little bit Emily came out and asked for music. They had dressed up and wanted to go to a ball. So Brad and Jeff went back and danced with their princesses. It was really cute. We also spent some time outside on the flexi flyer. We loved having them in town and seeing so much of them. One of these days we're going to have to make it down to NM to visit Ella. Emily's dying to see her new house.