Family Christmas Tradition

In the last several years we have somewhat of a family tradition. We decorate our Christmas tree and put the Christmas lights outside and then we take a family picture! It is so fun to see how our family changes from year to year. Next year will be even more fun as we will be adding our sweet little girl, A.P. to the mix!

This is in 2006 when E and L were just a little guys. I am sad to say that we didnt take a family picture in 2007. I am not sure what happened.

This picture was our 2008 Christmas card! The boys were too funny with their big grins and eyes closed!! Merry Christmas from the Whiteley's!

This picture was taken in 2009. We had just gotten our dog a month before, so we wanted to include him in the picture.

This is from 2010. We had to move the tree this year to make room for a new chair that we purchased. Notice that the nasty dog is NOT in the picture. He is outside because he needed a bath! Now that he is clean, we have been letting him sleep in his crate at night when the temperature is in the teens!

I am also 5 months prego in this picture!! So excited for A.P. to get here!!

Taking these family pictures is a fun tradition for our family. The boys love to help us decorate! We did let them down a little bit this year because we didnt put out any Christmas lights in the yard. Honestly though, it has been too cold and I have not had a ton of energy during this pregnancy. Hopefully next year we will be back to normal and have a festive house for Christmas!!

Merry Christmas from the Whiteley's in 2010!

Pizza and the Square

After Thanksgiving we met my parents in Fayetteville for pizza and to see the lights at the Square. The lights were beautiful and the kids loved it! Outtings are getting to be so much more fun as the boys get older.

Nanny and Pepaw spoiled the boys by letting them go on all of the rides. Here E and I are riding the camel.

Cale and L on the other camel.

Then we rode on the Cinderella carriage! I felt like a princess!

The Cinderella carriage was big enough that all 6 of us were able to ride on it.

Then Pepaw paid for the boys to ride on the ponies.

The boys also like following the lighted paths. It was hard to get them to sit still long enough to get a few pictures!!

Daddy and his boys!

It was a very fun night for all of us!

Thank you Nanny and Pepaw!!

Two Little Indian Boys

It was craft night at our house back in November. Grandma had given us paper sacks and real feathers!! We had to make good use of them.

Dont they make cute little indian boys??

E spent alot of time coloring and decorating his paper!

L on the other hand did not decorate for long. He wanted to be an indian!!

I am so glad that I ordered the art project book for first graders this year as part of E's schooling. He has loved getting to do some of the projects that they recommend!

Happy Late Thanksgiving!

Toy Ads

L is my shopper. I can take him to any store and he can find something to look at! This time of year is horrible for him. There are way to many ads in the paper for him to look at and he always wants everything in the ad!

I have even been known to take one of these books to church with us. He will sit so quietly in church looking at all of the toys that he wants!

Are we breaking a commandment here? Not sure. I know it says no coveting your neighbors anything, but does wanting everything out of a toy ad count?? :-)

Catching Up

Yes, I know that I have been a horrible blogger! So now I am trying to catch up on all of my pictures before Christmas and the New Year. I took these pictures at least a month ago. We were waiting on Cale to finish getting ready for church. So I told the boys to go outside and I would snap some pictures of them while we waited.

Aren't they cutie pies??

I ended up using the one of them together for our Christmas Card. I know it is not the best pictures of E, but have you ever tried to use the machines at Walmart?? It has been way to long for me. I just decided to get it all done while I was there. SO that is why I used that picture.

E. My handsome little guy. With teeth coming in at all stages. I am so ready to get past this stage in his life where his teeth are all different sizes and at different stages of coming in. I am also ready to get this boy to an orthodontist! He has such beautiful baby teeth!

Sweet L! It is impossible to get him to look at the camera, and when he does he squints! We have to say crazy things to get him to smile and look and then most of the time he is laughing for his pictures! He is sooo silly!!

Baby Bump

Just so that I can document these things here are some baby bump pictures! This is me and baby #3 at 8 weeks.

Now here we are at 19 1/2 weeks. I know this picture is at a horrible angle, but I did have E take it yesterday afternoon! Maybe Cale can take a better one in a few months!

It is so amazing to see what your body does when you are pregnant. I have been feeling movement for about 2 weeks so far. Last night we did have a breakthrough. I actually saw my baby bump move when I felt the baby move! It is so amazing! I know that the movements will just get stronger and I am excited about that. E has been so excited throughout this entire pregnancy and I want him to be able to feel the baby move too!

Fall Festival

Our church has a Fall Festival every year. The boys love playing all of the games and getting candy and toys! Cale loves the food!

They each had something painted on their hands. E wanted a pumpkin.

And L wanted the Superman symbol.

E at the balloon pop.

Fishing.

It was a fun night, but I am glad that it is over. I am sooo ready for Thanksgiving and Christmas. Hopefully more posts to come soon!

The Pumpkin Patch

A couple of weeks ago, L went on his first field trip with his preschool class. They went to the Pumpkin Patch. He was sooo excited about getting to ride on the bus!

L with his teacher, Ms. Gerri.

L with his other teacher, Ms. Annie.

The class sitting on hay bales listening to the Pumpkin Man talk about the different kinds of pumpkins. You can see that L was not listening very well!

L showing me his new class t-shirt.

L and I on the hayride.

Climbing the mountain of hay. This was a big hit with all of the kids. They would climb to the top and jump down on to the hay at the bottom of the mountain! I think we could have just done this for the field trip and the kids would have been happy.

Crawling through the tunnel.

Stopping for mom to get ANOTHER picture!

Picking out his pumpkin. (and showing me how strong he is!!)

Helping his team in the Pumpkin Rolling Contest.

L's entire class.

It was a fun day! I am so glad that L got to go this year. We have been in the past with E's class, but this time he was able to do it with his own class. Great Memories!!

Super E!

I know that it has been forever since I blogged last! I did have to get these pictures up though! I just finished sewing these pajama pants for E and I am going to have to get another pair made for L soon! Both of my boys are wanting to wear these pants!!

An upclose picture of the pants. It's a bird! It's a plane!

Still loving sewing class! I am learning so much!

Fall Line Up

Cale and I have a tendancy to be television junkies! We DVR everything and watch it after the kids go to bed. We used to not be able to watch shows together because I didnt like anything that was to intense or that might give me bad dreams. He didnt like only watching "girlie shows." So we started previewing things and we found a few shows that we liked. Most of them came on the USA cable network. We love shows like Monk, Psych, Covert Affairs, Burn Notice, and Royal Pains. Unfortunately, those shows are over for now. SO we have been previewing shows on the networks to see if there was anything decent to watch. Most of what we have seen in the past has been trash. That is why we like USA so much. They have good shows that do not focus on the bad. They are NOT perfect by any means, but they are better than most.

This fall I am looking forward to a few different shows that I previewed this past week.

Dancing With the Stars is one of them. I am not sure about Florence Henderson or David Hasselhoff this year. They seem kind of cheesy. Also, Bristol Palin?? She has obviously never had any kind of dance/performance experience. We will see how far she goes on the show. I dont know alot of the other performers. I am sure that Brandy will do well, and Jennifer Grey from Dirty Dancing looks like she might have some promise. Only time will tell!

After Dancing we always look forward to Castle. It is a police drama with enough comedy thrown in that it is not to horrible to watch. Rick Castle is actually pretty charming in the show and we all know that Beckett likes him and is only pretending to "put up" with him. The chemistry between those two characters is what keeps the show going. Hopefully they will keep them separated and the show will go on!

Mike and Molly turned out to be a cute little comedy! It looks really fun and of course I will support anything with Sookie in it! Sookie is a character from my all time favorite show Gilmore Girls. She has been on several shows since Gilmore Girls ended, but nothing has worked so far. This time she is actually the star of the show. We will see how this works!

We just finished watching Hawaii Five-O today from the DVR list. It was really good! A very fun show! Another cop show though!! My only problem with it is that it has that annoying brother from the Ocean's Eleven movie in it. He drove me crazy in those movies!! Fortunately, he is nothing like that in this show!

Blue Bloods looks like another good one! Even if it is ANOTHER cop show. Handsome Tom Selleck is in this show! It is about a three generation cop family. Very good! (So Far!)

I really got into a new show last year called The Good Wife. It is about a woman who stands by her man even after he is caught cheating on her. He is in a high profile postion. He goes to jail, and she goes to work as a lawyer. I like the characters and it has very little death in the show which is one of the reasons that I like it! This one is truly my show. Cale does not watch it with me.

Of course while I was looking for these pictures I forgot to add a few. The Office is always a favorite of ours. This season started off with a bang! Possibly one of the top ten funniest episodes of the entire series! LOVE THE OFFICE!

Another show that didnt air this week is called No Ordinary Family. It looks like a real life version of The Incredibles. I am anxious to see if it holds true to the PG rating and is family friendly. The kids loved that movie and they might enjoy seeing a real show if it is not to intense for them. They are just little guys! We are really excited for this show!

I told you that we watch way to much television! We really are busy and dont watch it every night. But when we are home we just hit the DVR button and off we go! How did we ever get along without a DVR? We are able to watch these shows so much faster because we can fast forward through all of the commercials! I know what you are thinking...go read a book! We do that too!