Christmas 2012

We had one full Christmas holiday! My mom came to visit Friday before Christmas so we were able to get some time visiting with her before the rest of the family arrived Christmas eve and Christmas day. Friday night Anthony and I went out to dinner for our anniversary and it was so strange to go somewhere without James! Dinner was wonderful and it was heaven to be able to eat in a restaurant without worrying about James. He is not a fan of sitting down for meals :)

Christmas Eve Anthony went fishing with his dad and they had a great time! They stayed out all day and caught 5 red fish (but were only allowed to keep 2). Anthony is dying to get back out there soon!

While Anthony was gone, James and I took my mom to check out the dinosaurs at the botanical gardens and find the geocache. The weather was perfect, and I walked right to the geocache! I had researched a little more online and realized that I had been looking in the wrong spot before. Once I got to the right area, it was a cinch!

Here he is, trying to give me a stick he got of the ground so I can put it in the "ash" (trash). He gets very concerned about litter or things he thinks are out of place :)

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At one point, he decided to just sit down and draw in the dirt with his stick. I don't think I have ever seen him do that before:

When we would get to a dinosaur, James would say "whoa!" or "cool!" and then proceed to find something more entertaining to play with. At the triceratops, he found a palm frond on the ground and pushed it around for the rest of our visit. He loved that thing! He cried when I made him leave it. I just think it is so funny that right in front of this HUGE stone dinosaur he would rather play with a stick:

As we were getting in the car to go home, my mom put James down in the passenger seat for a minute so we could put our other stuff in the backseat. Quick as a flash James crawled over to the driver seat so he could play with the steering wheel. When I pulled him away to put him in his car seat, he clung to the wheel like glue, he did not want to let go!

Christmas Eve my brothers made it from Gainesville and we had a great time visiting and playing board games. I love how much we laugh when we all get together! My older brother had to leave real early the next morning to make it home in time for work, but we are glad he got to stay for the time he did.

Christmas morning, I was up waaaaay before James was. I think I got up around 8:30 and finally I went into James room to wake him up around 9:45. Why can't he sleep in like that on a normal day?

After everyone was up, we went into the front room for presents. James had a hard time getting the hang of his stocking...he would get one thing out and then want to play with it and act annoyed when we would want him to keep looking for more. Eventually he got into it :)

For some reason he ended up with three different play microphones. He loves them though!

Anytime I ask Anthony what books James should have (since I can't resist buying him books!) Anthony always says The Poky Little Puppy, since that was one of his favorites growing up. This year he got it!

Another car:

A large car track/set. It is about 50/50 right now between him being really irritated by this toy and loving playing with it. It might need to disappear and come back in a few months...

The grand finale of the morning was his new jeep! He absolutely loved it!

Here is a video of him driving it around. He now has become a pro at pressing the reverse when he gets stuck somewhere and then backing out. Anthony is trying to think of ways to fix the wheels so that they don't get stuck so often in the grass.

Christmas afternoon Anthony's parents and his sister and her family came over for appetizers and desserts. The food was great and we had a blast visiting and opening presents. James caught on to Anthony's parents' names really quickly and he kept asking for "Mimi" and "Papa" all night:

Of course we couldn't leave the dogs out of the fun. They absolutely hated it:

It was a great Christmas, I hope everyone else's was just as wonderful!

Pow-pow-power wheels!

When I was little if you had a power wheels you were the (wo)man!!! Since James is obsessed with all things transportation, I started keeping my eyes out at garage sales for an affordable power wheels. I didn't think I would really get him one, since I didn't want to pay too much. Plus, it still seems like such a HUGE gift like it was when I was little, although it seems like now the prices aren't that bad compared to the costs of other popular gifts. So I wasn't really planning on getting him one, but then I came across a barely used one at a garage sale a few months ago. It was priced at $50, which I knew was reasonable especially considering how new it looked. You could tell it hadn't been ridden much. The owners said they got it for their daughter and she went through a growth spurt and grew out of it almost immediately. I offered them $40, they took it and it was mine!

The only problem was that it looked like this (minus the blonde little girl:):

 Not that James would care of course, but we just couldn't feel good about ourselves as parents if we let his friends see him loving on a barbie power wheels. The embarrassment! :) So we did some googling to figure out the best way to go about painting it and we finally took an afternoon and got it done. I love how it turned out!

His new manly ride:

We are considering adding a few more details, like some bike reflectors for headlights and brake lights and maybe some decals but we might not. It depends on how stressed I feel as we get closer to Christmas :) We spent almost as much on paint as we did on the car, but I love that my little boy is getting something we really put some effort into. I can't wait for Christmas morning for him to start cruising around!!!

Bongoland

This morning I took James geocaching to a botanical gardens about 20 minutes away. I had heard about this place a few times, but was reminded about it by my friend Leah. It is a really cool place, and it has tons of history! First it was a sugar mill plantation in the 1800's and there are still ruins and equipment preserved on the property.

 

 Then it was converted into a sort-of amusement park in the 1940's called Bongoland, with huge stone dinosaurs, a caged baboon named Bongo, and a train that took you around on a tour. It shut down after only a few years due to lack of interest, I guess those kind of amusement parks weren't in style back then! Luckily the dinosaurs are still standing.

A giant ground sloth:

 Walking on the dino foot prints:

 T-rex:

 Stegosaurus:

 Triceratops:

Now it has been adopted by a local nonprofit group as a botanical garden and it is gorgeous!! There are all these little side gardens, like an Asian garden, an herb garden, a "natural chapel" with walls of bamboo and trees, and even a human sundial. My favorite is this gorgeous tree they call a "confederate tree" because supposedly confederate soldiers camped under it during the civil war:

James and I had so much fun exploring, but we didn't end up finding the geocache. There was a wedding going on (who has a wedding at 10 in the morning on a Tuesday??) and I didn't want to interrupt with my weird looking under and over rocks geocache search :) In a way it is good, because it means we have a reason to go back soon!

Ward Christmas Party 2012

 This past Saturday was our ward Christmas party and it was so much fun! Last year there was a "whoville" theme and we all wore costumes, but this year it was much more low key, just the way I like it! It was just a bunch of people eating good food, visiting, and a visit from Santa at the end. James has been pretty cranky the last few days and we haven't been able to figure out why, so we weren't sure how the visit with Santa was going to go...

 We gave it our best try! I took James up to wait for Santa's entrance and Anthony got a picture of everyone swarming him once he came in:

 He made his way across the room to the chair by the Christmas tree in the foyer:

 Of course, the line to see Santa was really long, at least for a cranky almost 2 year old. At one point I had Anthony hold our spot in line and took him for a walk around the church.

Waiting in line and trying to get the camera adjusted:

 When it was finally our turn, James instantly didn't like the idea of being passed to Santa, so Santa told Anthony to go ahead and sit on his lap holding James. It was a great idea, but it didn't fool James for a second!

 I was standing there laughing and taking pictures when Santa looked over at me and told me I might as well get in on the picture! So I sat on his other knee and couldn't stop grinning, James' reaction was too funny!

"All I want for Christmas...is to get away from Santa!!!" Sincerely, James

A lady in our ward was taking pictures from the front, so I will have to update this post with the straight on picture once she puts them up. I just can't get over how desperate James is in this picture! I was debating whether or not to take him to a mall Santa this year, wondering if he would miss out if I didn't but I guess I have my answer! No Santa for James, at least not for awhile! :)

*Update-here are more pictures*

A Pirate Christmas party

Last Saturday we went to a Christmas party being put on by one of the local doctors offices for different medical providers and we had a blast! It was at a local campground/tourist spot/farm...I'm not really sure how to describe it. You could go out on kayaks and canoes and they had river boat tours that I think you pay for on a normal day but Saturday it was all part of the party.

On the property there is also a life size replica of snow white's house from the Disney movie built by close personal friends of Walt Disney. You could see it from the boat and it looked neat, but the boat captain said that you have to contact a local museum to set up a tour...sounds like a little too much work for me.

 As soon as we got there, we headed over to the pirate cruise! 

They had actors narrating everything and putting on a show as they took us up and down the creek. My mom snapped a picture of us waiting to get started. James doesn't look happy, but he really liked it!

Here they are explaining our job as their "crew":

They had play chains, swords, and hooks for everyone to pick up and depending on what you got, that ended up being your "job" on the boat. So if you had a sword you were a soldier who protected everyone from other pirates, if you had chains you were jailers for unruly passengers, and if you had hooks you would take over for the captain should something terrible happen to him.

The captain gave us a demonstration on how to lasso a cow for our dinner, and once we were on the boat he also gave us a knot tying demonstration:

There's a happy face!

James checking everyone out:

They had games like hula hoops and ring tosses set out for the kids. Anthony tried to show James how to hula hoop:

Of course, he just wanted to run around, so we spent a lot of time retrieving him from all over the place:

There were tons of wild peacocks running around:

The tractor ride back to the parking lot. A very fun swampy Christmas party!