Merry Christmas, Happy New Year...and all that jazz.

I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas and a very Happy New Year! We had a great Christmas this year and Bryson really enjoyed himself. He of course got more stuff than he knows what to do with! We made Christmas cookies on Christmas Eve, set out our plate for Santa...and wouldn't you know it, the big fat man came to see us!



As you can see, Bryson's big gift was his kitchen which he absolutely loves. His little imagination is really taking off and he's really starting to "pretend play" which is so fun to watch. The stuff he comes up with just absolutely amazes me. Every day is something new!
We are still struggling a lot with his toddler attitude, but hopefully we'll make it thru this phase soon. Some phrases we hear pretty frequently now are: "I bad boy!" "You don't tell me no!" ----Yeah. Don't really know what to do about that! Sometimes when we are telling him not to do something he even comes back with "Excuse me??" (which is what I say to him when he says something bad) Ohhhh boy oh boy. Oh and did I mention we are now referred to as "Mom and Dad"? Very rarely are we Mama/Mommy and Daddy anymore. I feel like we have a little mini teenager in the house sometimes!

(Blurry pic of Mr. Attitude himself sitting in time out)
One new thing that we did this Christmas season was we took our first family trip to the movies! We went and saw:

Bryson did SO good and sat thru the entire movie! He loves movies so I was pretty confident he would do great. We all really enjoyed the movie...it was so cute! ....and yes...I even shed a few tears at the end. I'm such a sucker for Disney movies. Anyways, we will definitely have to purchase this one when it comes out on DVD. It's a keeper! Such a cute twist on an old fairy tale.
Here's Bryson watching the big screen while enjoying his bag of popcorn:

And of course, last but not least:
HAPPY NEW YEAR!!

Fall portraits

I hope everyone had a great Turkey Day! I know we sure did! It's hard to believe that Thanksgiving has come and gone and fall has almost left us! Although, for those of us here in SC, I think it's safe to say that we haven't had much of a fall this year. We've gone back and forth between hot and cold weather for all of October/November, so much so that the leaves barely even changed color this year! They just died and fell off the trees. I think they just got so fed up with the weather they didn't know what else to do. Ahhh, how I miss fall. Anywho..

This past weekend we had the pleasure of having a photo shoot with the very talented Kellen, of Third Eye Wide Photography. We wanted some fall shots of the 3 of us and some good pics of Bryson for our Christmas card. We got some great shots and I was so excited to see how well they turned out! Here are a few of our favorites:





Thanks Kellen! :)

FREE Christmas Cards!

Yes, I said FREE! Shutterfly is doing a special promotion for bloggers where you have the opportunity to get 50 FREE Christmas cards! Interested? Keep on reading.

For those of you who are not familiar with Shutterfly, it's a wonderful website where you can upload and print all your pictures, create holiday greeting cards, calendars, mugs, etc. You name it, Shutterfly does it. I personally do all of my uploading, printing through them and have always been thoroughly pleased with the speed of processing, as well as the quality of the pictures/products I receive.

One of my favorite things about Shutterfly is their huge selection of Holiday Greeting Cards. You can choose from folded greeting cards, flat stationary cards or flat photo cards.

I personally love the flat photo cards the best, because not only do they look great and have a huge selection to choose from, they are EXTREMELY affordable, much more so than most store bought cards that I've seen (and much cuter!). I know that last year I was able to buy all of my Christmas cards from Shutterfly for less than $20. That's INSANE! For less money, you can get CUTER cards that are of HIGHER quality. Once I received my order, I knew I would never buy store bought Christmas cards again.

I also love that, depending on the layout you choose, you can put several pictures or just one picture on your card, whatever you choose. Shutterfly makes it easy for you to design your card the way YOU want it to look. You're not limited to just one style/template. Some of my favorites this year are:

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There are SO many cute ones to choose from!! It will take me hours to decide which one I want to use for our Christmas card this year!

Another great product that Shutterfly offers are Personalized Wall Calendars.

These make a wonderful Christmas gift! I made one last year for all the grandparents, and everyone absolutely loved it. It's a great way to show off how your kids have grown throughout the year, or just a cute way to display family photos. Here's what mine looked like last year:


Another gift idea are the photo books Shutterfly offers. This is a great way to document the first year of your child's life, a wedding, a special vacation.....really anything! I made one shortly after Jeffrey and I were married for our parents/grandparents. It was a great way to compile all of our photographs from the wedding into a nice little keepsake book that they can keep forever. They look so professional once they are all finished. I HIGHLY recommend making one!

So take some time to check out Shutterfly this holiday season! I promise you wont be disappointed!

For all you fellow bloggers, sign up to get your 50 free holiday cards from Shutterfly here: http://bit.ly/sfly2010

And a big thank you to Melissa for posting about this on her blog!!

Trick or Treat!

Howdy Partners! This year for Halloween we had a little cowboy in our midst. We celebrated by briefly visiting a church carnival and then some good old fashioned trick or treating with his very best friends Haileigh and Grayson.
Bryson had a great time and got so much candy he could barely lift his little pumpkin by the end of the night. Candy is a rare treat for him so he has really enjoyed being able to have 1 piece of candy at the end of the day. He usually chooses a Dumdum and says "YUMMY!!!" over and over while eating it!


Reading his Bible he received at the church carnival

Checkin out the goats

Still hangin on to the Bible

Best friends

Random pics

Playing his "bams"

A construction worker/musician

Serious pose

Loving/torturing Joey

Favorite time of year

Well, FINALLY my favorite time of year has come along. FALL. I love the changing leaves, the chilly (not cold) weather, the smell of fires burning in fire places....oh, and the SC State Fair! The fair is an annual tradition for most of us living here in the Columbia area and once September rolls around we anxiously wait for our chance to take a trip out to the fair grounds. This year was no different for us and as soon as we got the chance, Jeffrey and I took some time off of work and took Bryson out to the fair to enjoy some sights, sounds, and most importantly FOOD. Unfortunately Bryson was not big enough to ride any rides this year, but he was perfectly content riding around in his stroller and people watching. In fact, he didn't want to get out of his stroller at all! We enjoyed a nice lunch of Fiske fries (with vinegar of course), a Greek gyro for me and a polish dog for Jeffrey. (Bryson snacked on both of ours but mostly enjoyed the fries) We grabbed a bag of cinnamon sugar donuts for dessert which I think Bryson liked the most.
I didn't get a whole lot of pictures but I did get a few shots of my boy hanging in his stroller!

Another year gone by...

Well, I'm a few days late but my sweet little boy turned 2 on the 30th. I can't even believe how fast these past two years have gone by! It makes me sad to know he's getting big so fast, but excited to see what the future holds for him..and for us as his parents!

To My Sweet Bryson,
These past 2 years have been full of smiles, giggles, screams, and tears but I can promise you they have been the best years of mine and your Daddy's lives. You are our pride and joy and we couldn't be prouder of the little boy you are becoming.
You finally have a head full of hair (very blond hair) and it's starting to curl up at the ends. You're still not ready for that first haircut though. You LOVE to talk and say all kinds of things to us every day. You are very outspoken and have become a little bossy but you're just so dang cute it's hard to stay mad at you. You love to play very rough and are often tackling Mommy and Daddy on the living room floor. You love to hide in the pantry and think this is a very fun game. You love to play ball, swing, slide, run, scream, ...... pretty much anything and everything.
You're favorite movie is Shrek and you ask to watch this every single day. You always say: "I watch Fweck Mommy!" You even know most of the movie by heart and like to quote the lines. You love to sing songs like "Ring Around the Rosey" and "5 Little Monkeys" and the ABC's which you know very well. You can count to 10 and we are still working on your colors and shapes. You are not potty trained yet but you ask every day to go potty and really like sitting on your new froggy potty.
While you do have your not so wonderful moments, you are a very happy, sweet little boy who never fails to bring smiles to those around you. You are loved by SO many and I hope you always know that.
Daddy and I love you SO SO very much. Happy Birthday Baby.

Love,
Mommy


Sitting on the potty while watching Shrek (had to have the glasses)

Sacked out after birthday festivities

CHEESE! (after bath, sitting on the potty)

Cheese again! I'm 2!