Christmas Tree Day

Last year, due to our move, we weren't able to get our tree until about a week before Christmas.  That may explain why I wanted one so early this year.  I still refuse to get a tree before Thanksgiving (only crazy people do that!) But, just a few days later we set out on our Christmas Tree Day adventure.

Donuts for breakfast...yum!

The hubby wanted to go straight to Home Depot for our tree after he had seen some on sale.  What a sad Christmas Tree Day.  Pull up to Home Depot, hop out, grab a tree off the ground, and go home?  No way!  So, I decided that we would, in fact, give C the complete Christmas tree farm experience this year.  I chose Bishop's Pine Crest Tree Farm.  It came complete with free cookies, cocoa, and train rides.  Yes, it was a little far away..and yes the hubby did offer to get us cocoa on the way to Home Depot...and yes he did say that the train would probably be some white-trash trailer hooked up to a lawnmower.  To this I argued that it was, indeed, a legitimate train because I had seen a picture...

this picture...

My bad.

Yes, that engine is a tiny tractor in disguise.  And those cars are made out of 50 gallon plastic drums.

But just look how much fun he had! 

This smile was what I kept pointing out to my husband every time he gave me the "I told you so" look.

 A little warm-me-up snuggle.

"I like this one Mom!"  Too bad.  Yep, after looking at several price tags it became clear that we would be making a stop at Home Depot after all.

But, not before we explored the rest of the tree farm.

Just look at his face...there's an I was right gleam all over it.

Even he will admit that we all had a lot of fun!  It would've been more fun if we'd partaken of the free cookies and cocoa...but somebody didn't think that would be the right thing to do since we weren't planning on purchasing a tree.

Back in the warm and cozy car.

Our lovely (and affordable!) Home Depot tree.

I will call this next set of pictures...Daddy's little helper.

Best Christmas Tree Day Ever!

Mystery Solved

Friday night we dropped C off at Nana and Papa's and headed out for our mystery date. I guess it was only a mystery to me. The hubby had made all the plans and told me only one thing...dress nice.

We drove to the Olive Garden (one of my favorites) and I had this for dinner...

I'll admit, it was a little awkward walking into the Olive Garden dressed in our finest.  But, that mystery was soon solved when I was handed a birthday card...written in my Mom's handwriting...

"What?!?  You didn't plan this at all, did you?!?"

In his defense, my hubby did pick the restaurant for dinner...but he had nothing to do with what was inside envelope #2...

Happy (early) Birthday to Me!!!

Tickets to what????

Oh yeah.

What an awesome night we had! 

The manager at Olive Garden attempted to be helpful and run our card while our waitress was busy.  Her plan backfired when she billed us for the wrong meal and then could not get our card to run again a second time, thus prompting her to pay for our dinner.  When we arrived at the parking garage we thought we were doomed when the attendant told us that if we were going to pay with a card we would be charged full price.  Of course he didn't have a machine to run our card there so we assumed an attendant at the exit would look at our full price ticket and we would pay then.  Nope.  Guess the parking garage assumes everyone pays with cash because when we pulled up there was nothing to do but drive on through.

Thank you Mom for the tickets

Thank you manager at Olive Garden for dinner

Thank you parking garage for your flawed system

Thank you hubby...

...for ice cream!

Spending $2.13 on our entire evening....that's wicked.

Potty School

This morning, C and I spent 6 hours in "potty school."  Our previous attempts at potty training had been unsuccessful.  C had learned how to potty on the toilet, but motivating him to do so proved to be extremely difficult.  He was unimpressed by sticker charts and candy and always replied with a polite "no thank you" when I asked him if he needed to go potty.  I have always believed in waiting until the child is ready to be trained...fully trained.  Who cares if your 18 month old pees in the pot if you have to carry her in there every 30 minutes?!?  I wanted to potty-train C...not myself!  A friend of mine suggested the book, Toilet Training In Less Than A Day.  For those of you out there saying, "There's a load of bull and $7.99 you'll never get back."  One, the book does not guarantee a child who is 100% accident free in less than a day.  Rather, the concept is solidified in a short amount of time and the "accident free" part follows within a week or two (or so they say...we're not that far yet!)  And two, I checked it out from the library so I didn't waste any money!  The book was written by two psychologists and uses several different techniques to teach a child to potty themselves.  I wanted to try it just because of that right there!  Since I knew C understood the concept of going potty I especially liked the idea of teaching natural consequences.  I would never punish my child for having an accident, but doing things like having C practice going to and from the potty quickly following an accident, and having him help clean up the mess and change himself into clean pants really made a lot of sense to me.  These were just things that needed to be done following an accident and it made total sense to transfer the responsibility from the parent to the child.  My son may not potty in the toilet for an m&m, but he sure doesn't appreciate having to do all that work after an accident.  I knew that would probably be our golden ticket right there...we had been unable to motivate him to go in the potty...but here was a way to motivate him not to go in his pants. 

Did it work?  I guess I'll let you know in a couple of weeks.  Did it start us off on the right foot?  After watching C go to the bathroom without being asked/reminded/prompted etc., move his step stool to the toilet, lift the seat, pull his undies down, pee, pull his undies up, replace the seat, flush, move his stool to the sink and wash and dry his hands....all without any physical assistance or verbal reminders from me...one of those times being after I had already tucked him in for his nap and left him in his bedroom...then yes, I'd say it did! 

And the fact that we had quite a bit of fun together didn't hurt the book's case either.  Proof of which came in the form of C's question as he was washing his hands. "Can I go to potty school again?"  Yeah, you can if you want to buddy...but I don't think you'll need to.

Random act of kindness

Our street connects straight to the highway via stop sign.  Today as I was headed up the hill before the stop, a car coming toward me flashed it's lights twice.  I immediately slowed down (yes, I was speeding) because I had always heard that after passing a lurking cop you should flash your lights for others headed that way as a common courtesy.  Well, at least that's what I thought I had heard...I had that story a little mixed up with the one in which gang members drive around at night time without headlights on and the first person to give them a little 'hey dude, you're lights are off' flash is in big trouble.  Yikes.  What's that movie about urban legends?  No surprise that I can't remember the title, since I couldn't remember which scenario was actually an urban legend.  Things were quickly cleared up as I came over the top of the hill and saw my friendly neighborhood cop sitting on the side of the road.  Today I did not fall victim to a gang initiation!  I also did not get pulled over for speeding.  Thank you stranger for your random act of kindness.

Stirfry

Believe it or not, tonight was my first time to ever make stir fry for dinner.  Crazy, I know.  Especially since it is super easy (well, it is when you do it the way I did...frozen veggie mix and bottled sauce.)  I had almost forgotten about the chopsticks some very dear friends of ours gifted us with before we left them in Mississippi :( But, thankfully my husband saw our stir fry dinner as the perfect opportunity to prove how much chopstick knowledge we've retained since our lesson last winter.

Look at that concentration

That pretty red set is mine...and I barely managed to get a hold of them for this picture...

...someone else was honing their skills...

I don't know that we really set him up to succeed with those crackers

Yay!  I can eat string cheese with chopsticks!

But, I'd much rather use them to put on a puppet show with Mom.

Junk Posse

Check out these great necklaces from Junk Posse Jewelry. 

This one is crafted after the actual shape of Ethiopia...which resembles an angel wing...

Head on over to Junk Posse's etsy site to get one for yourself or someone you happen to know would just love to have one.  I'm just going to throw it out there that said person may or may not have a birthday coming up. 

Seriously though...check out the rest of Tracy's great designs.  She often donates a percentage of her proceeds to help with an adopting family's travel expenses.  Right now she's helping the Bottomly family raise some funds for their travel to Ethiopia to bring home a sweet baby girl.  Head on over to their blog to see even more Junk Posse necklaces and to read about the giveaway that I just entered by writing this post!  (Guess you may not need to get me a necklace after all) :) 

No, I do not know the Bottomly's.  Yes, I have been blog-stalking them since we began considering adopting from Ethiopia.  Yes, I realize that by entering her giveaway she will most likely discover that I've been blog-stalking her.  No, I don't care...I want that necklace!

Baking

A friend of mine has been tempting me with all her talk of baking sugar cookies lately...she even went so far as to post a picture on facebook....that was it...C and I had to make some of our own.  So, this is what we did with our evening...

We used this here...

and here...

Swirling the color was his favorite part.

He was really excited about the Sprinkle Station!  He sprinkled one cookie and then began to partake in the best part of baking cookies...

Yum!