Holiday Catch-Up Part 1: Thanksgiving

Okay... catch up time! Like everything else gone wrong in these nine months, I'm going to blame pregnancy on how I got so behind on the blog. 

Right, pregnancy! For the sake of family scrapbooking... we found out we were pregnant just a few weeks before Thanksgiving. After the hardest year of our marriage (maybe life).... from the miscarriage, to the month after month of negative pregnancy tests, to our house literally falling apart, financial roller coasters, a tornado, and everything in between... this positive pregnancy test felt like a glimpse of hope from the Lord saying: This year, I am giving you rest! I'm claiming it as our sabbatical year, even though I know we can never escape from death and decay on this side of heaven.

Anyway, this put me at right about 5 1/2 weeks at Thanksgiving which meant a whole lot of food aversions on the day when you DO NOT want to have food aversions. But food is not what Thanksgiving is really about, right? We spent the weekend at Lake Martin with Andrew's family being grateful... for the hard and the beautiful from our year. 

Wilson spent the weekend being thankful for The Three Stooges. Because Andrew found them on You Tube and this is really what the whole weekend looked like: 

Now that we have more kiddos and live farther apart, time spent with these cousins are so very precious to us. Wilson just adores Madelyn and Brooks and he is starting to realize that Blake and Cooper aren't babies anymore and will soon be able to keep up with him.

Baba and Grandan are such troopers to put up with a FULL house of loud littles.

The first time we were all at the lake after B & C were born, I said to Andrew... "This feels like a perpetual run of the first scene in Home Alone." You know, where there are cousins and chaos every where and Kevin says, "This house is so full of people it makes me sick. When I grow up and get married, I'm living alone. I'm living alone! I'm living alone!"

Well, I disagree, Kevin. I think it's kind of awesome.

We even managed to get one pretty amazing photo of ALL of us. Never mind that it took 15 tries. 

I've said this before on here, but I really am amazed that by some miracle I ended up in such a precious family. Andrew's parents are so incredibly generous to all of us... and most precious to us is the time and energy they give during lake weekends like this. Baba goes to great lengths to make everything so special and memorable for the kids. 

Although I sure miss my Thanksgivings in Kentucky, these lake Thanksgivings are growing on me. The slow pace, the read-a-whole-book-if-you-want mentality, the s'mores over bonfires, the falling asleep on a hammock by the water.... and the littles. All the precious littles...

Fifteen Months

Hello! Pardon the late post, please. I am proud to announce that I am now 15 months and four days!

If you can't tell from my shot above, I am starting to become a collector of a certain prehistoric reptile. I love "nino!"s and can spot them from miles away. Our living room is starting to look like a scene from Jurassic Park.

My love for books has only grown and I spend most of the day doing this...

However, a new development is that you can also sometimes find me doing this....

Mom says she loves reading to me, but she is very glad that I am becoming more self-sufficient in my playtime.

This doesn't last for too long though, as I have also started to be a little more clingy. I still go to other people with no fear, but after a few seconds I am ready to go back to my Mama. Where Mom used to take her time leaving the nursery at church, she now has to dart out before I see her leave or I will let you know just how I feel about it. I also like to hang around her feet most of the day.

What can I say? I love my Mom.

I love my Dad, too and am becoming more and more like him. I love being outside. I love being active and I love the mornings. Just like Daddy! I'm still on two (1-1.5 hour) naps a day, but no matter what time you put me to bed at night, I am up at 5:30 or 6:00 every morning. Rise and shine family!!

Something that's been true about me for awhile now is that I love to take things apart and figure out how they work.

Maybe I will be some sort of engineer. Or maybe I'm just a boy! If I'm throwing a tantrum (which seems to be happening about 100 times a day right now), Mom will put me in the front seat of our car and I am thrilled for at least 30 minutes to just play with all the knobs and buttons. It's the little things.

Two other things that I get really excited about are cheese and Elmo. If I hear "Elmo's Song" I will stop (or drop) whatever I am doing and run to the TV announcing to the household "Melmo! Melmo!" My parents say that I have a cheese radar because I can detect cheese in any form it may come.... a block of cheddar, shredded, feta, sliced, Swiss.... there is no fooling this connoisseur. They were baffled when I demanded "Cheese!" from the Parmesan bottle the first time I ever saw it. It's definitely my super power, although I'm not sure when it would be helpful other than to satisfy my tummy.

This month has been really busy. A couple of weeks ago we took a trip to Orlando for a conference. While Daddy was in meetings, Mom and I played in Disney. One of Mom's best friends got us some tickets to Disney World for the second year in a row... THANK YOU BECKY, RYAN & PARKER! I had so much fun playing with my new friend, Parker and seeing Disney World again. While there I adopted a new love for Minnie (???) and got really excited every time I saw her: "Minnie!!" I also learned how to say Pluto (Tu-to), Goofy (Doo-ee) and Donald (Non-nald). I got to ride Small World (this was my favorite), Pirates, The People Mover, The Great Movie Ride, American Idol Experience, and see the lights at Hollywood Studios. It was a busy but really fun day.

This past weekend we went to the lake to celebrate my second Thanksgiving! I am thankful for the two new additions to Dad's side of the family... Blake and Cooper (now 9 months old!). I love having someone my size to play with.

It was a fun weekend of playing, eating and laughing with my sweet family. I am so thankful for my family. I'm excited to see my Mommy's side of the family very soon for Christmas!

The thing that surprises people the most about me is my talking. I talk all.the.time. and I really try to say everything. I'm saying over 35 (yes, you heard right!) words right now. Not all of them are super articulate (like "pwee" for please), but they are all consistent and used in the right context. I haven't really pieced together sentences yet, but I am starting to put words together like "Dat nino" (That Dino). I also like to repeat the phrase "There it is!" which sounds more like "Dare-ih-ish" with hilariously identical intonation to Mom.

I'm quite the stud in that way.

Another development is that I'm starting to use a utensil at meal times! My parents have to put the food on it for me, but I then fly solo to my mouth. You should see the hilarity of Mom and Dad's celebration every time the fork makes it to my face. Pure joy in the kitchen.

Speaking of mealtimes, I'll end with a video of me showing off my manners. I'm learning to say "please" instead of whining for things. It's kind of a hard process as you will see in this video...



Catch ya at Month 16! Christmas Eve!!
W

Harwell Holidays

We have officially entered into the holiday season! I've always had a rule for myself that I wouldn't start playing Christmas music until the day after Thanksgiving, but I feel like I must confess publicly that I started way before this year! Harry Connick Jr. is my all time favorite Christmas crooner... and his records were absolutely begging me to play them about three weeks ago. So I gave in! And I think it's safe to say that they improved my quality of life and even gave lift to my ability to pull off my first ever Thanksgiving dinner!

Andrew and I were so blessed to host both of our parents and my sister for Thanksgiving this year. I am finding more and more that hosting is one of the top things that bring me joy.


This is the whole crew at dinner minus Mom who was taking the picture


Me and my sister, Allie posing with the set-up


Me giving Dad the picture of their new house I painted for him for his birthday


On Friday, the gals entered into the mayhem of Christmas shoppers in Montgomery. It was great to get most of my shopping done... but I have forgotten how draining extensive shopping can be. Before I moved to Auburn, the girls in my family would always start at 7:00 in the morning and shop until midnight in Nashville! I have no idea how we did it... but I'm not sure I want to do that ever again.

The treat we got after our shopping trip this Friday was seeing my two favorite children: Madelyn and Brooks! I stole this picture from Leslie's blog because it's probably the best picture of them I've seen!


Other highlights of this past month (sorry we've been skimpy on the posts!) were traveling to Orlando for a regional staff conference with Crusade. The conference itself was wonderful and it was great to reconnect with other staff, especially those that I joined with. However, if anyone ever asked for a good way to torture me I might tell them to place me in a room where I get to see Disney World everyday but can never go. That's exactly what happened.... almost Dante's Inferno-esque. It was terrible to wake up and look at Epcot out my window and know that we couldn't afford to go nor had the time. So we decided to do some Disneying for free... went to Downtown Disney, Disney Boardwalk, some Disney hotels with Christmas decorations... and even got to ride the monorail late one night with Chris and Anne Marie. It was pretty cool that we got to sit in the very front, but it was also kind of anti-climatic riding around in one big circle and only seeing the castle from a distance, not to mention it smelt like beef and cheese as Buddy the Elf would put it. But it was still fun... and if any of you know me well, you know that Toy Story is the best of best of movies on my list and I got a picture with Buzz Lightyear, so I guess it was all worth it.


The last thing to mention is that... we bought a house!! We are so blessed! It's actually a pre-sale of a house in construction in a new neighborhood in Auburn. After months of frustration, we could tell the Lord's hand was on this place. It is perfect for us and perfect for our ministry. We will be able to move in late February! I will post pictures of the process. Thanks for all of your prayers and all of your love. Andrew and I are so thankful for our family and friends. We hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving celebrating the Lord's goodness in our lives!