Dressing for December

Thanks to wonderful friends who dress their daughters beautifully, Abby has a lot of fabulous hand me downs.  I actually think she has enough Christmas clothes to dress for the holidays all month long!  So I'm documenting her Dressing for December in pictures.

December 1, 2012
This corduroy romper with smocked Christmas mice was Katie Grace's.  I get a lot of wonderful things from Katie Grace's mama, Julie.

Abby wore this to see Santa at the fire station's Pancakes with Santa on Family Fun Saturday.

December 2, 2012
This red corduroy dress was Sweet Kristi's.  She gives me so many fantastic things.  Her girls are about as well dressed as you get.  Abby wore this to church Sunday since it is short sleeves and it was almost 80 degrees and the velvet and flannel dress I had laid out was probably not going to work.

December 3, 2012
This was Abby Golz's and it says 'Abby' on it.  Janice blesses me with Abby and A items! This is Abby saying Merry Christmas.  Seriously, ask her to say Merry Christmas and this is what she does.  This is also her standing in the window.  Moving on.

December 4, 2012
We had to buy these!  Abby had Polar Express Day at school and all the kids at the whole school wore PJs.  Except that they couldn't be footed pajamas because they had to wear shoes.  Poor girl did not have a single pair of pajamas that weren't footed.  So we bought her these at Walmart on Family Fun Saturday.  Fun.

December 5, 2012
I got this outfit in an exchange at MOPS last year!

I'm pretty excited about Day Six.  It's another Katie Grace outfit. 

Color Me Happy

These are not good pictures because I took them with my phone,

but these are of Abby wearing PJs my grandma made for me when I was her age.

They fit perfectly and I thought she looked adorable.

Gaylord

Here are some of the pictures I took when we went to the Gaylord in November.

Abby watching the water.

On the Christmas Sled

Watching the train

Looking up at the big tree

Waiting for the elevator

Waiting for Santa

More Pictures and Words

These are pictures of Abby I was going to upload before I starting having problems.

I just like this picture of her.  It's hard to see online but it's a good shot of her blue eyes.

In her Ohio State Dress saying Touchdown when the Buckeyes went undefeated!

Pretending to swim.  She LOVES to swim.

Decorating for Christmas

After church

I was looking back to see where I last posted Abby's words and I think I skipped a bunch.  So here's what she is saying right now:  uh oh, oh, whoa, yes, bug (buh), duck, out (uh), hello, apple, yuck yuck (yeh yeh), broken (bow), bow, up (uh), open (uh puh), more, brother (brah), woof woof (woo woo), bird (bow), book (ba), bubble, no, dad (da), bus (bah).  That's 23.  Dad is funny because she calls for him.  Really, seriously calls for him.  Da! DAAA!  Da!

Pictures

These are pictures I took in November and then wasn't able to upload to the Blog.

We had big plans for the weekend after Thanksgiving, but Jory ended up having to work, so the kids and I went to Grapevine Mills Mall for a bit on Friday.  I thought this was a good picture of Aaron.  You will notice Cat who has become a vital part of our family.  If you ask Aaron what his cat's name is, he will say Muffy, but he always refers to it as Cat.  And Cat does everything we do.  Cat makes me nervous.  Losing Cat is a scary proposition at this point.

This is Aaron acting really confused when I said, "No, we are not going to buy Chips Ahoy cookies in the checkout aisle at Walmart"  Really???

Cat is also here.  I love that he loves Cat because Cat is one of the things I have of my grandmother's and I treasure her memory dearly.  She had a cat that she named Muffy because she was white like a muff.  When my grandparents moved into a retirement home Muffy couldn't go.  Grandpa got my Grandma this stuffed cat and I have a picture of her holding it.  I got it when she passed and Aaron took it over almost at birth though it was recently that Cat became a constant companion.

Aaron wanting me to take his picture.  I keep meaning to post this about Aaron:  he has very good pronunciation and an incredible vocabulary.  However, there are a few words he doesn't say quite right.  It baffles us a bit since he can say Intestine just fine, but whatever.  He says PeyPo for pillow and SoSo for cereal.  He also says Regot instead of forgot.

Hi Silly Boy

Sunday after Thanksgiving is my official start of Dressing for Christmas.  YAY

Grandma Beth got Aaron this Christmas Train Vest and turtle neck.  Aaron is very, very into trains right now.

Aaron helping shovel leaves into a pile.

Funny Stuff

Every year I make calendars for the kids with pictures from the past year on it.  I put family member's birthdays on it and I use the calendar to record what they do throughout the year.  To make it easier, I have started putting a few pictures each month in a folder for the next year's calendar.  I opened that folder today and found these pictures from Christmas last year:

 And this year...

Could you not just die?

On Saturdays, we have Family Fun Saturday.  Occasionally we go to the Gaylord Texan because it is right up the street from us.  If you haven't been to a Gaylord, it's fantastic and the fact that there is one in Grapevine is fabulous.  People pay a bunch of money to stay at a Gaylord and experience all of the offerings.  We just go up there on Saturdays.  They have an unbelievable miniture train that Aaron could absolutely watch all day without moving.  There are rivers and waterfalls inside the hotel and always something fun going on.  We heard that the Christmas decorations were amazing so we went up there the Saturday after Thanksgiving.  Low and behold, Santa was there and we showed up right as the line was forming.  So Mama and Daddy decided we HAD to see Santa.  Neither of the kids were in favor of this.  Luckily, the Allen household is not a democracy.  You can see that Abby is trying to run away and Aaron was being held against his will and I think this is the funniest, sweetest picture ever!  I will keep it forever!

Christmas Pictures, Round 2

I do still want to take a break from Blogging, but before I decided to take a break I had a whole bunch of pictures I wanted to upload and then I couldn't get them uploaded.  Since that is working again I want to make sure I have these in here for my Blog Books. So I have a couple of posts to do.

Kristi offered Christmas Mini Sessions in downtown Grapevine, so of course we participated!

The picture above made it to our Christmas card over the pictures she took of them on the chair that I posted earlier.

Aaron's getting to an age that we can get him to sit for pictures.

Abby, not so much!

Test

Well, I am still taking a break, but...

I have been dealing with a problem uploading pictures on the blog and my friend (and photographer and technological genius) Kristi sent me an idea today.  I wanted to see if it would work. And...

I'll be!  It did! 

I had been wanting to post our Christmas picures. This was our first round!  We used the picture below on the front of our Christmas card. 

I wanted to use this one, though.  I think it's funny and fitting.

We didn't use any of the pictures of the kids on the chair together, though I love them.

We used a picture of the two of them that Kristi took during Round Two!

We did use the first picture on this page of Abby by herself in my favorite family rocking chair.  The picture we used of Aaron alone was taken this summer by Kristi.

Break

I have decided to unplug a bit this month.  I will let you know when I start blogging again.  Merry Christmas!
Love,
Sara and the Allen Family