Jacob's 1st Christmas!

...was amazing!! :)

Christmas Eve started with SNOW falling around 1pm all the way until about 7pm. I mean, we're talking some serious snow (for Texas, anyway!) I think we got about 2 inches or so. It was so perfect that it arrived just in time for Christmas, considering the day before it was 75 degrees outside!

All of my family and some of Badi's cousins came over to our house on Christmas Eve. We made a chicken and steak fajita dinner and lots of munchies. Everything was so great. Afterwards some of us played cards while others played Mario Kart. Then we all snuggled up and watched a movie. Perfect night. :)

The next morning, we woke up early and made cinnamon rolls. Jacob got to eat his first one, which he loooooved. Afterwards, we all bundled up and went outside to play in the snow! We had lots of fun and Jacob seemed to love it. He even got to make a snow angel! :)

Afterwards, we all changed clothes and headed for the Christmas tree. It was so fun watching Jacob with his gifts. We had to help him with the wrapping paper a few times but he did pretty good! One of his favorite gifts was from his cousin Jayden, a cool new helicopter! Thanks Barsanti Family!! Also a big thanks to the Whitfields and Hesches who sent Jacob some really cute gifts, too!!! :)

He also got to wear his cool Dallas Mavericks shoes! I am so lucky, we have the best family! :) Then we headed over to my parents house. Of course, Santa made another appearance!

Then it was time for all the gifts over there!

The best gift we got this year was from my brother, Greg. Greg's is one of the most talented people I know. Any sport he ever tried, he was one of the best on the team. He plays college basketball right now. He's also an incredible artist. He can look at anything and basically free-hand it to look the same on paper. A while back I had asked him to draw something for Jacob's room and we could get it framed. Well, he listened and surprised us with this awesome gift that goes perfectly with his room. Thank you, Greg!

To go along with that, Jimmy and Jenny bought Jacob the complete set of Curious George books. Awesome! :) After all the gifts and our yummy Christmas dinner, it was time to play games. We tried out one of the gifts we received, Guesstures. It was so much fun watching everyone acting out charades. Hope everyone else had a wonderful Christmas. We missed everyone in Virginia, hope to see you soon!

Merry Christmas

From our family to yours, we hope you all have a most wonderful day that is spent with those you care about most. Merry Christmas!!!   :)

Special Visitor

Growing up, we had Santa come to our house every Christmas! It didn't matter if we were at our house in Richmond, my grandmother's house or any other relatives house to celebrate. Santa seemed to always find us! I thought I was so special! We didn't have to travel to the mall like some of my friends.

Christmas has always been a huge deal for my family. In Virginia, we (all 30+) got together with my Mom's side of the family on Christmas Eve and my Dad's side of the family on Christmas Day. Even though we're not in VA and can't come back for Christmas every year like we used to, it's still one of my most favorite holidays and time of year. Not just for Santa coming, in fact it's most everything else I love most about the holiday. :)

But, it was up until 1991 (yes I know the exact date, too) that I believed in Santa. That Christmas Eve we were at my grandmother's house, we just finished Christmas dinner. All of my cousins and I were trying to be on our best behavior because we were told Santa was on his way to come see us. Later, once Santa had I arrived, I made my way into the living room to sit on his lap. As we discussed if I had been good that year or not, I happened to look down at Santa's hand. Santa was wearing my Mom's watch and wedding ring on "his" left hand. Then I looked closer at "his" face...and it was definitely my Mom...about 9 months pregnant with my little sister (who was born a few weeks after Christmas).

I then found out that my Dad had been dressing up as Santa every year. No wonder he was never around to see me with Santa! Nevertheless, everyone (including my Mom) thought it would be fun to have her be Santa that year since she was sooo very pregnant. But, she forgot to take off her ring/watch...and I caught on. Even though I knew the hoax from then on out, I still loved watching my brothers and sister light up when "Santa" came to our house. Possibly even more than my siblings love for it, was my Dad's love for dressing up as Santa! Back then my Dad was much heavier and didn't need any stuffing for a "jelly belly" in his suit.

Well, clearly, now that we're all much older and know the real scoop on Santa...he hasn't come to our house in a very long time. Well, that was until last night. We had a very special visitor come to see Jacob.

I was so afraid Jacob would start screaming, but, he LOVED Santa. He was so excited to see him and was mesmerized by him. A lot of the pictures we got are just of Jacob staring at him.

Apparently Santa forgot his boots. Under the cover-ups are some nice, festive, athletic socks. :)

That's a LONG beard! Can I please touch it and pull on it? I think Santa's eyes give away the answer to that question! Haha.

Who told you that I love monkeys? I will especially love wrestling and crawling over this HUGE monkey!

Can Santa come over to our house every night??? He's fun!

Thanks for visiting me and bringing some gifts, Santa! Can't wait to see you again!!

10 months old!

Jacob, you are now TEN months old. Double digits and  that much closer to a year! So much has happened this month! You have had a lot of "firsts".

- You now weigh 22 pounds. (60%tile)

- You are now 31 inches long. (97%tile)

-You are still in 12-18 month clothes and are now in a size 4 diaper.

- This month you started saying "MA-MA" !! YAYYYYY!! It's the best thing I've ever been called. :)

- This month you started holding you own bottle for the first time!

- You had your 1st Thanksgiving with all our family. You got to see so many people, even some relatives from California! Thanksgiving Day you loved being outside playing with your aunt and uncles! :)

                           

- This month you started crawling!!!! For a while you would scoot on your tummy or back everywhere, but, a few weeks ago you decided you wanted to start using your arms and legs to crawl! Now, you get into EVERYTHING!

- Last week, you were getting into so much stuff in the house, Mommy had to keep pulling you away from wires, electronics, etc. After about an hour of that, Mommy had to put you somewhere you couldn't get to the DVD player and stereo.....

                           

You didn't like the laundry basket too much, this only lasted about 5 minutes...ha.

- Now that you crawl a lot, you also started to crawl all over us. When we reach down to pick you up, you pull on us to get to us quicker. It's so cute! :)

- This month you've started to eat pretty much any foods we eat! No more baby food, you want whatever we're eating! Some of your favorites are rice, cheese, bread and chicken/steak!

- I think one of your most favorite toys in the last 10 months has been your jumperoo! Sometimes you jump so much and so hard...that you completely wear yourself out. Sometimes, you even fall asleep...mid-jumping!

                                   

- You love watching your Uncle Greg play basketball! You and your Daddy are so handsome! :)

                                    

- You got to help Mommy and Daddy set up and decorate your very 1st Christmas tree recently. There's even a special "J" ornament on our tree this year! :)

                                    

- This weekend you got to visit the Cowboys stadium  to watch the UT vs UNC basketball game! You loved it!

Lastly, here was last month's monkey picture:

And here's your 10 month picture!! You sure are outgrowing Curious George! :)

You are so special, Jacob. We all can't wait to celebrate Christmas with you this week. You are, by far, the best present we could have received this year! Love you, sweet boy! :)

Lately and Coming Up

This Sunday I leave for a conference for work in Nashville. Last year this conference was in Orlando and we got to go to Disney World. You can read all about that here. Everything was awesome, except I couldn't ride any of the fun rides since I was about 6 months pregnant. Oh well. This year it's in Nashville at the Gaylord Opry!

Ahhh, I can't wait! A lot of my friends from other universities are going and we've already started planning fun stuff to do...I mean, fun session to attend at the conference. Like the session we'll be attending on the Rockettes. That one should be good. :)

It will be my first time away for more than a few hours from Jacob! I'll only be gone a few days, so, it shouldn't be too bad.

switching gears...

A few months ago, I wrote to all of you (here) after a visit to our family in VA about something I had never heard about.....cornhole. The fact that it was a GAME and I hadn't heard of it was even more intriguing! Several of you mentioned you had, in fact, heard of it and played it outside of VA so apparently it wasn't just me that was in the dark on that one.

Nevertheless, about 2 months after our introduction to cornhole, the game entered our lives again. One weekend, Badi and I were at Bed Bath and Beyond and (so random, I know) the first endcap in the store had a stack of Cowboys Cornhole games! Whaaaaaat! So, needless to say, we bought it.

We thought it would be most appropriate to bust out the game on Thanksgiving when my brothers were both in town, right before the Cowboys game. It was a lot of fun! Thanks for showing us the game, Evans & Barsanti family!! :)

We had so much fun! I've been meaning to post these pics forever, but, time seems to be slipping away from me lately!

A quick update on baby Skyler, things are looking pretty decent. As well as can be expected, but, he's improving a little every day. Thank you to everyone for all the prayers, I'll continute to keep you posted as things progress!

Lastly, yesterday I came home from work to find a box at the front door. It was a package addressed to Jacob from his cousin, Jayden (almost 4 months old) in Virginia! Ha, sooo cute! Inside was a wrapped present that Jacob was so excited about. That was very sweet, thanks Jayden, Cindy and Jared!

The present is sitting under the tree until Christmas and Jacob can't WAIT to open it!!!

Prayer Request

Isn't it strange how when certain things in life happen to you, people come out in droves to let you know how they experienced the same thing themselves. Either personally or a close friend or family member, it has affected them as well. But, it's not until you experience it do you know about it happening to others. Like, it doesn't get brought up unless others go through it? As you all know, we started off 2009 with me being on bedrest, Jacob having to be delivered by an emergency c-section and all 3 of us getting to experience the NICU. A few short days after Jacob was admitted to the NICU we had received so many phone calls, emails, and notes from friends, family members, and friends of friends that had also had experiences with the NICU. Even today, almost 10 months after Jacob was born, I still run into women all the time that have had children go through the NICU.

Each story I've heard always amazes me at how strong and resilient babies are. I still think know that the biggest force behind each of the NICU stories I've heard, is the power of prayer. We know, firsthand, how powerful prayers are and were in making sure our sweet baby was healthy, strong and thriving. That being said, I need to ask for some prayers for a friend of ours.

A very dear family at our church has two young daughters and wanted a 3rd child. Over the summer they were blessed with another pregnancy. About a month ago they were so excited to find out that baby number 3 was going to be a boy! Each time I would see the mother at church functions, I would ask how she's feeling, how the pregnancy was going, etc. She always felt great, looked great, no problems whatsoever. That was until last week when her membrane broke. She was rushed  to the hospital and put on bedrest. Four days later she began contracting and they had to deliver the baby.

When she was admitted to the hospital at 23 weeks, her doctors told her that generally anything before 23 weeks was not survivable. She held on for a few more days, then the baby had to be delivered. Baby Skyler was born last week at 23 weeks 4 days along. He was born right at 1 lb 8 oz. The Dr said if he made it through the first 72 hours, things should look better. That was over a week ago. Skyler is doing fine, but, it looks like he'll be in the NICU for at least 3 or 4 months.

Please pray for baby Skyler and his family right now. The Campbell family is so wonderful and would be so appreciative of your positive thoughts, as would I! They need all the prayers, love and support they can get as they go through this difficult journey. But, through the power of prayer, I know they will all be just fine.

Here's a picture of Skyler's mom holding his foot. Thanks for your prayers!

THE Pioneer Woman, Ree!

About a month ago, I wrote a post telling you just how sweet Badi's cousin, Neda, is which you can read about here. She surprised me with The Pioneer Woman cookbook! She bought it on Amazon, had it shipped to my house, and all that completely made my day. :)

Well, naturally, our next step was to show up at Borders in Dallas, the night that P-Dub would make an appearance to sign her cookbooks. PW started her book tour at the end of October and has been visiting places all over the country. I've seen from her blog that these appearances have gotten pretty insane with the amount of people lining up to meet her. Am I surprised?! Heck no, she's awesome!

Neda and I were both assuming that we would just show up around 5pm to hop in line for her 7pm appearance. We would most likely be done by around 8 or so. Just to be sure, we even brought something for dinner to eat while we were in line. (thank GOD we got that part right!) So, while I was driving to Dallas I called Neda and we both agreed that there would probably be even less people at Borders considering Dallas was experiencing a ri-DONK-ulous monsoon that day. It was pouring down rain all afternoon, freezing cold, terrible traffic. That would steer people away...right?!?!

Yeah, not so much. When we arrived (to a fairly empty parking lot, I might add) we were thrown a curveball and notified we needed a wristband to get in line. So we grabbed our wristband and I'm thinking "this place isn't that crowded...this is going to be great!" They already had Ree's table set up where she would be signing books. I saw maybe 50 people sitting around waiting.

I decided, just out of curiousity, to ask one of the Borders employees what my color wristband's group # was. "Oh, neon yellow is group #3." Oh...wow. Really?! So....how many people are in each group? "Umm...probably 100." "You can't start lining up until 6pm and we'll call everyone to the line in wristband color groups. Okay fine whatever.

So, Neda and I go find some comfy chairs in the back and talk for the next hour or so. We head back up to the front around 5:45pm and the place is PACKED. The announce the first color....gold. Gold can line up. A flood of people start to line the perimeter of the store. Twenty minutes later....red. Finally, yellow is announced. Thankfully, Neda and I shoved our way through and were like the 4th and 5th people in line for the yellow group. Honestly, the line wasn't looking that bad. Then 6:55 arrived and so did about 75 gold wristbands and about 80 reds. Which, of course, got to hop in line....right...in...front...of...us. Awesome. See at the top where it says "discussion" at the top? Yeah when Ree came in and got the mic to say hi to everyone she said right off the bat, Borders nixed that idea b/c there were so many people there who wanted to meet her there wouldn't be time.

Ree showed up a few minutes after 7pm with her kiddos and lots of family members! Everyone started squeeling and clapping.

Okay, great, now the line's really going to start moving! An hour later...still haven't moved from our spot. In fact, several people came up to us to ask what color we had and if we had moved. Once they found out we hadn't and we were like 6 groups in front of them, they bailed. Even some of the yellow banded people around us bailed around 8:30pm. I felt bad for them! Finally after 1 1/2 hrs, Ree's daughters start walking through the lines to talk to people. We snagged Paige and got her to sign our books. She was so sweet and such a DOLL! Poor thing got sucked into signing about 35 books right there.

Meanwhile, we started talking to the girls in line with us. People had driven from all over the place to come to Borders that night...some all the way from Louisiana! And, of all things the two girls behind us lived less than 5 minutes from my house, went to the same high school as me and one of them teaches kindergarten at the elementary I went to! Small world. For the entire night, these girls were CRACKING us up.

We were making fun of people, laughing at all the "stalkers" of Pioneer Woman, feeling sorry for all of the people that came in to Borders at 7pm only to get a wristband color that was like 7 groups behind ours. Seriously, there had to be at least 4,000 people in that place. In fact, at one point some alarm went off and we were thinking it was the fire marshall!

I received about 3 calls from Badi saying "are you STILL in line?" and "is all this really worth some lady's signature?!" Haha, YES! At that point, we were in it to win it! It was so much fun and I had such a great night. Around 10pm we finally got around the final corner and we were about 6 people away from getting to meet Ree. Then, OF COURSE, Ree got up from the table....and had to pee. :)

She said "I swear I'll be fast!!" Anyway, we finally got up there, we chatted for a few minutes. She's just as sweet, if not sweeter, than she seems on her blog. LOVE HER! We got a picture with her, got our cookbooks signed, and we got some cute brown PW t-shirts.

Such a fun, fun night! We got our new friends full names so we could go home and become Facebook friends because clearly, almost 5 hours in line with someone creates some serious long-lasting relationships!! :) By the way, I heard at 1:00AM she was still there, signing books, with a line around the store! I bet that was one of her most well-attended signings!!!

Thanks, Neda, for such a fun night!!! Glad we went...and stayed. Ha.

 I seriously have never had so much fun waiting in line for over 4 hours.