Christmas Day 2011

Christmas Day this year was a little different than usual. This year, my Dad actually got 4 tickets to the Mavericks first basketball game of the season. The one where they were going to hang their championship banner from last season and play the Miami Heat...who they beat last season! Pretty awesome. He orginially got the tickets for me and my 3 siblings to go. But, I gave my ticket to my Dad because I didn't want to miss most of Christmas Day with Badi and the boys. I'm glad I decided against it, it was worth it to be with my little family of 4. :)

So, because the game was at 1pm - we had to squeeze in gifts at our house first thing in the morning, then rush to my parents house for a big Christmas breakfast, then gifts with everyone over there before they all left for the game at 11am! Whew! It was a whirlwind morning, but, a lot of fun! After Christmas at my parents, we headed right over to Badi's cousin Leyla's house for lunch and family time with his side of the family. We also took my Mom with us so she wouldn't be home alone while everyone was at the game. :)

Before we left for my parents, we went to see what Santa left for Jacob and Noah...

Jacob got his train set! Badi set it up for him later that night since we were in a big hurry. (good thing, too, it took him like 2 hours!! poor guy!)

Noah's big gift from Santa was an activity cube!

I had to take a picture of our tree this year because the amount of gifts under it was unreal. I told my parents we may need to start drawing names next year, haha. :)

Badi got me the sweetest sign. He actually got into my pinterest account and looked around at things I was pinning. He found something similar to this sign and contacted the lady and had one made for me. It says "there's these boys that stole my heart, they call me mom." I LOVE it!!

Another absolute favorite....the first thing he ever bought me was a diamond heart necklace for our first Valentine's Day. I have no idea how, but, I lost it a few years ago. I was absolutely crushed. I used to wear it every day. He bought me a replacement this year. :)

I got Badi some boring clothes. Then after all the gifts were done. On the way out of the door, I told him he had one last surprise gift. He opened a small bag that had one of Jacob's matchbox racecars in it. I told him that his gift was he was going to have the chance to go to Texas Motor Speedway and actually DRIVE one of the cars on the race track! It's actually a 3 hour NASCAR experience. We're not really into NASCAR, but, I knew he would be so excited to have the chance to drive one of the racecars!!!! Here's the link. Even better, I called his cousin's wife and she ordered one for her husband so they can go together. He was so excited. :)

Then we headed over to my parents house. We thought our tree was filled with gifts, then we saw their tree. WOAH!

I didn't take as many pictures of gifts because we were trying not to take 3 hours to open everything and I was taking video and helping the kids. But, here are some of the highlights and some of my favorite things! Noah got a personalized/recorded book from my sister. It's a Thomas the Train book with my sister reading it to him. I LOVE it. And, on the last page, she says "we love you, Noah Bear!" Then, all of my family members say their name and in unison say "we love you Noah". I definitely started crying. :)

This was the year of the Keurig! Badi bought me one. He told my brother about a good deal he found. So, my brother bought one for his girlfriend, Amy. Then, we saw the deal was still going...so we bought one for my parents. Ha. K-cups for everyone!!!! :) We love it!

Jenny wanted her own cookie press to make Spritz cookies! YUM! :)

This was one of the things I was most excited about. I framed the actual Dallas Morning News paper from this past June with the Dallas Mavericks Champions headline and matted everything myself for both of my brothers. They loved it! Jimmy is even wearing his jersey in this picture before he heads to the game, ha. :)

Jacob got about 6 new Thomas & Friends trains for his train set. He started opening them immediately!

We got Quelf - the board game, Kinect for our XBox, clothes, Badi - tools, me - jewelry. Awesome, awesome gifts!

My Dad has been looking for a nice VA Tech polo forever, every time we visit VA. I finally ordered one for him from the Hokie Planet store. He was excited. :)

I made custom photo 2012 calendars for my Mom and sister with all of our family birthdays, anniversaries, etc printed in.

Then, after gifts were over...my parents said they had one last gift for Jacob (and Noah later, ha). We left the room and came back in and saw this. Jacob flipped. His very own Lightning McQueen car to drive outside. Soooo cool!

He had to try it out immediately. Surprisingly, it actually goes pretty fast!

Love my siblings so much!!!

Group shot, minus Badi taking the pic.

Mimi and Pops with their grandkids. :)

Lastly, here's a few photos from Leyla's house for lunch. We had such a great day!

Noah and his cousin, Martin. They were born only 5 hours apart..but, Martin was 1am so they have different birthdays! :)

The whole group!

Hope everyone had a great Christmas!! We missed everyone in Virginia so much!!

Christmas Eve 2011

We had such a great Christmas this year! Every year I think it's amazing and couldn't get better. But, then it does! Having two kiddos around sure makes things even more exciting. Especially now that Jacob gets SO into everything and loves everything about it. It was a blast! Leading up to Christmas, we did so many fun things...I'll have to post some of them later. Badi was off work for the whole week leading up to Christmas and all of my siblings were in town and home. It was awesome!! We spent just about every day with everyone and got to do fun things like bowling, Gameworks, driving down to my brother's basketball game, going to Holiday in the Park at Six Flags and driving through Prairie Lights!! Aside from all of that, we had my family over for dinner several nights and stayed up late playing games, etc. So, so, so much fun! :)

A couple of years ago, we started a tradition of having all of our family over on Christmas Eve. Somewhere along the lines, we also decided to make it a big fajita/Mexican dinner versus the traditional turkey or ham. So, this year, we did it again! But, we added several people. My favorite. :) We had my family, Badi's parents, grandmother, younger sister, my brother's girlfriend Amy and her parents, then Badi's cousin and his wife. There were 18 of us!!! Definitely a house full, but, I wouldn't have changed a thing. I love having everyone over and always - the more the merrier!

To kick off Christmas Eve, my Dad followed his tradition of dressing up as Santa to visit our house. Last year, Jacob got slightly freaked out and I had to sit with him. This year he was BEYOND excited. When "Santa" rang our doorbell to come see him, he was running around the house and screaming "Santa! Santa! Santaaaaaa!!"

Telling Santa: "I was a good boy! I want a train set with Thomas, Percy, James, Spencer, Rosie, Hiro and Thomas's friends!!!" Ha, not even kidding.

We had so many people over for dinner on Christmas Eve, we had to split up between rooms. This must have been the "kids table". :)

My parents and Amy's parents!

Badi's grandmother, sister and Jacob.

Me and Nika! She is due in about a month with her first baby. Can't wait to meet Isabella!!!! :)

Some of the girls!

Some of the guys!

Villagomez family!

Lastly, we let Jacob open a gift on Christmas Eve. So, we let Noah do the same. Thank you so much Sue Sue and Hesch family for Jacob and Noah's sweet gifts. They're perfect!! :)

Noah's gift from our sweet neighbors. :)

Overall, it was a huge success. So glad we could have so much family over and enjoy another Christmas Eve with everyone. Next up, Christmas Day fun! :)

I LOVE Christmas!

Everything about it! I love being around my family. I love getting together with friends. I love trying to find perfect present for everyone. I love seeing Christmas lights and decorations on everyone's houses. I love baking Christmas cookies. I love Christmas music. I love all of the holiday drinks and hot chocolates in our cute holiday mugs. I love bringing goodies to our neighbors and doing things for others. I love that everyone has time off of work/school. I love that everyone seems to forget about stress and come together....well, except if you're out shopping. :) I love all the Christmas movies on TV. The list goes on and on and on.

It's even better now that Jacob is almost 3 and knows a lot more of what's going on. He is SO into Christmas this year. He is obsessed with Christmas lights and decorations. He can't wait for it to get dark every day so that he can go turn on our lights. He always wants our tree to be plugged in. He is constantly talking about Santa. And occasionally when someone knocks on our door he gets so excited and asks if Santa is here. :) He is always telling us what Santa is going to bring him, ha. And, if he ever acts up...he PUTS HIMSELF into timeout and says he should be a good boy so Santa can come see him!!!!! Too funny!! I am so looking forward to watching him open his gifts this year.

Tomorrow night we're having a special Christmas devotional and dinner at our house and I can't wait to have everyone over. You're invited, too! :) And all of our family (and some extended family) is coming to our house on Christmas Eve. I can't wait!!

I love my sweet family so much and I love this time of year. :)

Noah is 7 months old!

Our sweet Noah bear is already 7 months old!!

You are now 27 pounds! (still above 100 %!)
You are 29 inches. (still above 100 %!)

This boy just hasn't stopped growing! Every day he is looking more and more like a little man and not a baby. It's so sad to see the time just going ridiculously fast, but, then again - I'm so thrilled to watch him as he gets older and starts interacting even more with his big brother. I hope they grow up to be as close with one another as we both are with our siblings. So far, things are looking good. :)

We've really been experimenting with more foods this month. We added some bananas, actual white rice, mixed vegetables, tried some rolls and mashed potatoes on Thanksgiving. He really loved the potatoes!! Definitely my son, there. Bring on the carbs please. :)

Jacob loves to help me feed you baby food. He also talks to you just the same as Daddy and I talk to you. It's incredibly precious. Gosh, he loves you so much.

You are mostly wearing 18 month clothes now. Some 12 month, depending on the brand. But, for the most part 18 month is our standard. CRAZY! Because of the size and the weather getting so much colder now...you are literally wearing things that Jacob wore last winter. I just put all of these away. So crazy!

You are still incredibly happy! When you wake up in the morning, or from a nap, you don't even cry. I will just hear you in your crib playing, laughing and "talking". We're so thrilled that you're such a relaxed and easy going baby!

You still haven't had a tooth pop through. AHHH! We've seen it waiting to poke through for weeks and weeks now. Hopefully soon. In the meantime, you put anything and everything in your mouth to chew and/or try to eat.

You are sitting up SO well. Sometimes you last about 20 or 30 minutes watching Jacob play next to you! I love this picture of you and your Uncle Jimmy...you actually look small in comparison to him! Ha.  :)

You're SO close to crawling. You scoot everywhere. When we put you down on the carpet, you are never in the same place for very long.

My side of the family must be coming through in waves. You love to play cards like we do. Especially Phase 10 and Rummy. :)

Now that our Christmas tree is up...you LOVE sitting in front of it to stare at the lights.

You still absolutely love your jumperoo. You still spend about 2 hours a day in there!

You love swinging in the backyard!! You get the biggest smile on your face when I push you and you get to swing next to to your brother.

You love taking baths with your brother! Jacob loves it, too. He mostly loves it because he thinks that since you splash everywhere...it's okay for him, too. Ha. :)

You are still a fantastic sleeper! At night you sleep 10-12 hours. Most days, you take 2 long naps and a short nap. Still, only sleeping on your tummy.

You are really trying to talk. You love to babble and have a "conversation" with us.

You love Jacob so much. The other day you were a little fussy and I couldn't get anything to calm you down. I finally walked through the hallway and pointed out a big portrait of Jacob. (He was playing at his grandparents house that day.) You immediately stopped crying, starting to smile and laugh, then kept trying to reach for him and grab the picture. So precious.

You love watching the Cowboys like the rest of your family! Even if the coach makes questionable calls and ends up icing his kicker to lose the game. :) I love this picture so much, because you remind me so much of what your brother looked like...in this exact jersey, exact same sitting position, and the exact same age and 7 month post!! Click here to see it.

Last but not least, your monthly picture!! First was your 6 month picture, then your 7 month one. :)

We love you so much, Noah Bear! Thanks for making it so easy to love you and be your Mommy. :)