Making National TV

Being the Wayne County Assistant Prosecutor my brother-in-law, Rob, is on the local news and in the local newspapers quite often. But tonight he will be on A & E's Cold Case Files, featuring a large case he was highly involved with. It is pretty exciting to have a member of the family on National TV! Here is the link to the article in the Detroit Newspaper and the link to the show itself.

I Can Do It Myself!

Sam is getting to be such a big boy. Lately he will not eat breakfast unless he can "do it himself" and be at the "big person table." This is includes cereal with milk and runny oatmeal. So now he will sit at the table like a big boy and attempt to feed himself without any help from Andy or I. More ends up on himself, the table and the floor, then ends up in his mouth. But I guess the more he does it the better he will get at it. It might help too if he had a booster seat (we will be getting one of those in the next couple days). I took some cute pictures and a video too.

Happy Birthday Jeanette

We celebrated Jeanette's birthday on Tuesday, but I still wanted to say "Happy Birthday!" Hope you have a great day! Here are the pictures from dinner.

Christmas with Andy's Family

Christmas afternoon we celebrated Christmas with Andy's family. Sam got his present when we got there (since it was so big). He got a motorized four wheeler!!! At first he was a little scared of it, but once we got it home later that evening he was trying to ride it all over the house. Hopefully he will get some good practice on it during the winter and this spring he will be all over the backyard! THANK YOU Grandpa and Grandpa! We had a very nice dinner and then opened lots of gifts. Ed and Lynda had bought a lot of stuff from their recent trip to Germany, so we got some cool stuff from them. Sam got a cool Tonka Truck from Uncle Matt and Aunt Kim and a personalized robe from Uncle Rob and Aunt Patti. Lily and Sam are starting to play with each other a little bit and of course Kelsey and Lucy loved playing with their younger cousins! Everyone had a great time! Thank you everyone!!! All the pictures are here!

Christmas Morning

Six o'clock came and went, seven o'clock came and went. Finally at about eight o'clock I heard Sam banging in his crib and I wondered why Jacob wasn't up yet. Jacob was playing his GameBoy in his bed, waiting for us to wake up! So I got the boys up and they saw all the presents that Santa left. Jacob and Sam got a ton of gifts. Jacob's big gift from Santa was a MP3 player. He also got some Bionicles, pajamas, books, drawing stuff and lots of other things. Sam big gift was a basketball hoop. He also got a ton of balls to go with it, some pretend cooking stuff and food, a school bus and lots of other things. Jacob tore into his gifts, while Sam opened one and played with it for awhile and wanted to pass off his other gifts! Andy and the boys got me some new perfume and Andy got a PS2 Game to play with Jacob, some bathroom books and an old Daffy Duck movie he wanted. Even Ocho, the dog, got some presents from Santa! Andy's parents come over for a little while to give Jacob his gifts before he went to his mom's. Jacob got a new Game Boy Micro and a dragon and slippers (from their recent trip to Germany) and lots of other things. It was a great Christmas morning and especially nice to have my whole family together.

I hope everyone had a MERRY CHRISTMAS!

All the pictures from the morning are here.

Twas the Night Before Christmas...

The boys put their Christmas pajamas on (matching of course!) and got all snuggled in their bed so that Santa could come. But first Jacob put out some cookies and milk for Santa and carrots for the reindeer. And of course I took some pictures!

Christmas with Pam's Family

Tonight we celebrated Christmas with my family. We have a very nice dinner that Becky made for us and opened tons of gifts! Sam got a new VTech Playhouse toy from Grandpa and Grandma and a Finding Nemo book that lights up and makes noise. He played with the Playhouse a lot the next morning. Grandpa and Grandma also put some more money in his college fund - which is always very, very appreciated! THANK YOU Grandpa and Grandma! He got a Doodle Dinosaur and Dr. Seuss book and stuffed animal from Aunt Jeanette. From Aunt Becky he got an outfit and the new Tickle Me Elmo. We all thought that the Tickle Me Elmo would be a big hit, but every time we take it out of the box he shakes his head no and wants us to put it back in the box! Hopefully he likes it soon! Andy and I got lots of gift cards to the movies and dinner, and a babysitter included! We got lots of other great gifts too - Thank You everyone for the great gifts! Merry Christmas. All the pictures are here!

Christmas Cookies

Jacob, Sam and I made some Christmas cookies this afternoon. I don't know who is going to eat them with all the frosting and sprinkles on them, but hopefully Santa will! Enjoy some pictures here. (Thank you Dad for letting me borrow your camera!)

Way Behind Schedule...

I knew that starting a new job three weeks before Christmas would put a cramp in getting everything I needed to get done for the holidays. But, hey you do what you gotta do. I finally got my Christmas cards done and mailed yesterday (two weeks behind schedule than past years). I finally got the tree decorated last night (it's only been up for a week now). I started wrapping "Santa's" gifts last night - and also realized that going to take a long longer than I planned (I will probably be wrapping five minutes before the kids wake up!). Normally I am finished wrapping gifts at least a week before Christmas. And I still have shopping to do, something that I normally wrapped up with long before now. I am not looking forward to being out there with all those last minute shoppers. I planned to get a lot of things done today, but of course that won't happen either. Sam was up all night sick and very unhappy. We went to the clinic this morning and he has an ear infection in both ears. He now happily sleeping with the strong medicine they gave him to dull the pain. Oh what fun the holidays are!!! But they really are when you see the kids faces on Christmas morning, then it's all worth it.

Another Year Gone By

Today I celebrated my thirty second birthday. I actually celebrated yesterday too with Andy, Jacob and Sam and tonight with my parents and sisters. I was thinking this morning how the meaning of your birthday changes with age. Thirty years ago I was just two and barely knew what "birthday" meant. I just knew that I was getting presents and that was reason enough to celebrate. Twenty years ago when I was twelve I couldn't wait to have my girlfriends over for a sleepover and talk about boys and do each other's hair and makeup. Even ten years ago, when I was twenty two, birthdays meant a time to "PARTY!." I got as drunk as I could for the entire weekend surrounding my birthday. This year it's a lot more mellow. I just looked forward to spending time with my family and being thankful that I have everything that I dreamt my life to be. My son is going to be two soon and I am very excited to see the joy on his face when he figures out what birthdays are all about. Instead of talking about boys, I have an awesome husband that I don't have to worry about, "if he likes me." And while partying was a lot of fun, for some reason I seem to remember the morning after a lot more and I wasn't feeling so good then! Birthdays are a lot of fun and wonderful memories are made. They always make me reflect on how my life has changed throughout the years. I wonder what the next ten years will bring.

Christmas Tree Hunting

Today we went and hunted down the perfect Christmas Tree. We went to a new place, Trim Pines in Holly. First we boarded the horse drawn hayride and that took us out to the Christmas Tree Farm. But first we spotted some reindeer and then Santa! We got a family picture in with Santa, then Jacob and Sam told Santa what they wanted for Christmas. Jacob of course wanted video games and Sam, well he just sat there like "who is this guy and why am I sitting on his lap." Then went walked around the farm until we spotted the area of tress that we liked. Jacob cut down the tree that we all picked out (well not really, they were already cut!). It's a nice big round tree (which I have to say looked a lot smaller out there in farm). We loaded it onto the hayride and then took it back to our car. The ride home was a whole other story - let's just say we didn't tie it onto of the car very well, but it didn't fall off! That might be because we were the slowest car on I-75 for about 20 miles! Here are all the pictures.

Happy Birthday Mom!

Even though we didn't get together today I still wanted to say, "Happy Birthday Mom!" Hope you had a great birthday.

Where am I?

Sam found a new hiding spot! Had to take some pictures!

Squirrel Watching

Sam and I feed the squirrels some shelled peanuts on the deck this afternoon. It took about an hour but the squirrels found the peanuts and were eating them up like crazy. Sam was amazed watching them and trying to figure what it was they were doing. Then he banged on the window and of course scared them all away. (oh, but don't worry they came back once he was napping!) Check out some more cute pictures here.