Gingle Bells!

As promised, here is a video of Grady practicing Jingle Bells (or "Gingle Bells" as he says). He's practicing for his preschool Christmas show that will take place this Friday. He also informed me that he wants to bring his microphone to his show. :) On another note, if you take a close look at the status of our Christmas tree, you will see that the bottom portion is slowly falling apart. Grady has a fascination with the tree and is always rustling around in the branches rearranging ornaments or playing with the "lollipops" as he calls them (candycanes).

Last weekend we bundled up and went to a local Christmas parade... It was only in the 40's that day, so it was quite chilly (for NC standards anyway), but perfect for a holiday event! Grady loved it and quickly learned that the more people he waved to, the more candy they threw him! :)


We also learned that it's even more difficult to get a good family picture with one more little person in the mix! (That's why our Christmas cards for the next few years will feature only the boys!) And special thanks to Heather, Chris and Charlotte for Landon's adorable outfit. :)

This last picture is just one I took because it's one of the many things I love about newborns.... their little dimpled hands.

December!

A lot has been going on lately! This is the first year that Grady really remotely understands the whole idea of Christmas, so we've been having a lot of fun just making the month exciting for him. We put up and decorated our tree right after Thanksgiving....He loved putting ornaments on, although most of them (the non-breakables) are just laying on branches at the bottom. (He couldn't get all of them to actually hang.)

We bought a couple boxes of candycanes later on to add to the tree, and Grady thought that was very exciting that he could put candy on the Christmas tree! He put them all on himself (as you can tell) and got very excited each time he managed to hang one!

Landon also managed to join in on the fun!

Grady has a Christmas performance next week for pre-school. The 2-year-olds will be singing several songs, so his teachers sent home the words to the songs so all the kids could practice. We've been working on Jingle Bells, and Grady has gotten quite good (video coming soon)! On another note, when I picked him up from pre-school today I asked him what he did, and he told me, "I ate bananas and fish and played with baby Jesus." That pretty much summed up his day! :)

We also took the boys to see Santa....We were lucky that Grady's pre-school had "Breakfast with Santa" on Saturday, so we were able to avoid the craziness of the mall (especially with Landon being so little). We had only intended for Grady to sit on Santa's lap, but Mrs. Clause took a liking to little Landon and before we knew it he was on her lap! We were honestly quite surprised that Grady even sat on Santa's lap because he can be shy at times. (You can tell by the look on his face that he still isn't sure about him.) All he managed to quietly say was, "I want choo-choos." :)

And finally, Landon is one month old today! We can't believe how fast time has gone, although he fit right in to our family from the start, so it seems he's been with us forever! At his one month doctor's appointment, he weighed 10 lbs, 7 oz and was over 22 inches long (can't remember the exact measurement, but he's in the 80th percentile for height), so he's definitely a strong little guy! Here is a picture of him today (at exactly one month old)... Thanks for the cute outfit Amy and Ray!

Thanksgiving!

We were lucky in that we were able to have two wonderful Thanksgiving celebrations (and I managed to escape without doing any of the cooking)! Normally, we travel to Boone and Pinehurst to see both sets of families; however, we did things a little different this year due to the fact that Landon just arrived! Brandon's family (Granny, Gramps and Uncle Scott) came down to our house the weekend before Thanksgiving and brought a wonderful Thanksgiving feast with them, which was great and a huge help to us! (Gramps and Uncle Scott also got to meet Landon for the first time.)

We then headed down to Pinehurst for a second Thanksgiving... It's only about an hour drive to Pinehurst, so we figured we could handle that. We have lots of extended family that come to Pinehurst every year for Thanksgiving (aunts, uncles, cousins...), so we were also excited to have them all meet Landon!

Landon also got to meet his great grandmother (Ma) for the first time!

In other news, Landon also had his first real bath while we were in Pinehurst (opposed to just a sponge bath since we had to wait for his bellybutton to heal). Needless to say, he didn't like it too much! :)