December Fun-Christmas Preperations

This has been the most fun of all the Christmas seasons so far with Ally. She is really starting to get into it. She helped to decorate the tree and is learning Christmas songs. When you ask her about Christmas she says "it's about baby Jesus and I love it so much" I put out the none breakable nativity set and Ally has been playing with it all month. On this particular day she added someone to the mix. When I asked her what Hello Kitty was doing she replied "she came to see baby Jesus"




My Aunt Sheila sends us these fun wooden cut outs for Alyson to color. She gets so excited when she sees them. This one was a Christmas Elf. We use it as out center piece on the table.



It snowed a lot this month, melted away quickly, but snowed none the less. Which meant spending a lot of time inside. We made Christmas cookies for our friends- Ally wanted to bake, I wanted to not eat them- so we baked for other people.



How cute is she? This is her Christmas dress. I love love love the color. She had a dress this color last year and I loved it. This is her super model pose. She didn't want to wait till Christmas, so we wore it early and will wear it often. Love it. She really is a pretty little girl.


Since we set up the tree she keeps putting her toys by it and running up to it all surprised and saying "oh I got a ____ for Christmas" filling in the blank with whatever toy she put there at the time. So funny. Her favorite was to put her bike by the tree. She also had to hang out by the tree. Here she is with her baby by the Christmas tree.

Happy 3rd Birthday to Alyson

Alyson is 3 years old today. Time sure is flying. She is turning into such a big girl.

Things about Alyson:

She loves the colors brown and pink.
She loves to ride her bike.
She ask "why, mom why?" all...day... long....
She likes to point out the letters in her name. "there's an o, like my name. there's an s. look mom an a" and so on. And she does this everywhere. A trip to the grocery store is very long.
She gets kicked out of story time for beating up the boys......a-lot.
She knows tons of words- just doesn't speak them clearly. We are working on that. I still think she specks Chinese on the side. She speaks in sentences, but again, not 100% clearly. It worries me sometimes, but she's smart enough to be sassy, so maybe she'll be all right.
She is a sweet girl and still loves her daddy. She's also started calling me mawddy- a combination of momdaddy. Apparently I can't even be called mom anymore...it's got to be momdaddy.
We are working on being potty trained. She's still not too into it. I told her she needed to learn to use the potty like all her big cousins and so she can go to preschool. to which she replied "memaw can teach me preschool. her change my diaper."
She loves to jump and whenever she is excited she jumps up and down and says "oh yes, let's do that!"
She still takes an afternoon nap and that makes me happy.
She loves to bake - chocolate chip cookies are her favorites.
She can be so grown up about things, but then seem so little too. She is very stubborn and likes her way.
She reminds us to read scriptures every night and always wants "a big kiss, a big hug and a big good night"

And we love her!

When Ally woke up, we sang "happy birthday" to her in bed and then brought her to the table for breakfast. For a special birthday treat, I made her cinnamon rolls. Daddy went into work late so he could have a birthday breakfast with Ally.

We invited a few friends over to eat birthday cake with us. Ally greeted them at the door with " did you come for my birthday party? You are so cute"
Running around chasing balloons and having a good time.

Ally wanted "memaw's happy birthday cake" so I got the recipe from my mom, figured out how to change it so it would come out right with the altitude change and thankfully the cake did fine and didn't fall. We decorated with candy flowers, because Ally found them at the store and said "oh mom, these are just so cute" (everything is so cute- these days)

We went to the store for her to pick out birthday balloons. She chose pink of course. The light pink said "happy 3rd birthday" and the hot pink just said "happy birthday" She came home and wanted them tied to the computer chair- or as she claimed it for the day and called it her birthday chair.




On birthdays, the tradition is to call and give a birthday wish, Ally got lots of phone calls. She would run to her self proclaimed "birthday chair" and talk to them on the phone in her birthday chair. When the caller would tell her "happy birthday", she would say " happy birthday to you too" It was funny.

Butterfly!

So I saw a cute costume in a magazine and showed it to Ally and we decided that we um... she would be a butterfly. So I made her a butterfly costume. It turned out wonderfully, if I do so brag about myself.

She's really into pink right now, so the butterfly was requested to be pink so- pink it was!
My Aunt Shelia and Uncle Joe know that I like make the costume, so they surprised me with a halloween gift that I used to buy everything I needed for the costume.

I left her wear the costume all day- riding her bike, the store, everywhere. She was so cute.




Carli and Ally. They are in the nursery at church together. They got so excited when they saw each other at the Trunk of Treat.



Jonathan's cousin Daniel has two little girls that are in our ward at church. Ally has gotten to really like them. They met up at the trunk of treat.



How cute is she??




Love it- I think this is the best one so far- I'm getting better at making things and being crafty.


She did so good, saying "Happy Halloween, Trick or treat" and even said thank you. The first car she went to was her Nursery leader and she showed off her costume.

The trick of trunk is a community event- they shut down main street and the grocery store has a big thing in their parking lot too. There were a ton of people and Ally got a little nervous with it being dark and crowd. We heard about a carnival at the highschool, but we missed it. We will figure everything out better for next year, now that we know how things work here.

Carving the Pumpkin

So last year, we went to the pumpkin patch and Alyson picked out a little tiny pumpkin and we drew a face on it. This year, we thought she was ready to carve a pumpkin. We didn't make it to the pumpkin patch, we couldn't coordinate everything to work out, but we daddy still helped Ally with her pumpkin.




Talking about the kind of face they wanted on the pumpkin




Ally and her pumpkin- getting ready to carve.




Daddy handled the knife

And Ally got the "guts"





Sitting proud outside the house with her pumpkin. Our pumpkin didn't have any teeth, and with the dentist office below, we showed Dr. Tenny and had a sign on the pumpkin that said "Dr. Tenny have you seen my teeth?" We thought it quite amusing.

Halloween Fun

We were excited for Halloween this year. We did tons of fun things to celebrate. The local grocery store had a trick or treating event inside the store. They also had a decorate your own Halloween Cake. You could wear your costumes, but I didn't want Ally to get her costume all dirty, so we wore Halloween/ fall colors instead. She's wearing a necklace I got for my birthday that is a fall leaf and her Halloween bow that she got from grandma ( Jonathan's mom)

She was excited for the party.



Sorry the pictures are all weird, the computer was being stupid. Anyway, here she is decorating the cake. She only wanted to use the mini m&ms- m&ms are her favorite candy. I had to keep reminding her to put them on the cake and not in her mouth.





Trick or treating in the store. It was a lot of fun.

Lost 28 and turned 28

October 26th rolled around again- and I celebrated 28 years of life. Oh and I did it 28 lbs lighter. That's right- I set a goal to loose 28 by my 28th and I did it. I did it a whole 3 days before my birthday too- so that was pretty awesome. Now, I have a little bit more to loose, but I met my goal. Yea me! So I baked my pie and ate it too!



Ally was so happy for my birthday. She told me I was 10. She also told me happy birthday about 28 times that day. I thought it was wonderful.






She painted pictures for my party decorations.



Here is a self portrait that I took of myself, See- nice and skinnier. Than last year.



My family loves me! Look at all the goods I got for my b-day. New workout video, new books, new movie and money to buy myself something pretty. I also got lunch brought over by my friend Amy and I got to love on her little baby. I got the best picture for Christie and her girls celebrating me with candy. They cheered for me all day. Great times. 28 is looking good on me.

October Fun

In October we......




Had a play date with Joshua Smith.... Ally really likes him and he is really patient and kind to her, he's 2 1/2 years older, but he played really well with her.





We got lots of packages in the mail from family.






Memaw sent Ally her own Hello Kitty pjs, but Ally calls them her "Ally cat" pajamas.


I think she got her first crush.





She watched Lion King for the first time on her Daddy Daughter date.



She found where a new reading spot.




She got to try out her new winter clothes, and we paired them with fabulous bows from Grandma.


She checked out a book from the library about milkshakes and then we made her one. She didn't know it was healthy.... hahahaha.




And she got drunk and cried in the cabinet. okay, not really- but this is such a funny picture, it really does look like she's all distraught over a guy or her life or something.

I be craftin'

So week 2 of our preschool hour continues. Yes, I am awesome- I followed through to the next week. Yeah for me. Here she is super excited to bring out the craft box. And I have to add a Friends' quote here:

"What if the baby gets into the ribbon drawer? Messes up all the ribbons?! What if there's no room for a ribbon drawer, because the baby's stuff takes up all the space!? Where will all the ribbons go!?! - Monica on Friends.

Oh, so glad I found a place for the ribbons. :)



This week we learned about the color green, the jungle and various other things. Here she is hard at work drawing her jungle animals. Notice, I taught her how to hold the pencil the right way- Mom that's for you.





So this craft was all my idea. No copying it- straight up Lacy original. So if you don't like it- so what none of you ever made a craft. This craft is called, "Who's hiding in the jungle grass?" So we cut out strips of green paper. I let Ally crumble them up and then we taped them on to a paper plate.




Then, on the inside of the plate, I drew an animal for her to find under the grass. Hence, Who's hiding the jungle grass. Nailed it! You know you want to steal the idea. Go ahead. I dare you.



The vocab word for the week was vine. So we also made a vine. Doesn't she model it so well? She's so pretty.

The rest of this week has us hiding the vine from other places in the house each day, and when Daddy comes home he has to find where the vine is hanging from. I also put in different pictures on the plates while she naps and she and daddy play who's hiding in the jungle grass now? game when he comes home.

We also learned about the Biggest, brightest, best letter B.

Good times.

I be learnin'

So, Alyson and I started a pre school hour each day so we (she) can learn new things, develop gross motor skills, learn songs, improve her talking and entertain her. Or "proof that I do something with my kid and don't just watch tv all day" So I found a great website with lessons. Because I need a jumping off base- I'm copycat creative, not inspired creative. So we have a learning poster that has our weekly theme, shape or color, number, letter, vocab word and Nursery rhyme. This picture above was for week 1.




So we checked out books from the libraby that went along with the weekly theme. One of which was about painting. So we learned to paint. I was so proud of her. She did so well with the water colors. She didn't mix the colors and didn't make a mess. She painted for an hour! Which is a big deal for her and she was quiet the whole time concentrating. Also never happens with this kid. Until the end when she told me it was my turn and then explained how to paint and told me what colors to use and where to paint and basically bossed me around while it was my turn. I don't know where she got that from ?!?!?!?! ..... me.....



The shape for the week was squares, so we built with squares and then went on a "where or where is there a square?" hunt and found squares. Which she did with her daddy. So fun.



We made cookies... square cookies. So yum!



She's painting an apple because we learned "All about the absolutely awesome letter A"

Yeah... I know.. I do rock!

Mom of the year award goes to:

Lacy Jones


I'm just sayin.