Photo du jour

I love this picture ... so freaking cute!!

Thanksgiving Craziness

(ok, I know this post is late ... I've been knee deep in tree trimming, holiday shopping and gossip magazines! Honestly, it just took me a while to make it through all the pics from Thanksgiving before I could finish this post. FWIW, enjoy!)

Thanksgiving has always been one of my favorite holidays. As a kid, it was the ultimate family get together - our extended family is enormous and so much fun. Crazy, but the good kind of crazy. And the food ... the food was always fantastic!

In my twenties Thanksgiving was always about spending time with my friends (and lots of drinking).

Now that I'm married, we have a tradition of always spending Thanksgiving with Bryan's family. It's really become the one time during the year that Bryan, his brother and his sister have committed to celebrating together. As often as possible, we're with the rest of his family - Grandmother, PeePaw, Aunt Julie, Sydney, etc. This year we hosted the Thanksgiving feast so Barry and Becky and kids were able to come down, but none of the other family mentioned above. While we had a really amazing celebration this year I think we all missed have the grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins around. After all, that is what Thanksgiving is all about, right? That and gorging on too many calories.

Here are some of my favorite pics from this year's Thanksgiving feast.

Rowan, Chris and Alicia being silly ...

Alicia in all her cuteness ....

Chris, Becky, Alicia, Rowan and moi ...

Rowan ... too cute!

Uncle Barry and Dylan ... what studs!

Brendan and Dylan chillin'

Pumpkin Patch ... with granny!

I know these photos are old and a bit out of season, but couldn't resist sharing. We went to the pumpkin patch after Halloween. Yes, I know you're supposed to go before Halloween, but I couldn't get my act together in time. Don't ask ... :)

We drove for what seemed like an eternity (about an hour and a half) to a little farm by Jessup, GA. It was a beautiful day and a fun little adventure - they had a petting zoo, hayride and pumpkin patch. All Dylan really cared about was eating snacks as you'll see in the pictures below.

Oh, and grandma went with us. She seemed to enjoy herself.

Fun with family!

Matthew and Shelby (our cousin and his girlfriend) came to vist right before Thanksgiving ... we had a great time with them! Here's my favorite pick of the boys chilling over a cold one :)

In Loving Memory ...

It was 19 years ago today that my grandpa passed away, Mike Myers. And my mom says no, he wasn't the scary dude from Halloween and wasn't Austin Powers!

It's strange to think that I'll never get to meet him. If he was half as crazy as my mom is I know he would've been so much fun! So grandpa, I'm thinking of you today. And I know my mom and family are, too.

Therapy, therapy, therapy

OK, so it's not like poor little Dylee didn't go through enough with his plagiocephaly and torticollis and all the therapy, but now he's having trouble with his speech (or lack thereof). He had a frenectomy at the beginning of October. The hope was that once he'd have more mobility with his tongue that he'd begin saying some real words. He recovered very well and very quickly from the surgery ... however, no words. Zilch. Nada.

Oh, we also thought that he'd 'find' his tongue and start to stick it out after the surgery. Bryan's been waiting for Dylan to be able to lick his eyebrows or something. Again, nada. Zilch. Zero. Here we were waiting for this magical surgery and felt totally let down by it.

So, we began speech therapy on October 23. Miss Amanda, our speech therapist, comes to our home twice a week and works with Dylan. She does very structured play and tries to reinforce her words, signs and his behavior. I'm still not sure how you do speech therapy with a 22 month old or what sort of changes I should be seeing.

I think he's just working on his own schedule and doesn't want to start off with words like juice, outside or shoes. He's going to jump to full-on, grammatically correct sentences. Right? Right.

Halloween!

I struggled to come up with a clever idea for Dylan's Halloween costume this year. Since he's not talking yet it's hard to figure out exactly what he likes and doesn't like. However, one thing is clear: he's obsessed with the movie Happy Feet. From the first time he saw the movie he started dancing just like the main character, Mumble. Whenever he hears music or any sort of rhythm he begins dancing. So a penguin was a natural choice for his Halloween costume!

Going to the first house was very exciting - once I convinced him to put on the complete suit ... with the feet! He quickly learned to take a piece of candy, put it in his cool bag (probably his favorite part) do his Happy Feet Dance, wave bye-bye and move on to the next house. He was disappointed when he walked up to our front door and no one gave him any candy!



And the end of the night is never very pretty, is it? After the trick or treating was done and the sugar buzz was starting to wear off he was EXHAUSTED!

Pic of the day

pure cuteness ...

My first boo-boo

There I am, sitting on the couch with Mimi and Papaw, playing with two stuffed animals that are as big as me, when I suddently lost balance. Yikes. I fell straight from the couch onto the coffee table ... breaking the fall with my mouth. Not exactly a happy moment for me (or mommy!)

bad hair days ...

Mommy says "Isn't this fun?!"
Dyaln is thinking "Why does she keep doing this to me???"


"And the wig? you've got to be kidding me. I totally need a little sister!"