Meet Criddle

I don’t know if you have every heard of The Elf on the Shelf.  He made his first visit to our house last year.  This year, I thought that I would try to document his shenanigans. 

Mikayla named him Criddle last year.  Criddle visits our house during the Christmas season and watches over our home.  He reports back to Santa each night and then picks a new spot each day in which he sits to continue to watch us.  Sometimes, he can be quite mischievous. 

Tonight, Criddle came and set our tree up.  I can’t wait to see Mikayla’s reaction when she sees what he did.

Happy Thanksgiving!

I hope that everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving.  We had a great time spending some time with my family.  Both of my sisters and their families were in town this week, so it was especially fun to be able to spend time with them. My mom found these cute hats in the dollar bin at Target.    Mikayla had a lot of fun wearing that all day. On Thanksgiving Eve, Mikayla, my mom and I made these place cards.  We had a great time working together and succeeded in keeping little hands off of the M&Ms prior to other people consuming them.  (That was no small feat!) We have about reached the capacity of my mom’s dining room.  I think there will definitely be a “kiddie” table needed in the near future.  It was so nice to have so much family there together.  The only person that was missing was my brother and his girlfriend (they were out of town with her family).  The more our family grows, the harder it is to get us all together.  I feel very fortunate to have so many wonderful people in my life. 

We think my dad is the master of being able to get EVERYTHING on his plate.  Most of us had to do things in shifts, but he was able to pack it all on.  So funny!

I am so grateful for my family and the opportunity to spend time with them.  I miss those that I wasn’t able to see yesterday, but I hope they all know I missed them and love them. 

And the winners are…

  

Mikayla's school pictures.

 

The winners from Gavin’s portrait session

 

The winners from the family photo shoot.

 

A personal note to my family… Let me know what pictures you want and in what sizes.  I have a large variety.  Just email me your requests!

I am thankful for…

 

…these two sets of little hands

Gavin

   Mikayla

After working 12 hours last Friday, it was nice to come and see these two little school projects that the kids had done.    I am a definite sucker for anything that captures the size of those sweet little hands.

Two year olds and pictures are not a good combo

We have had two separate appointments for pictures with Gavin this week.  Last week we did some of just him and then today we did some Christmas pictures and some of just him and Kayla. ( I hadn’t gotten any since he was about 9 months old! )  Gavin did not want to be a part of any of this.  He didn’t want to sit, stand still, or smile.  He also wanted to hold all of the props used to try to make him smile.  I have decided that this is my least favorite age to photograph.  At age one, the don’t have to much of an opinion about stuff and they are generally pretty agreeable.  At age three, you can bribe them.  At two, well nothing works.  Thankfully, we had some very good and patient photographers.

He are some of the “best” ones.  I will share the winners in a later post.

Total mischief!

He was supposed to be laying on his tummy – that never happened.

He did not want to sit on the stool for this picture.  We ended up putting him on the very end of my knees.  The didn’t capture pics of him flailing back trying to throw himself off of the stool – thankfully I was holding him!

  He was not a fan of the red chairOne of many action shots. I love how Mikayla has a look like “What on earth is wrong with you!”

Complete meltdown

This one wasn’t too bad, but neither wanted to look at the camera, and Mikayla was not too happy that Gavin was holding the box with the ornament hiding inside.

Strong Legs Race 2009

Last Saturday, several members of my family and I drove down to Atlanta to participate in the Strong Legs Run.  It is a race sponsored benefiting Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta which happens to be the hospital that I work for.  It is a great event with tons of fun family events.  I have done the 5K in the past, but since Mikayla has started joining in, we have started doing the 2K fun run.  Last year, I had to carry Mikayla the last half of the race.  This year, with a little encouragement, she finished the whole thing!  I was so proud of her and she was so excited that she beat all of us and “won” the race. :) This year my mother in law, sister and nephew joined us for the fun event.

Here is Mikayla playing a little put-put.  It looked a little more like shuffleboard to me, though. There was also a balloon artist there – as you can see the kids were enthralled with him.  I need him to come to my house because I can never captivate their attention like this for that long.  Mikayla also had an airbrushed tiger tattoo put on her hand.   She decided to have it look like "Daddy’s tiger” (also known as the LSU Tiger).  I was quite the proud daddy when he saw that.  There were also various mascots from local companies.  This one was definitely the most interesting one.  He is a natural gas flame from Georgia Natural Gas.  Wierd!He is my mini family pic.  Gavin, as you can tell, was in a fantastic mood.  He was a grump all day.  After the race, we went to the post-race booth and got some food.  Two bananas and part of a bagel later that boy was in a much better mood.  If I had known that was all it would take, I would have gone through MUCH sooner.  See how happy Mikayla is to have finished the race!  I hope to finish many more together and eventually graduate to the 5K with her.     Since the race was pretty early, we decided to have a “slumber party” at my parents house the night before.  Mikayla had been wanting to have one for quite a while so it was a perfect opportunity.  We set her up with her sleeping bag on some loveseat cushions on the floor in the family room.   Papa slept on the couch next to her.  I think they both enjoyed their sleepover. :)