Christmas Celebrations

We celebrated Christmas in Columbia at our house before we went to Cape to celebrate some more. We exchanged gifts between the four of us (Ricky, Amy, Caden, and Lilly) on Tuesday evening and enjoyed just hanging out. Caden got his gifts from Santa. The Popper and the balloon where big hits.

Caden pointing out the star on our tree

Seeing some presents from Santa

Both kids enjoying their gifts

Christmas Eve in Cape

Drinking his milk before bed.

Christmas Day

Christmas with the Dewrocks

Climbing on the box is as much fun as the toy inside

Riding his John Deere Tractor at my parents house

Christmas with the Ogles

Caden got a wagon and enjoyed pulling it everywhere

Trip to Jackson, MS

On Sunday we headed down to Jackson for the birth of our niece. The first baby girl in the Ogles family in quite a while. We are pleased to announce she and mom are doing great. Caroline was born Monday morning and weighted 6 lbs.

Our drive down to welcome Caroline

Caden and Ricky enjoyed a swim in the pool at the hotel.

The Ogles family with the newest addition

Chapman with his new baby sister

A Year Gone By

I can't believe this year is almost over. We have had a lot of changes...Ricky graduating Med School and starting Residency, Me staying home with Caden, Moving to Columbia, Buying a house, not to mention Caden growing and keeping us busy. I can't believe how much he has changed in the last year. He is now 16 months old and is no longer the baby he was last year in his Christmas pictures. What will 2010 bring?

Last Year at Christmas Caden:
-Took three naps a day
-Was going to daycare
-Was fed mostly breast milk
-Had just started rice cereal
-Couldn't even sit up on his own
-Had no teeth


This Year at Christmas Caden:

-Takes one nap a day
-Stays home with me (well really goes everywhere with me)
-Drinks whole milk
-Eats everything (well really only what he chooses to eat, he's becoming a bit picky)
-Walks - really runs most places
-Has 8 teeth

Christmas 2008

Family Picture 2008

Christmas 2009

Family Picture 2009

Merry Christmas!!!

Christmas Lights

Ricky decorated our house again this year and we think he did a great job. There is also a tree here in Columbia called the Magic Tree that is decorated with Christmas lights and is quite fascinating. We went to check it out the other weekend and then went back again this past weekend when some of Ricky's family was in town. This tree is crazy! Every twig is covered and it is a sight to see. The guy who does it is a bit wacko...not because he spends three months of his life every year decorating this tree but because he has changed his name to Will Treelighter and has developed his own religion about the tree, etc. I don't know him, but I'm thinking he isn't quite right. Anyway you can read about him if you would like to, here. But the tree is very neat to look at, even if he is crazy.

Our beautifully decorated house

The Magic Tree

HoHoHo...WAAH!

So I thought we were doing good. Maybe Caden would do alright with Santa this year despite everyone's expectations that he would cry. Santa can look a little scary to a 1 year old but we were doing good. We had passed by Santa a few times at the mall in the past couple of weeks and I showed him Santa. He seemed ok with him. We went to Bass Pro to visit Santa last night. We had waited in line for our turn to sit on Santa's lap. Caden was saying HoHoHo when asked what Santa said. He was smiling and watching all the other kids sit on Santa's lap. I explained how it was almost his turn to sit on Santa's lap. We were doing good...We walked up to Santa...still good. Santa was talking to us. Caden was asking him what his elves were (What's dat?). Then came time to sit on Santa's lap for the picture. Caden gripped onto my shirt and I knew it wasn't going to be good. But you have to have a picture so I sat him down, told him he was fine, and got out of the way so we could get a picture of our poor screaming child with Santa. Someday he will laugh about it. But he doesn't care for Santa as of today.

Entertainment

Our entertainment this morning was a neighbor's moving truck. Who knew it would be so cool. Caden loves cars and trucks and big ones are even cooler. So he had a great morning when he woke up and I showed him an 18 wheeler parked across the street. He was pumped! He and Lilly stayed perched at the window until I made him leave to eat some breakfast. He cried.

Here is also a video of Caden singing and dancing with a snowman. For Christmas I have a snowman that I sit by the fireplace that sings when you push his hand. Caden made a new friend. I think that the snowman sang more his first day out this year than he has sang in the four years I've had him. You may notice that Caden is moving his lips as the snowman sings. He lip sings to songs now. We don't really know why nothing actually comes out. Maybe he knows he can't say those words so he just lip sings. I don't know, but it is cute just the same. Enjoy.

I Can Sew

Well at least simple things. I am not a crafty person. I don't pretend to be. I've tried things in the past but found that it takes too long. If I have to spend a lot of time and it really doesn't turn out much cheaper then I'd rather just buy it. But I wanted to learn how to sew and thought maybe it would be different. Lots of my friends can do it and they make the cutest stuff so I asked for and got a sewing machine for my birthday and have completed a few items thus far. I did some burp cloths that I gave as baby shower gifts and I made a hooded towel for Caden (he's getting it for Christmas so don't ruin the surprise.) Anyhow, here are my masterpieces. They aren't perfect, if you look closely, but you can't tell from the pictures so I'll let you see. : - )

V-O-L-S Go Vols Go

For Ricky's birthday I got us tickets to the UT vs Memphis game in Knoxville last weekend. We had a blast and cheered the Vols to Victory. Here are some pictures from our trip.

Orange & White Corvette (Ricky thought it was pretty cool)

Vol Walk. You can't tell very well in this picture, but the players are the ones dressed in black. Being my first experience seeing the Vol Walk I found it a little crazy. These college football players are like Superstars to these people. They are sought after like famous celebrities. Cool but also CRAZY!

Here is a picture of James Denton (the guy from Desperate Housewives). He was right behind us for the Vol walk and in this picture was posing with somebody for a photo.

We met up with some of the guys Ricky went to Med School with.

The Game. UT won...Big Time
For those of you looking for pictures of Caden (not Ricky and I). A picture of Owen and Caden playing in the backyard.

A Horse A Horse Of Course Of Course

Here are our Halloween pictures. Caden was a Horse this year.

Caden finding the Candy Bucket. You can see the candy scattered around.

Posing by the pumpkins outside in his Halloween shirt.
The carved pumpkins. Everyone got one, including Lilly.

A Family Picture

A cute horse.

A walking horse. And a good picture of the tail.

"What's this on my head??"

Caden dressed up for the Halloween party we went to on Thur.

A sleepy horse on the way home from the Halloween Party.

Boo Hoo

This picture is from Ricky's birthday (Oct 22nd) before Caden's bedtime when we were enjoying Ricky's birthday cupcakes. Ricky thought he looked like he had a Hitler mustache so that is why the picture was taken. But you can also see the steri-strips on his chin from is first "major" injury of his walking career. I'm sure it won't be the last nor the worst but it wasn't very pretty when it happened. Ultimately Ricky came home to assess the situation because I am not a nurse or doctor and I wasn't sure if it needed stitches or not. He determined he could just put some steri-strips on it and it would help hold it together and we could avoid the ER and stitches. It worked well and he is healing nicely.

More Halloween pictures to come soon, but here is a preview of our little Horse. Happy Halloween!

Hard Working Men

The other weekend Ricky was out in the backyard working on building a flower bed. After Caden woke up from his nap he pitched in to help get the job done. However, currently thanks to Caden and Lilly (mostly Lilly here) there is as much mulch in the yard as in the flower bed. Unfortunately Lilly doesn't understand that mulch is not small sticks for her to eat. So we are working on that. Oops, we knew she liked to eat mulch...guess it would have helped if we had thought of that before we put in a flower bed in the backyard where she plays. Anyway here are some pictures of my hard working guys and some of Caden playing in the yard.

Caden making sure the newly buried plant can withstand the piece of mulch test.

Playing in the yard.