Farewell 2010

Urbana Free Library was hosting an event called Noon Years Eve for children to celebrate the last day of 2010. They had books, crafts, treats, and a countdown to noon. Of course we had to start off at the train before heading to the event.

Finn and daddy make a New Years hat...
and a noise maker.

Hat is on, shaker and bells in hand, ready for the countdown.

Finn shared his hat with Mia.

Finn wasn't sure what to think of the countdown as it got pretty noisy in there and there were LOTS of kids. We left before the snacks because the kids were ready for naps, but we had fun. We'll definitely remember this next year.

Making mini-pizzas for dinner. Yummy!

Holding hands. Love those two!

Happy Girl

Our sweet girl is such a happy addition to the family. Check out her wild pants.

Look at that sweet face.

My little monkey! She loves her bath time.

Christmas 2011!

Finn woke up to a note from Santa. He left Santa a note the night before and some cookies and milk.

Attacking the stocking first.

Who needs toys? Finn's two favorite presents were the Swedish Fish in daddy's stocking and the big sucker (the only thing he asked Santa for).

And of course, the empty box from mommy's new vaccuum cleaner provided a fun hideout. Merry Christmas! We had a wonderful year and couldn't be happier. We have two amazing, beautiful, and healthy children. We certainly couldn't ask for more.
A daytime picture of the beautiful snow. When Finn saw this picture he said, "Home!"

There's our sweet girl celebrating her first Christmas! She'll be right in the middle of everything next year.

We spent Christmas evening with Betty Jo and Kandy. Apparently the dress code was navy blue for boys, red for girls.

Silent Night

Finn left a note for Santa and then both kids were tucked into bed. Wes went outside and took some pictures of the beautiful scene. The snow made for a rough drive home, but created a picture perfect Christmas Eve.

Christmas Eve

We headed to Springfield for my family's Christmas Eve get together. Here Finn gets pumped up for opening presents by lifting old thread spools (is that what they're called?).

Mia meets Memaw.

Austin and Donoven patiently await present time.

Finn did a great job helping pass out presents. Mia bonds with Aunt Jennifer in the background.

Look at my teeth, look! Look at the stack of presents behind me that is taller than I am, look!

Finn loves Muno!

Mommy loves Finn!

Silly boys! I think this is the only picture I had with all the boys looking. Apparently Josh wouldn't get in the picture.

We had a great evening and almost ended up spending the night. We had to brave some nasty weather to make it home so that Santa Claus could visit. It took two and a half hours, but we made it!

Holiday Treats

The Miller family likes to exchange gifts and when I say Miller family, I mean the extended family. That's all the aunts, uncles, and cousins. Grandmother Miller has 4 children who are all married, 10 grandchildren with spouses, and more great-grandchildren than I am going to take the time to count right now. That makes for a lot of gifts. Everyone tries to be fairly reasonable and just exchanges $5-$10 gifts. We take the cheap route - I mean the heartfelt route of making treats as our gift. Finn has already become a great helper. Here he is unwrapping the Rolos for the pretzel-pecan goodies.

Almost finished.

Finn helps wrap up the goodies. He counted 5 Hershey's Kisses cookies for each bag.

My favorite people

Birthday Party!

We were going to try to get by without a party this year, but after attending a couple parties for some of his daycare buddies, Finn became a little obsessed with birthday parties. We spent quite a bit of time making birthday cakes out of Play-Doh. So we decided to just go ahead and have a party.

Some of Finn's buddies.

And the BIG GIFT - a train table. I'm not sure he understood that it was his. He just walked up and started playing. I was hoping for some big reaction, but he just acted like it was business as usual. It was a fun day!

Finn Turns 2!

Another tradition begins! We decorated Finn's door so that when he woke up on his borthday he would know it was a special day. We plan to continue this tradition yearly. I don't know how we did it without waking him and Mia up as we (and when I say we, I mean Wes) kept stepping on a very loud creeking spot in the floor right between the two doors.

And here's the birthday boy trying to figure out what was going on.

When daddy got home from work it was time for cake and presents (after Pizza King of course - a tradition started last year).

"I did it!"

Every time we asked him what he wanted for his birthday he requested a sucker so I made a special trip to the candy store in the mall to get him a huge sucker.

Sucker face!

And the other traditions...marking his height,

and the yearly picture in the Sandy Koufax jersey.

Happy birthday sweet boy! We love you so much! You are such a kind and funny little boy and have already proven yourself to be a great big brother. You love to sing and dance and read books. You have also become quite the little junk food junkie, always requesting cookies and suckers. Everyone also comments on how verbal you are, such a chatty little guy. You often surprise us by speaking in complete sentences. You also love trains, trucks, and sports. You often want to play football, basketball, golf, and soccer and you've perfected hitting a baseball off a tee. You have just started to be able to hit a pitched ball which has prompted us to move our game of baseball away from the tv. We can't wait to see what year 3 brings!