Pre-Christmas

I love this time of year! It is even more fun with kids around to make it special. Since Brady is almost 4, he is very much into all of the "Christmasy" things this year. We have been recording every holiday special and watching them over and over again. He loves "Home Alone 2" this year along with all of the other usual cartoons (Frosty, Rudolph, the Grinch, Charlie Brown). Here's a couple other things we've been up to:

Brady had a preschool Christmas party and here's a couple pics from that.

Decorating a cupcake

Swinging at the pinata

Brady swung at it really hard. Some of the other kids were just swinging the bat around. If they knew that there was candy inside of it I think they would have been swinging at it a little harder to begin with!

My favorite present this year-a handprint ornament that Brady made for me at school. It even matches my tree perfectly!

Pictures of my little cuties for Christmas

And I couldn't resist this one......Bo has always reminded me of Max the dog from the Grinch

Man crush...I mean BYU b-ball

The BYU basketball team was playing at Creighton here in Omaha. We got Aaron tickets for his birthday for all of us to go to the game. We were sitting so far up so I didn't take any pictures of the game itself. But afterwards, all the BYU fans were congregating near the visiting team entrance and the coach and a couple players spoke briefly. I took some pictures, at Aaron's request, of one of the greatest college basketball players he's ever seen-Jimmer Fredette. He later admitted to me that he had a man crush on him....creepy! He would totally have a bromance with him if he actually knew him! :)

Here's Jimmer signing autographs

And here's the creepy one-"I'm in a picture with Jimmer Fredette but he doesn't even know it!"

Here's a Youtube video someone took and posted in which Collin and I make an appearance around second 6 or 7.

We all had a good time and I'm glad that Aaron had a good time and got to meet his man crush. He he he....

Note: I would have never accused him of having a man crush-he admitted it all on his own and now I like to exploit that fact! :)

Thanksgiving at our house!

So I am finally getting some of the pictures up from Thanksgiving. My mother took 450 pictures (not exaggerating) I had a lot to go through!

We had quite a full house for the Thanksgiving holiday. We had our first visitors arrive on Tuesday night and then the rest on Wednesday. Here's a count:
-4 of us

-Aaron's parents, grandma, brother and sister - 5

-My parents, sister, brother-in-law and 2 nieces -6

We had a total of 15 people in our house and we had places for everyone to fit! It was great and I loved every minute of our full house! We have never had Thanksgiving with our family in all the years Aaron and I have been married and have never gotten to host a holiday of any kind at our house so it was so much fun to have everyone closer and able to come to us this year!

Sorry, there are lots of pics!

Lots of fun time with all Grandmas, Grandpa and Pop Pop

Trying to trick this Diet Coke snob by doing a taste test to see if she can pick the "good stuff"

Had to put this one in here!

Thanksgiving dinner-Hadley carving it up for us

All of the Grays....why didn't we get one with all the Purcells too? Not sure-probably too hungry!

Pass around the "thankful" turkey and say what we are thankful for

Apparently something was really funny while someone was talking and my mom snapped a picture of us. Have no clue what it was!

Doing a little holiday craft. Hadley joined the ladies-notice how one of these things is not like the others?? :)

The kids did their own little project

We also played Just Dance on the Wii - way fun!

Brady played the guitar while we danced. We were playing some Guitar Hero too.

I think this is my favorite picture! Aaron's Mom and Dad dancing to "It's Raining Men" Hilarious!!! Brady and Ava sword fighting with pool noodles in the background. We had such a good time with everyone here. Staying up late, playing games, talking, drinking a lot of Diet Coke, playing Wii, Black Friday Shopping, good food, fun times with cousins.......it was all very fun and we loved having everyone here. And as always, the weekend went by way too fast! Can we do it again next year?? :)

Boy's rooms

So I was making it my goal to have all the rooms painted and done before everyone came for Thanksgiving and I did it! :) But since I was so busy doing it, I didn't have time to post pictures so here are some right now!

Collin's Room-

I didn't really want to paint his room a whole new color because I already had to paint a couple other rooms. Since his was still the neutral cream color, I just left it and added some things to the wall. I painted some little planes from his bedding on the canvas instead of on the wall itself. We're renting so I think I would have to repaint over it before we left anyway. Because it is hard to get a picture of a whole bedroom, I am standing next to the wall with the dresser/changing table and closet door on it so you'll have to imagine it there. It turned out really cute and I still have to add a couple more things to make it really look the way I want it to but it's mostly done.

Brady's room-BEFORE

Ok, so you cannot even begin to imagine the brightness of this color unless you are standing in the room with it. It was so bright in there, especially in the morning when the sun was coming through the front window.

AFTER

So it's not that I didn't like neon green-it's fine for a boy but it was way bright and most of the stuff in his room was already a bright green so that would be overload!

I found a cute Buzz border at Wal-Mart for $10 that is easily removed, I chose a really pretty blue color that is in the border but that also matches the dark blue and bright green in his bedding and curtains. I really do love this color and how it turned out with all the colors together. I'm going to put a bulletin board up over his bookshelf to display all of his cute school projects he comes home with. That's also why I didn't put the border up on that wall too-because there's 2 doors on that wall and the bookshelf would cover most of it. It will look better once I find one/make one and hang it! His dresser is on the wall you can't see-actually you can see the corner of it in the picture.

Here's Brady on his bed-and yes, he has no pants on. I swear this kid would never wear pants if we didn't make him!

Here's the cute canvas art I made for his room. I just found some Toy Story pictures on the internet and printed them out, painted the canvas and modge podged them on to the canvas. Don't worry, I was careful with the modge podge-no mishaps this time! ;)

I am still working on more of the house and now with Christmas decorations up, it doesn't look the same anyway! I've redone 2 of the 3 bathrooms so I'll have to post pictures of them next! First I need to get some up from Thanksgiving!

Brady's Thanksgiving program

Brady's preschool did a little Thanksgiving program and cookie "feast". It was so cute watching all the little 3 year olds sing and clap with their little turkey hats on.

It was really funny when the kids came through the door and lined up in front of us, all the parents took out cameras and phones and video cameras to document this moment forever. How funny is this? I was guilty as well, but it just struck me as pretty funny as I looked around!

Here he is with his little hat and placemat he made to use to eat his cookies on.

He really loves his new preschool here so that is good. I just can't believe he is old enough to go to preschool! My baby is growing up!!