We are all ready...bring on Christmas Day!

Just a little glimpse of the Crump house around Christmas time! We love this season and love to decorate for it! We are always sad when we have to take it down because the house looks so bare!

This was a cute idea this year for displaying our Christmas cards. I loved to come into the house every day and see all the cards hung up on the cabinets with the cute clothes pins. We also had a old window that we displayed a wreath on that also held Christmas cards!

We were hosting our families for lunch this year and this was the table settings.

Don't forget the plate for Santa's milk and cookies!

Practicing baking cookies for Santa!

Sugar cookies are always the greatest at Christmas time and we thought that Santa would also love them too. We had never made sugar cookies and cut them out with cookie cutters before so we thought it would be a good idea to practice before the big night when the "big guy" slid down the chimney. Grant is so funny about things where he has to get his hands messy. He did not want to help mash all the ingrediants into the dough or even use the cookie cutters. He mostly just enjoyed watching from the bar stools and of course, eating the finished product! We think Santa will be pleased!

What is this white stuff falling outside??

Yes, it actually snowed in Houston this December...not a huge amount or enough to stick, but we will take anything we can get!

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas....

Christmas time + 18 month old son = super fun holiday!

For the first year ever Matt decided to put Christmas lights up on the house! We all were so excited and Grant was right by Matt's side the whole time wanting to help. It was so cute! He would hand the light hanger to Matt and he would put it on the bulb. He did this for about 10 minutes until he decided that it would be more fun to run away from Matt with the bag of hangers! Silly boy!

The whole light process took about 3 hours and we couldn't wait for it to get dark so we could light up the house! When it was time Grant was so excited and said "yea" and clapped at the lights! Now every night we turn on the light he does the same thing. So cute!

The next day we decided it was time to do more decorating and put up the Christmas tree. Grant really loved "helping" putting the ornaments on the tree. He did not realize that he had to be gentle with the ornaments....that took a little bit of practice.

New Braunfels - Thanksgiving 2008

This year we traveled to New Braunfels to have Thanksgiving in the new house with the Oekerman side of the family minus Mark and Katie. Katie was 37 weeks pregnant and it was not recommended that she travel. But we did have some new attendees this year. My mom's longtime friend from Midland Carol was there and so was my Nanaw. She recently moved to Abilene from Midland so this was a special treat.

As usual mom prepared a beautiful meal for us with all the fixin's! Matt even cooked his special mac and cheese which was a hit! Grant also enjoyed his first Thanksgiving meal (last year it was formula and baby food). He loved the fruit salad, mac and cheese and the dinner rolls.

After lunch we all relaxed and many of us took naps. Now that is the life..eating and napping! :) there was also some family coloring time. Grant really enjoyed having his Grammy and Papaw color "Momo" (Elmo) with him.

The day after Thankgiving we all braved the San Marcos outlets to shop the great sales. although we did find some great deals we were all pretty excited about the Auntie Annie's pretzel that we finished the day with! Here are a few pictures at the outlets after a full day of shopping and a full tummy of pretzel!

We all had a great and memorable Thanksgiving with family this year!

Coloring

Wow, I have got to be the worst blogger ever! It is now the middle of December and my last post was about Halloween! Well that is all about to change so hold on for a massive update. Let's start with Grant's new favorite thing to do - color!
He will sit at the kitchen table and color all morning long!
It is hard for a "new colorer" to learn to stay on the paper so we taped 5 or 6 pieces of paper together to the table and he enjoys having more space to color on. Although one morning he was coloring so nicely at the table i decided to unload the dishwasher. When I looked over to check on him he was turned around in the chair coloring on the blinds and the window sill! Oh I will chalk that one up to an experience in parenting! Good thing crayons are washable!

Halloween 2008: No costume - No problem!

Yep, you read correctly...Grant did not have a costume for Halloween this year. We tried to get him one and took him to around 4 different places to try them on, but he was having absolutely none of that! Not only did he not want to wear a costume, he didn't even want to try on a costume or even let us approach him slowly with a costume - he would just run away! So rather than fight that fight we saved our $30 and bought a cute Halloween Snoopy t-shirt for him to wear instead. And just for a little more Halloween flare we all put temporary tattoos on our arms!

Grant really enjoyed the spider tattoo on his arm, he kept pointing to it.

Instead of trick-or-treating we went to a Fall Festival hosted by a local Baptist church. They had all kinds of activities for the kiddos to do and Grant loved it! He started off the night by riding the pedal tractor around the track. He had to have some help steering from Dad though.

Then we moved onto the hay ride! It was a short little ride but enjoyable all the same.

After a few more rides and a jump in the Bounce-House Grant was wearing down but perked back up for a new experience...his first lollipop! He loved it and had about 2 more that night!

What a fun night! We all went home a crashed! I'm sure that Grant had dreams of lolli-pops all night long!

Our Lil' Pumkin' with his Pumpkin!

Every boy needs his very own pumpkin and pair of Halloween pajamas!

"Definitions": 17.5 Months Old

Just within the past few weeks Grant's speaking and learning new words have really taken off! Now with some words it just takes a few times of Grant hearing it before he will say it himself. Such a smart little boy! Here are a few of the newest words...

AAoo: noun

1. Grant's word for "apple". So cute!

AAdee: noun

1. Our yorkie, Abbe's name. He says it constantly and really loves to be around "Aadee"!

Turtle: noun
1. Grant's word for turtle. It sounds very much like the real word.

Steeky: noun

1. Grant's word for sticky. He likes to say he is "steeky" after eating.

2. He also uses this word for "stinky".

Rarara!: adverb

1. Grant's lion sound. (So cute!)

Keys: noun

1. Grant's word for car keys. Again it sounds very much like the real word.

Deese: noun

1. Cheese - Definitely Grant's favorite food

Kitty: noun

1. Grant's word for kitty-cat. He says it over and over when he sees a cat.

(When it was Halloween at Sonic Drive-In they had black cats painted on the windows, Grant loved to see the "kitties" and said it over and over whenever we got into the car...whether we went to Sonic or not.)

Mo: adverb

1. Grant's word for more. We are still working on getting the word 'please' in front of it.

Momo: noun

1. The funniest little red muppet ever - Elmo! (Grant loves to watch "Momo" every morning on Sesame Street)

This is such a fun age with Grant and we are treasuring being able to understand him more and more each day. Pretty soon he will be talking in full sentences and using words that we don't even know the definition for!

Impromptu Backyard Photo Session

A cute son is a very easy subject to shoot!

A Little "Aggie Adventure"

We decided that it was time to show Grant what being an Aggie was all about, so a couple weekends ago we took a trip up to College Station to do just that. We started off by picking up Uncle Andrew and having lunch at our favorite restaurant, Rosa's Cafe. Next we took a trip to the Campus Bookstore to pick up an Aggie shirt for Grant....we figured since he was going to be on campus that he needed to look the part. Then we set off to explore the A&M University campus. Since Grant loves water we started off with the fountain at the student center.

He loved to walk around the outside of the fountain holding daddy's hand. He even tried to get in a few times! Next, we moved onto the grassier part of campus, walking by all the dorms and classrooms. Since it was a Sunday afternoon, there were not a lot of students on the campus...but there were a lot of squirrels. Grant is completely fascinated by squirrels and loves to chase after them.

Once we pulled Grant away from squirrel watching we decided to introduce him to an Aggie tradition....putting a penny on the foot on the Sul Ross statue for good luck on exams. There were many times that Matthew and I placed pennies on this foot believing it would bring good luck on exams. Sometimes when I really didn't study I would place a quarter! :)

Since everyone was getting hot and tired we finished up our A&M tour with some dorm step climbing and playing in the grass on the Simpson Drill Field.

Grant sure loved walking around the campus! One day he might be walking there as a student!