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!