The Naughty Kid

Okay so I know there are a lot of you who have boys much like mine. I however, have been used to dealing with the 13 year old girl attitude over here for the past few years. Ella is much older than her age at times and difficult in a lot of ways. Carter however, is so dang NAUGHTY! As I write this, he is upstairs refusing his nap. He has been there for over an hour now and is just playing in his crib. He is jumping on the bed, running his binki along the crib rails and just babbling to himself. He torments his sister regularly. Ella will be relaxing and he will walk up to her and smack her in the face, pull her hair, throw a toy at her, bite her, pinch her, anything he can do to get to her. He walks around with this little man walk, looking for things he can destroy and does a pretty darn good job of it. He absolutely trashes my house each and every day. He eats out of the trash (it is currently in the garage). He pulls child locks off cupboards. He screams if he does not get his way. He refuses every meal we give him, throws it on the floor and says "that" pointing to the cupboard surely wanting candy. He only wants milk and nothing else to drink. He climbs on everything. He loads clothes into my washer/dryer so I can no longer tell what is clean and what is dirty. He throws clothing into the tub full of water. Oh and the tub, he poops at least once a week in it. Sometimes more. (He is now going to get a quick wash, no playing allowed). If you ask him to give you something he shouldn't have, he throws it away from you as hard as he can. And he can throw really well for a 17 month old. He keeps me in the hall for all of church. He tries to jump off the top of our little tikes slide, and goes down head first at times. He will bring you a diaper and wipes BEFORE he poops, however when you actually go to change it he runs to the other side of the room, crouches down and points at the floor. As if you are supposed to come to him to change it. He take his pants off, then works on the diaper whenever he feels it necessary. He opens dirty diapers if I don't keep them completely out of his reach (and that means the trash too). He pulls keys off our keyboard and loses them (luckily we eventually find them). He still refuses a nap. Guess I had better go and get him. Here are a few pictures of my naughty little boy.

This is his picture face.

Don't you just want to kiss his cute naughty little face? I love him. =)

New year, new me!

Our friends Carrie and Jimmy came down from Seattle to ring in the new year with us. Ella absolutely adores Jimmy and spends every second with him. Here they are reading her new story they brought her.Little Declan. I love this face he kept giving me when I would point the camera at him. His sort of smile I guess!

Carrie and Carter. Eating a bell on a string, why not?

And Declan crashed in the middle of eating his dinner. Too exhausted to finish I guess!

We had a quiet evening at home. Just mostly watched TV until midnight, but in good company! Thanks for coming down to visit guys!

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You all may have watched a show on TLC called Extreme Couponing. If you didn't, you missed out. Try to catch a re-run. At first I thought, those people are NUTS! Then I thought, those people are SMART! I want to do that! Just on a way smaller scale. I have to admit I have become addicted. I loathe the thought of paying full price for things such as toothpaste, or laundry detergent ever again! Don't worry, I won't be one of those people taking nine carts to the checkout or taking up 4 lanes to check out my items. I am however, going to plan my shopping trips well and take full advantage of my coupons. I started out by getting my Sunday paper last week and cutting out the many coupons I received in there. Then the printables. I haven't picked up my binder to organize them yet, but I will this week. I made my first trip last week to Safeway and took the kids. I was a bit nervous to look like an idiot! I went to buy four boxes of fruit snacks and four boxes of Natures Valley granola bars with eight coupons in tow. In the end I spent $3 for all eight of them! I felt like I got a steal! I am planning on getting more coupons and going back for more tomorrow if I am feeling up to it. I also just went to Walgreens tonight for diaper wipes and came out with a box of wipes, toothpaste, and two boxes of cereal for $3! I know with time I will get better and save tons of money with this! I am planning on building some food storage this way too since we have minimal at this point. I don't really do resolutions per se, but this is my plan for the new year. To cut my grocery budget WAY down and still eat what we like. =)

Christmas Morning!

This is what Santa brought!

This is what Carter did immediately after getting in the car.

And toy of the year goes to Toy Story figurines!

Coming in second is the car. The kids do strange things in it. Here's Carter listening to his new MP3 player in his car.

And Ella playing her IXL in the car.

We had a good Christmas, hope you all did too!

Pre-Christmas Festivities

On the Thursday before Christmas we decided to head to the city and check out the Christmas tree!

We baked treats for Ella's friends and Nursery leaders.

On Christmas Eve my family always does goodie bags (just bags full of small wrapped items). Ella and Carter got to open those as well as presents from my Grandma!

They also got to open gifts from Papa and Grammy!

Then we got into our cute Christmas jammies!

And put our cookies and rootbeer out for Santa! (Santa doesn't care for milk when he comes to our house =) And Carter is actually smiling and saying "cheese" believe it or not. Those of you that have heard him say this word know why his face looks like this! Haha.

And this is Carter stealing Santa's cookies right after the picture. =)

What we've been up to...

Finally getting our Christmas tree. Turns out it is hard when it is ALWAYS raining and it gets dark at 4pm. Ended up getting it from a family farm. They came out of their house just to let us pick one on a week night (most here are only open Saturday, Sunday and it's almost always raining those days).

The Tree

And catching the ladybugs that are flying out of our tree.

Decorating the tree...

And finally it feels like Christmas! I have a love hate relationship with trees, love the smell but hate the needles!

And this is a good story. Brady's Christmas gift arrived yesterday. I tried hard to keep it a secret. As soon as he got home Ella ran up to him and said, "Hey Daddy, Mom doesn't want me to tell you this but we got you goggles for Christmas!" She was so excited she couldn't contain herself apparently. Guess I didn't try hard enough. So sure enough since Brady was going skiing this evening after work he asked to receive them early. Oh well! Carter has learned that if he wants to reach something he just has to get a stool. Ella's play-doh ended up in his mouth of course. Not sure what to do with this naughty kid!

And this is Ella practicing to be a hair dresser. She put this in my hair and I had to leave it in until Brady got home to remove it. She did do a wonderful job however, not sure how she even did it!

Christmas time!

Christmas time is here and we are loving it. Ella is quite into it this year, and we have been having fun getting all decorated. The inside is decorated (minus the tree), now we just need the outside and the tree this weekend. The count down for Santa begins! P.S. My sister in law and I went Black Friday shopping this year and I am nearly done with shopping. About 2 more gifts to buy and then we are done! I am excited to be finished, yet have to wait a LONG time to give the kids these presents I know they will love. That's hard for me! Hope you all are having a great holiday season so far!