Christmas Photos

We had a quite but enjoyable Christmas as usual. We actually enjoyed not having to rush around. On Christmas eve we went out to look at Christmas lights which is our family tradition. We have a hard time finding too many houses with lots of lights or at least very many in a row, but it is fun anyways. It actually started to downpour rain on us, while we were out. Craig just laughed and said, you know if we were still in Colorado, this would have been a huge snow storm. I wish it had been. I miss the snow.

Here we are Christmas morning. Peyton is looking at his new book.

Here is Peyton modeling his new frog backpack.

This frog came with a book and 3 small stuffed animals that are in the story. The big backpack frog is the mommy frog. Peyton loves it!

Peyton got this barnyard bowling game from Uncle Dustin and Aunt Jen (my brother and his wife) and he loves it. Craig and Peyton played for quite a while. It is perfect since Peyton really enjoys destroying things right now!

My mom gave me this nice fuzzy blanket. It is so soft. It has snaps on the sides so that you can drap it over you and it won't fall off. It will be nice to use while nursing the baby in the middle of the night. But as you can see, Peyton loves it too!

And so does Craig. Peyton actually went over to the couch, threw his not as soft blanket on the floor, grabbed Craig and sat him on the couch, so that they could try to blanket out together. Peyton says it is his new blanket. I don't think so!

Peyton got this viewfinder from Uncle Clint and Aunt Denise (Craig's brother and his wife). Peyton was so intruiged by it. He actually thinks it is a camera and kept saying smile!

He wanted me to have a look too.

I just love to see little ones get so excited about Christmas and about opening presents. Peyton opened our gifts as well.

This is one of the many tractors Peyton got for Christmas. This one had about 16 screws holding it in place. Why do they have to do that?

Peyton loves to play hide and seek so I found this school bus tent for him. He loves it. I picked this one because it seemed big enought for his favorite playmates to be able to fit in it. US! Craig liked that it had a sunroof.

Here I am with my expanding stomach! Still have a long ways to go!

This is how Peyton's Day ended. He was so exhausted from all the new toys, that he just crashed. Notice how Peyton and Spartacus have taken over my blanket! What is up with that?

On Christmas morning, Peyton actually slept in until 8:30 and we all got up, took showers, I made us some breakfast, then about 10:30, I brought the presents down from upstairs. I knew that as soon as Peyton saw them, he would want to open them, and he did. He went from present to present, just opening them. Occaisonally, he would pause to play with his new treasure. It was really fun to see how excited he was to open all of his "tractors". I think he got 4 tractors and a fire truck. He even got an awesome construction book from his Uncle Dustin and Aunt Jen. It has buttons on the side that you push to hear all of the construction equiptment. It is now his favorite tractor book. Thanks guys!

Mess

Peyton really has been having a hard time taking naps, and I really need him to. I decided to just put him down and tell him goodnight and shut the door. Well this is what happened. I left him in his room for about 45 minute while I did some online bill pay and talked to Craig on the phone for a bit. I was just across the hall, but he was being really quite. I thought maybe he was asleep, but really I just figured he was playing in his room. Well, he actually decided to empty out his entire dresser. He used his step stool to get the second to the top drawer open. I seriously had just went through all his drawers before his nap and pulled out the too small things and organized everything in there, then he helped me pick up all his toys. Errrgg! I was on the computer when I heard a fairly loud noise and decided to check on Peyton. He had just knocked over the basket of diapers that was on the top of the dresser. Luckily he didn't climb the thing. We are going to be installing a strap to the wall this weekend. Oh, and the dresser was moved to the side about 6 inches. Hmm.

Oh, the best part was when I opened the door, Peyton said "Mess, YEAH!" Like I was going to be excited!

He moved his bed and everything.

Yeah, he actually does this a lot.

Oh, this is an entire new box of wipes that he individually took out. I can't imagine what the next thing he was going to do would have been.

28 week check up

I went to the doctor for my 28 week checkup. This is the fun visit where they make you fast and then drink the orange syrup and make you sit there for an hour so that they draw blood for checking glucose levels. Peyton had fun running around the office, which amazingly wasn't crowded. Then they told me that I could go to the hospital for my Rogam shot since I am RH negative. I decided to do this another day, since there was going to be more blood drawn and more waiting involved and Peyton wasn't going to be able to handle anymore behaving! Anyways, the baby is growing fast and everything seems to be on track. I have started to have consistant contractions everyday (only a few times a day), but they make me stop what I am doing and slow down. The one thing that is totally different from when I was pregnant with Peyton is that this baby has the hiccups all the time. It is crazy. I usually feel them low in my cervix, which is totally weird. I also don't have as much heartburn as with Peyton. Does this mean that he will be a blond-headed baldie like me? Hmm.

Here is what happened at the end of this crazy day.

Peyton has started fighting naps and then is totally worn out by the end of the day. He sat in his tipped over chair and crashed asleep about 7:00 pm. Silly boy!

Our House

As promised, here is an attempted picture of our house with all the Crhistmas decorations up. We love to decorate the outside of our house. With the exception of the top, because Craig is afraid of heights and I am pregnant. We would love to have a Grizwald home with tons of strands of lights, but that probably won't happen without the addition of other outside outlets and another fuse.



We like how it turned out. We had a few more things to put out, but never got to them. The weather has been cold and Craig has been working a lot of hours. I pretty much did most of this myself and it took about 3 days to do. Maybe next year we can have even more lights!

Our Ward Christmas Party

Our Ward Chirstmas party was this weekend and Peyton had a blast. He has 3 friends that are around his age and they just love playing with each other. We scoped out a table at the back of the cultural hall so that the boys could all play together and not cause too many distractions.

This is Peyton, Isaac, and Noah taking the table centerpiece apart.

The kids all got to sing Jingle Bells and Peyton loved doing that. He liked being up with all the big kids.

He looks so handsome. I guess this is a preview of what his school christmas programs will be like.

Again, Peyton didn't like sitting on Santa's lap. Sorry about the blurry pictures. For some reason, Craig takes horrible pictures. (Sorry honey) I think we need a camera that is anti shake or something, because it takes awesome pictures for me, but not for Craig. Hmmm.

Happy Birthday to you!

This video is a little bit long, but I think it is cute!


I realized that the last video that I posted of Peyton was more than a year ago when he was learning to crawl. Although we have certainly taken a ton of movies, I never take the time to upload them. So, here is a video of Craig's birthday party last week. Sorry about my singing in the background. Peyton is really growing into a little boy and it is hard to see any baby left in him. I can hardly believe that he is almost 2 and we will be celebrating his birthday in January.

Happy Birthday Craig!

Today was Craig's 38th birthday and I thought it was fitting to pay a little tribute to the man I love. I admire you for how hard you work for your family, always willing to make the sacrifice to better yourself and your family. I hope you know how much I love you and how much you mean to me. Thanks for being a wonderful husband and father. Happy Birthday Sweetie!

Making Daddy's "birthday cake"

Peyton loves to help me in the kitchen. I call him my anti-helper. I decided to make Craig a non-traditional cake this year for his birthday because they always have a cake for him at work and we just didn't need anymore cake at home, so this year, I made him an apple cherry tart for his birthday. I made it a few days ago for relief society and it was a big hit and since Craig is always bugging me to make him an apple pie, I thought he would like this.

Here is Peyton making the topping for the pie. Notice he is eating apples at the same time.

Ok, time to put the sliced apples onto the pie crust. This ended up being one for me, one for the crust!

Yummy, time to bake it.

Here is the finished product. It just needs whipped cream.

"Cake" Time

Peyton is intrigued by fire. He loves to blow out my candles. I have been trying to teach him about fire being hot, so not to touch it. Peyton is so cute, he says, "No touchy fire, hot"

I think we lit the candles 3 times for Peyton.

I'm sure we ate a lot of spit along with our apples and cherries.

Doesn't look like it in this picture, but Peyton loved it!

Pudding disaster

Peyton loves to eat pudding and he hates to wear a bib. So, now I have more messes to clean up. He sure does have fun though.

He loves to say Mmm, mmm!

Now the back of the chair is covered too!

Oh, well.

Spartacus says, whats up?

New fort

I got a new office chair and the box that it came it was really big. Peyton has had fun playing in this new fort. He loves to sit in here and read all about his favorite tractors!

Annual Christmas Tree Hunting!

In my family when we were growing up we had the family tradition of going up to the mountains, hiking through the snow (if there was any) and searching for the perfect Charlie Brown tree to cut down. It was always so much fun and something we looked forward to. I only remember buying a tree off a lot once when we were in Wisconsin, but I am pretty sure we always found a place where we could cut down our own Christmas tree. Well, since Craig and I have been married, this has also been our tradition. When we lived in Colorado, we would go up to the mountains with my family and we would spend the morning searching out the perfect tree, then we would have a picnic lunch and hot chocolate. It was so much fun. Well, now that we are in North Carolina, we found a nice tree farm about 10 minutes from our house. Not quite the same as hiking up the mountain with tons of snow, but not nearly as hard, or cold. Plus, the trees are hand pruned, have more than 15 branches, and only cost $15.00. Yep, so this is where we have gone the last 3 years that we have been here for Christmas.

Here is Peyton looking for a tree. He seemed confused as he only has found 2 sticks so far.

Here is our tree. I forgot to get a picture of it before Craig almost had it cut down. Peyton was helping, of course.

Timber. Now the tree is "broken" as Peyton says.

Us with our tree.

Peyton was helping carry the tree, but decided it was too heavy.

Every year I see these strange shrub-like trees that I wonder if people actually cut down as Christmas trees, and we actually saw a family cutting one this year. Anyone know what it is? Sarah, do you know?

We quickly got our tree decorated and have as many ornaments on here as Peyton would allow. I would put them on and he would take them off. Ignore the ribbons on top of my curtain rod, those are for the tree and I forgot to pull them down before taking this picture.

Peyton loves that we have a tree in our house.

An attempted family portrait.