This year marked my first full year as a working mamma with a full-time career to handle in addition to raising the kiddos. It’s been a challenge; balancing work and family life is hard, but I’m fortunate to have the two most amazing kiddos and sweetest hubby in the world to support me.

Josh’s job is going well for him to. I dare say he actually loves his job–which is great.  He’s been truly blessed to have landed a career that allows him to endeavor in all his nerdy exploits and get paid for it.

But, of course, our year revolved around those two amazing kiddos of ours. And of course, a big year for them equates to a big, proud year for Mom and Dad.

For starters, both kids are now potty-trained!!!!  That’s right, NO MORE DIAPERS. Ali, our over-achieving two-year old, was fully potty trained by the end of October, with little effort exerted on our parts.  She seemed sort of content to stay in her pull-ups, so one day Josh and I just decided we would do away with them, and she’s been dry ever since.

Both kids are learning SO FAST right now. Xavier recognizes his letter (X) everywhere. He’s started writing his name, recognizes the letters of Ali’s name, my “M,” and can spell “red,” “brown,” “blue,” and “green.”  He colors in the lines of his coloring books, draws most of his shapes perfectly, and is an animal expert.   He’s a budding techie, and is in every way, the duplicate of his father.  He loves cars, trucks, planes and trains, all things Wolverine (or super-hero) related, and building things with Play-Dough.  Xavey is also the single most vocally affectionate person ever.  Over the course of our break, Josh and I have heard “I love you” from him at least once during each of his waking hours, often more. Don’t be fooled by that though-he’s 100% boy, and loves to do all sorts of mischievous things to get him (and Ali) in trouble.

Ali is also learning fast, and super independent. Her approach to everything is, “I do it!”  Ali knows her “A,” and loves singing, dancing, and doing anything with crayons, glitter and glue (who’d a guessed?). She is in most ways, my mini, right down to her incessant desire to have someone play with her hair or rub her back while she’s falling asleep.  She’s truly coming into her own now, and unlike me, is already nurturing her loving side (or maybe just her bossy side, in which case, yes, she’s just like me) by constantly playing with her baby dolls. Ali is our little firecracker, a big ball of beautiful, joyous energy.

Xavey’s big goal for the year is to learn how to do a flip on the trampoline (yeah, the grey hairs are starting to sprout). Ali simply wants to be Picasso and paint some more.

My immediate, easily attainable goal is to get Josh to a concert. He’s roamed around for twenty-six(ish) years now, and still has NEVER been to a concert. We need to remedy this given my love for all things rock.

Long term, our goal is still to get outta Texas.  Northeast, midwest, Pacific northwest. I’m not picky. We just want to be somewhere where our kids can actually enjoy the outdoors. That’s hard to do here, when four to five months of the year temperatures are near or above 100 degrees.

We’ve got one final gallery for the year, with all of our holiday pictures right here.  Enjoy the pictures, and Happy New Year!

We also took a trip to the zoo while they were down since the weather was so nice (60′s or so that day).  I’m now convinced that going to the zoo during the summer is just a waste of time.  Every animal was so much more active since it wasn’t so hot, and the trip was a lot of fun.

Pictures from the weekend are up right here.

I’ll post an update as soon as things slow down.

So I ran it by Megan, she made fun of me a lot, and I’m now typing this post from the closet, my new little man-cave.   (Let me interject something here… About two years ago, right after we found out I was pregnant with Ali, and it became painfully obvious to Josh that he would have to forfeit his office to our darling daughter, I suggested that we turn the closet into an office. Of course my suggestion was met with comments like, “The desk won’t fit, ” “that’s a stupid idea,” and [my favoirte] “I don’t want to.”  So yes, of course I got a little frustruated, and first made Josh admit that I’d been right all along.  And yes, it is endlessly funny to me now that his “man room” is merely a closet at the back of our house.) During the process of making the move though, we nearly lost our only remaing computer, Megan’s desktop.  I unhooked it all like I’ve done countless times in the past, hooked it all back up, and all I got was a ticking power supply (it literally sounded just like a bomb).  Thankfully that was all that was wrong, and 14 bucks later we’re back up and running with at least one computer.

We’ve also been getting ready for our voyage back to the homeland.  We’re planning on driving this time, and in order to get our Jeep in good condition to make the trip we just got done with about 2 weeks of ridiculous repeat trips to transmission shops and service garages.  Ask me about it some time, I’ve ranted about it too much to bother typing it.  (Or me. I’m the one who was in Southlake when her hubby called to inform me that, “Oh yeah… Be careful. The Jeep is leaking someting.”)

All of our technical problems aside, things with the kids couldn’t be better.  They are so much fun.  Some things Xavier likes to do now: play with staplers, cut paper with scissors, open doors, and lock doors.  No joking here, he literally takes a piece of construction paper, staples it like 100 times, and then cuts it into pieces (and leaves them all over the floor for his mommy to pick up).  It’ll entertain him for at least 30 minutes, easily.  And as far as opening doors goes, I swear, I think we are going to have to remove our door knobs.  Locking them barely slows him down, he’s already learned how to take a small thin object and turn the little slot on the outside of the knob. (Fun, when you’re the only one up in the morning, and all of a sudden a little hand touches your leg or your arm…)  Just the other day I was literally locked out of the house three times in one evening.  Xavier managed to listen to me the first time and unlocked the front door so I could get back in (after about five minutes of incessant pleading).  The second and third times they (yes Ali does this too) locked me out in the garage, but Megan was home and after about 5 minutes of me knocking on the door she had finally managed to quit laughing long enough to let me in.  Oh, and the early morning wake-ups with a little 2 1/2 year old face about 2 inches from yours have started since he can now stroll out of his room and into ours whenever he wants.  Did I mention how fun they are!?

Ali is just barely a step behind him, she follows him everywhere, doing pretty much doing every single thing he does.  They are quite the little (terrible ) twosome.  She has some of her own interests too though, she’s becoming more and more obsessed with shoes and little purses.  Meg made the mistake of giving her a purse to hold while we were grocery shopping, and there was no way Ali was leaving it behind. We wound up having to buy the thing and hid it away until Christmas.  She also loves anything sparkly, glittery or messy.  Meg’s jewelry is always fair game, as is her makeup and her shoes.  It’s a tough call–Ali definitely has a wild, rough and tough side that makes me think she’s gonna be the athletic-type of kid. But then there’s that girly nonsense too… and it just makes me pray she doesn’t have her mommy’s taste in jewelry and clothes.

What else about Ali girl? She’s a huge flirt, she’s growing like a weed and she’s quite the talker. She’ll repeat just about anything you say to her, and I think she really drives Xavier to talk more. (No way is he letting his litter sister do something, anything, better than him! )

Soon enough, we’ll be home and you can see them for yourselves. There’s no denying how crazy things get around here, but I don’t think either of us would have it any other way. We love our crazy little kiddos and the chaos that they create.

Merry (early)  Christmas!

Hectic, but good. Xavier got to play in the snow for the first time ever, and he had an absolute blast. The first couple times I would just follow him as he wandered around, but once the snow got deep enough he got to actually do some sledding. After a few times going down with Meg and me, I decided to let him ride down once by himself… He made it about 3/4 of the way down before his first snow wipe out. As bad as it sounds, it was pretty hilarious, he just laid there motionless, face down in the snow until I got to him. Fortunately he was fine and only had a minor scrape on his nose to show for it.

Ali on the other hand, was still just a bit too little to head out into the cold for an extended period, but she got to enjoy opening presents multiple times for her first Christmas. I swear, our kids are going to think Christmas lasts the entire month of December.

Jenny’s wedding was beautiful, and Meg and I got to have a fun night without the kids during the reception.

There are tons more little stories to tell from the trip, but unfortunately I dont’ have much more free time, so check out all the pictures here instead .

Anyway, it was really good to get back Ohio and to see everyone and spend a couple weeks with them. Unfortunately, Xavey ended up getting an ear infection in both ears on the last few days in Ohio, but he was quite a little trooper. The drive back to Texas was actually really easy because he did so good. So for anyone who hasn’t come to visit us yet, if Meg and I can drive it with Xavey being sick, then you have no excuses!

I hope everyone had as wonderful a holiday as we did, and have a great 2007. Pics from Christmas here. More to follow soon from Mom’s camera.

So, now that it’s actually December I went ahead and put up some pics of Xavey playing with the Christmas tree. He, of course, loves playing with/eating the ornaments and trying to rip down the whole tree, so it’s pretty funny. Since we like to extend the Christmas season as long as possible, we’ve had the tree up since before Thanksgiving , and Xavier loves just sitting there, staring at the lights. Megan also dressed Xavey up like an elf just to get him in the holiday spirit – from the looks of the picture he was not amused.

On another note, we are headed up to Ohio for some much needed rest, relaxation, and family time. We’ll be at Meg’s parent’s house on Christmas morning, then head to my ‘rents that evening. So if you’ll be in Ohio for the holidays give us a call.