Deck the Halls

Last night we decorated the tree when Joe got home from work. Kylah had already given in and gone to bed, but we let Joey stay up late to help us. He was SO excited. He literally could not stop himself from grabbing the ornaments, even though he was supposed to wait for mommy to hand them to him. He has to have the tree lights on anytime we are home.

He was taking his job very seriously.

His favorite thing was putting together his own little nativity set. Joey's friend Connor gave this to Joey for Christmas last year. It is fun to see him play with it this year. When he first got the pieces out, he started rocking the little baby Jesus!

As I'm posting this, I realize I never took a picture of the finished product. Well, maybe next post I'll show you the fully decorated tree.

Unfortunately, my wonderful husband refuses to put Christmas lights up on the outside of our house. I don't know exactly why, but apparently it's not one of his things. (I'm hoping to keep trying to persuade him as the kids get older, though!) But I do want to thank those of you who do put lights up on your house, because both Joey and I love driving around and looking at all the fun lights in the neighborhood.

Manes Thanksgiving 2008

We had a wonderful Thanksgiving weekend. We all were at my Aunt and Uncle's house in Fremont, NE. My parents, Joe and I and the kids drove up there every day and then drove back to Omaha at night to sleep. The kids were troopers, being put to bed there and then being woken up and brought home again. I'm thinking Kylah is going to need some re-training in the sleep department since she's been getting a midnight feeding when we got home! Oh well, it was worth it! :)

Kylah looks like she is very much in love with her daddy.

Did I mention that we had around 35 people at Thanksgiving dinner?! Here is my brother Tony mashing the potatoes. There were so many that a normal mixer just wouldn't cut it.

Joe taking a turn carving the turkey. My favorite turkey is the one my uncle smokes on the grill...yummy!

Papa got in lots of play time with his two favorite grandsons.

This is the annual post-Thanksgiving meal football game. We play against the family next door. Needless to say, with all of our tall and athletic guys we won quite nicely!

On Friday night we took all the little kids to the Christmas walk in downtown Fremont. They were all so cute dressed up in their warm outfits. Joey and Michael liked the little train the best. I liked looking at all the gingerbread houses.

Joey and Michael shared the stroller together. They are quite the good buds.

Kylah also enjoyed the Christmas walk. (Well, until I had to carry her for a while because she was screaming.)

Hanging out together on Saturday. That was a nice relaxing day.

Rock band was a hit. Here's my cousin Tommy taking a turn at the drums.

Gina, Andy and Nicole.

We had a great weekend, but as usual it went way too fast. We consumed way too much food. Did I mention that my Uncle Pete is a phenomenal cook? Joe and I stole his recipes for his Italian beef subs and his enchiladas. Now I'm going to have to work on getting back into shape before the next holiday comes! :)

Breakfast of Champions

Here is our little man and his big man's breakfast. Two packets of oatmeal? Check. One banana? Check. A bowl of yogurt? Check. One scrambled egg? Check. One cup of milk? Check. Four spoons and one fork (all of which were necessary according to his highness)? Check, check.

Amazing, isn't it? He actually ate most of this, minus maybe half of the banana.
This is what he asks for every morning that we are home. He doesn't usually get all of it, but I was feeling generous this morning. He actually talks about it at night before he goes to bed, as if he's afraid maybe he won't get to eat all of his favorite things for breakfast. :) How he doesn't weigh 100 pounds I don't know. I guess he's a growing boy!

We love weekends

We've had a fun and relaxing weekend so far. We hung out with some friends last night, hung out today, I worked out, took a little nap, and got my hair cut today. Now Jody and Jennifer are here. Joey has been talking about Grandpa and Nana coming all day long, so he was so excited when they got here. I think he was a little confused that he was going to Grandpa's house, so I had to keep reminding him that Grandpa and Nana were coming to Joey's house. He's already been playing cars with Grandpa.





I thought this was a pretty cute picture of Joey and Kylah I took this morning.

Joey being tickled by daddy.

Playing the "throw" game with daddy. Let's see...we have the blanket game, the 'go' game...we're pretty creative on names of the games we make up.

Kylah is also ticklish. She's my sweet little girl.

I don't know about you, but I think Kylah looks so old in this picture.

I had to throw this picture in here. Joe took it on Tuesday because Joey likes Kylah to be in her exersaucer when he is playing in the jumperoo. But what I think is funny is that they're in their jammies....again. :)

I'll post some more pictures of Grandpa and Nana's visit later!

Getting ready for bed

I shot some pictures of the kids getting ready for bed tonight. They were pretty cute.

Kylah loves bath time these days. She kicks and splashes like crazy. Have I mentioned lately what an easy-going baby she is? She just goes with the flow, only barely crying when she's hungry or tired. And then she just puts her fingers in her mouth and seems to be fine again. Everyone tells me she's the typical second child. We're loving it. And she thinks Joey is the best person in the world...I love watching them interact together.

Cuddly, cute and clean in her towel after her bath. I'm loving how her eyes match the deep blue of the towel. I'm not sure where my children got their wonderful eye lashes, but I'm so glad they did!

Not sure he's getting many teeth clean here...

That's better. (and look at those lashes!)

Reading one of his favorite books with daddy. Daddy uses cool voices to make the book so fun.

One of Joey's favorite new things to do is to read his own little Bible. He kept wanting to take mine and pretend to read it, so we got out his little Bible that he got when he was dedicated. (Joe's pastor from his church in Kansas sent it for Joey.) I wonder what's going through his mind when he's "reading" it. But he can't go to bed without having his Bible with him in bed.

We went to visit my grandma today for her birthday. (Of course, I don't have any pictures because I forgot my camera!) She made eggs and bacon for us, which was a hit with Joey. She is known as "Nona" to all of her great-grandchildren. Every time I called her "Grandma" Joey corrected me by saying "no grandma, Nona!" Oh, yeah, I forgot! We had a wonderful morning. And what a cool great-grandma that lets her 2 year old great-grandson play with her lift chair by himself for 30 minutes! Needless to say, Joey hasn't stopped talking about Nona! Happy Birthday, Grandma...we love you!

What a fun 24 hours!

Josh, Val, Mackenzie, Bella and Deacon came up to our house last night for a quick visit. (Joe's brother, wife and kids). We got a babysitter for all the kids (thanks Brynn and Chris!), and the four of us went out to dinner. Val and I were reminiscing about the last time they were here and we went out...we only had one child between us then; now there's FIVE! Staying up til 1:30 am seemed so fun last night, but I was definitely feeling it today at work! I'm actually getting ready to head to bed---at 9:15!

Needless to say, Joey adores his cousins. Although, there are still arguments and fights and "no! yes! no! yes!....." between the three older ones. Mackenzie slept on Joey's floor which was fun for them. Joey was pretty sad tonight that Mackenzie wasn't going to be sleeping in his room again.

I don't have any pictures of Kylah and Deacon. I think Val has a few on her camera, so I'll steal some from her blog when she posts! :)

I love the way Bella talks. She calls me "An Shell" and Joey "Joo-ey", and she talks about Kylah non-stop. She is such a sweet, cuddly little girl, but she's got a stubborn streak in her!

Here's the three bums on the air mattress watching what I'm guessing must be Cars. Val promised me that she would dress Joey in real clothes today while I was at work (unlike last week with Joe)! :)

Joey wanted to go bye-bye with Mackenzie and Bella to Grandpa and Nana's house this evening. He was pretty upset about it, but Val and I tried to convince him he would miss mommy and daddy too much. I'm thinking Christmas will be a blast with all these cousins together this year (we have these five and also our 1 year old niece Hannah.)

**********************************

I just checked Val's blog after I posted mine, and she had some pictures of Kylah and Deacon for me to steal. As she said on her blog...they look like they could be twins, but Kylah is 5 months and Deacon is 2 months! We didn't weigh them, but to me it felt like Deacon is pretty close to surpassing his older cousin in size!



I'm not sure who put the bunny ears on Kylah, but Joey loves to keep putting them on her!

a lion and a bunny

In spite of the fact that I really don't get too excited about Halloween...I did dress the kids up, and we all went around to a few of our neighbors' houses. Joey was a lion (thanks to our wonderful neighbor who let us borrow it!), and Kylah was a cute little bunny. I even painted their faces all by myself. Kylah's didn't last too long because she kept sucking on her fingers and smearing it.

I usually get pretty lucky when taking pictures of my kids. They are both pretty photogenic, and they both like to look at the camera and smile. Well, I had a heck of a time getting a picture of them in their costumes. It was probably worse because I was trying to do it before Joe got home to help me. These next few pictures give you a little glimpse of what I went through to get a picture of them together:

Cool bunny ears Kylah...

Cool lion ears Joey...

We're bored; can we go get some candy now?...

Oh, the joys!

Kylah did make a pretty cute little bunny, though. I put her in the bjorn and carried her around with us, which she thought was great!

I think this picture of Joey with Joe is so sweet. They are sharing a fun moment together.

Now, if you ask Joey if he had fun trick-or-treating, this is what he will tell you: "Burger King, scare, candy, lion, roar." You may wonder why he's talking about Burger King for Halloween. Well, the second house we went to last night was answered by a guy wearing the 'Burger King' king costume with a mask. Of course my sweet, timid Joey was deathly afraid of this caped man in a mask, so he starts screaming and backing down the stairs. It took a little bit for him to go back to get a piece of candy from the guy (after the guy removed his mask.) And of course Joey thought that all the rest of the houses we went to were going to have a scary Burger King man answer the door. We actually caught in on video, but I don't know how to download from our video camera to our computer. It's hilarious. So, now Joey will always equate Halloween with the scary Burger King man!

******************************************************************************

Joe and I are exhausted after staying up until 2:15 am last night painting our basement. We spent the rest of the day today painting too. The kids did great...Joey watched Cars on our portable DVD player, and Kylah played in her toys and slept. As I type this, everything is back in it's place, and it looks great! Here's a picture of the corner so you can see the two colors we painted. The brown is actually quite a bit darker, but the flash makes it look lighter. We did the chocolate brown on one wall, and the yellowish/tan on the rest of the walls.

We are so excited to have Josh, Val and their kids come visit us this week!