Gingerbread house

I decided to get brave and try out a gingerbread house with Eli this year. I figured he would do fine with it, it was just me not wanting to do something quite so messy with a two year old that has held me back before:) I'm a very clean person, and I hate messes, so the idea of doing a gingerbread house just seemed like a lot of work for me. But, I decided to suck it up this year. I'm so glad I did. Eli loved working on his house. He didn't even make too big of a mess (he is so his mother's son:)). This will probably have to become a yearly tradition. Next time I will even let Kamdyn join us...this year she happily played all over the floor getting into mischief so we could decorate our house.

I have to say that I was very impressed that Eli didn't try to eat any of the candy until I told him he could have a gum drop. I was shocked....he loves gum drops so I didn't figure they would manage to stay out of his mouth.


Thankfully we were pretty much done with the house by the time I told him he could have a gum drop. He wouldn't stop eating them after the first one and I had to take them away. He wasn't too pleased. It's all fun and games until mom takes away the gum drops!
Our beautiful finished product. For next year I have a gingerbread train. So fun! Can't wait!!

Christmas Time

Whew! Another Christmas has come and gone already. Can't believe it's all over already. Christmas was so much fun this year. It was exhausting, but a lot of fun. We had several days full of lots of family and tons of delicious food. I definitely love the food of the holidays, but I feel like I have to do some major working out to make up for all the stuff I eat. Well worth it. I do love Christmas, but I'm always ready to get back to a "normal" schedule. The kids' rooms have been cleaned out to make room for all their new treasures, and I have a nice little pile going for the goodwill. I love cleaning stuff out:) I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas too!

Dips

I love all things chocolate. So a little tradition of the women in Brian's family is one of my favorites. Every year (sometime after Thanksgiving) we get together to make chocolates. The centers are made the day before (I have yet to help with this part....maybe next year:)) and then the next morning we dip the centers in chocolate. So yummy. The first year I was a "family dip" I wasn't sure how I would like playing around in chocolate, I don't really like messy hands. It was actually a lot of fun, and it's even better when you get to sample the chocolates you are dipping. It's a good thing we only do this once a year, I would get outrageously fat eating chocolates every day. I have no self control when it comes to sweets in the kitchen.....this time of year is dangerous for me:)

In the middle of the dipping process. We get warm chocolate on the counter and roll the centers in it. We do this over and over:)
Hard at work....I was dipping my oreo bon bons for our Christmas plates to the neighbors, the ones in front of me are cherry centers waiting to be dipped.
Virginia was busy cutting the carmels. YUM, my favorite!!
All done. We had a ton of chocolates, there was more over to the left. Good thing I give a lot of ours away:)

This is how we do it, man style

Last weekend Eli got the chance to have some "man time" with daddy, papa, great papa, uncle Ben, and his cousin Wesley. They flew to Kansas City to visit Union Station and see their train exhibit. I was a little (ok, a lot) nervous about Eli flying. I HATE flying, so I was having a hard time being cool with my two year old flying (without me, even though I wouldn't want to be on the plane:), and on a little plane too!). I just didn't know what he would think about it. But, he handled it like a champ, very unlike I would have. If I had been on the plane, I would have been gripping the seat for sure. Brian said he just sat there and looked out the window and would say "high" every once in a while. Once they got to KC, Eli was in heaven. I place full of trains to look at!!!!! Life doesn't get much better than that in his eyes. I've been told he was running around like a maniac. He is still talking about the plane and the trains, the "black one engine" he saw. I think it's safe to say he enjoyed himself:) Gonna be hard to top this "man trip" and I can promise him now any mommy/son trips he gets with me will involve only the car:)

Union Station

Eli's Heaven here on Earth. This kid loves trains.....

How we spend our evenings

Brian and I often make up new "games" to play with Eli in the evenings. They are ridiculous little games that he seems to love and that we usually end up regretting we even started with him. I always say, "If you don't want to do something ten thousand times, don't start." This is true of our made up games. Eli loves them, and constantly wants more. It's nice that it keeps him occupied, but it usually wears us out! Brian was making Eli fly in his laundry basket the other day. He was having a blast, but that's a lot of work to swing him around in that basket. Brian is a great daddy and will do it over and over for Eli. I don't usually do it quite as many times as Brian:)


We also spend a great deal of our day keeping this little rugrat from destroying her brother's train track. Having a train table in Eli's room was an awesome idea before Kamdyn became mobile. Now, I often ask myself several times a day why we put something like that in his room. He could play with his trains all day long, and Kamdyn could destroy it happily all day long. Neither one of us has the desire to fix the track all day long., so we spend most of the day trying to get her interested in other toys (sadly this rarely works).

Our sad excuse for Christmas decorations

This Hutton family looks a little bit like a family of Scrooge's. We are very sadly behind on our Christmas decorating. I am one of those people that won't put the Christmas tree up until after Thanksgiving. So the earliest Brian is ever allowed to bring our tree up is Thanksgiving night. I LOVE Christmas decorations. I think they are beautiful and make the house look so nice....but I hate putting them out. For those of you that know me well, you know I am kind of an OCD clean person...everything has a place, so when it comes to Christmas decorations, I kind of feel like the house is out of order. But I still put them out. This year has been the exception. For whatever reason, I just have no desire to decorate the house. Brian brought the tree up Thanksgiving night, but we couldn't decorate it yet because the rest of our Christmas stuff was in the attic. I certainly haven't pushed Brian to get it down:) I had already decided that I wasn't going to put ornaments on the tree this year because I don't feel like constantly keeping Kamdyn away from all the ornaments, but I had planned on putting the rest of our stuff up. But it's still tucked away safely in our attic, and at this stage in the month, I don't really mind if it never makes it down:) Thankfully the kids are young enough to not know the difference. Eli loves Christmas, and all the Christmas decorations, but he is happy enough with just the tree being plugged in. It's a good thing too, because that's as good as it going to get in this house this year. So sad I know. But I do have an advent calendar too. I put it out 3 days late (had to get it cut out and put together), and there is nothing "fun" to do hiding in the envelopes this year, but it's still out:) So, if you come to our house this Christmas season, don't think we hate Christmas. We don't, I'm just too unmotivated to make it look like Christmas time in here. For this year, our undecorated tree and advent calendar will just have to be enough....

Here is my finished advent calendar. It took forever to cut out all the stuff for this, but it was worth it.....I love the way it turned out. I have big plans to put some really fun activities in it next year. In fact, maybe I will just get them ready before I put this away for the year so I don't have an excuse to drag my feet next year:)

I hope the rest of your houses' look much more festive than ours! Poor Eli.....he loves Christmas.....pretty sure I'm failing him on this season this year:)

Illuminations

This past weekend we went to Illuminations. We took Eli last year and he seemed to enjoy looking at all the lights. We decided it probably just needed to become a tradition. But this year instead of going with daddy, we went with Granny and Aunt Erin and cousins too. The kids all seemed to have a lot of fun. Eli loves running around chasing after his cousins. Kamdyn and Shepherd did an awesome job too sitting in the strollers all evening. Thankfully we had a nice night. It was pretty chilly, but there wasn't much wind, so it was bearable outside. Can't wait to take the kids again next year. Then I will have two running around!

They were pumped....can you tell. It was tough controlling Kamdyn:)


I think this was a new addition this year. I would have passed it if I had know it was there. Not because I didn't want to see it, but Eli has a slight obsession with trains, and I knew if he saw it it could be hard to pull him away. Sadly, he heard it before he saw it, so there was no turning back. He would have gladly stayed there all night, but this is where the cousins and granny come in handy:) If I had taken him away from the train, he would have thrown a royal fit, but with Wesley and Bethany moving on, and Granny pulling him away, we escaped fit free. Thank you granny and Wesley and Bethany!
Had to get a shot of all the kiddos. Bad picture, but funny moment. Kamdyn and Shepherd were sick of the strollers, Wesley was freaking out about being on the ledge, and Eli and Bethany were interested in other things.

Starting our Thanksgiving off Right

Two posts in one morning?!?! I know, I know, impressive. Especially after the poor posting of the last month. But don't come to expect this:)

Thanksgiving morning started off like most mornings around here, a little crazy. Eli got in trouble for being mean to Kamdyn so we gave him a time out. When he gets time out we have to shut the door, otherwise he gets up right away and starts playing. When we shut his door his sits in there for a while before he decides to get up and come out and apologize. Well, I heard Eli going to the door, so I told Brian he could go get him so he could apologize to Kamdyn. Brian went to his room and said, "Ummm, we have a problem...Eli locked the door." We tried to get the door unlocked using a screw driver first, but we couldn't get it. So Brian had to take to whole door knob off. We have it figured out now which screwdriver to use to unlock the door if it ever happens again, but I'm hoping it doesn't:) By the time we got the doorknob off, Eli was bored with waiting and was just playing with his trains like any other morning.

Eli enjoyed "helping" daddy put the doorknob back on. He kept saying, "mommy, daddy work, daddy fix." Pretty cute.

Thanksgiving.....WOOT WOOT! Only a few days late:)

We had a great Thanksgiving full of lots of family and very yummy food. Ben and Erin willingly opened their house up to the crazy troops:) Eli was thrilled, he loves playing with his cousins, and loves playing with their toys even. Eli of course, didn't eat a thing....I'm praying this picky eater stage ends soon, starting to get very frustrating! Thankfully, his baby sister is still willing to eat anything, and I'm going to enjoy it while I can. She tells will tell you all about it too. She loves to talk while she eats, the WHOLE time. Everyone was getting a kick out of her "noise" at the dinner table on Thanksgiving.

The table all set for the big feast. We had it pretty full of delicious food.
Our two turkeys posing for a picture. We were at home later that night and I realized I hadn't gotten any pictures of the kids together. Probably not really that big of a deal, but I decided I needed to get a couple of them. This is a pretty good picture.....it only took about 12 takes to get one where they were both looking. And bonus...I got Eli smiling!


Hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving too!

Still Here

Hello all! I realize I've been neglecting this blog recently. No reason other than the fact that I have been a bad mommy and don't take many pictures these days. That and the fact that we haven't done anything new and exciting lately. We do plenty to keep our days full and busy, but I've just already blogged/scrapped about them:) I figure you guys don't want to see 12 posts about our visits to the zoo. Anyhoo, I plan on getting my camera out a little more and updating this thing sooner! Enough of this boring blog business!!! Until next time...... here a few random things to ponder.

Random bits:

1. May days recently have been filled with keeping our very mobile 10 month old away from big brother's train table. Of course, since it is seen as the "forbidden" toy in his room, it's the only thing she wants. I have no desire to re-do Eil's train track 30 times a day, so instead, I'm constantly pulling Kamdyn off the table and trying to divert her attention elsewhere (not very successfully either I might add)

2. I've been spending my nap times trying to get in shape. Well, not the entire nap time, just 30 minutes. I've been doing Jillian's (from The Biggest Loser) 30 day shred. I told myself I would commit to doing this work out every day for 30 days. I finished day 17 today. Go ME!! I have a love hate relationship with this workout. It's not too long, so it is definitely a doable work-out, but it does take up some of my much-loved naptime. Plus, I'd much rather just be lazy and sit around doing nothing. But I do feel like it's starting to work some. My butt may be slightly less jiggly and my post-baby flub (abs) are more like post-baby flab now. And only when I sit:) When I'm standing, they look pretty good, much better than what they were when I started. Progress! I have high hopes for the second half of this workout.

3. Maybe if I stopped eating junk my workouts would be much effective. But, seeing as that probably won't happen anytime soon, I guess I will just have to work twice as hard.

4. I do my workouts in my underwear. I get too hot otherwise! B came down the stairs the other day when I was working out during naptime and just smiled. I told him that was why I couldn't work out in the gym, I get too hot to wear all my clothes. So, if you come over during naptime, you never know what you might see. Just kidding, if I have to answer the door, I will put all my clothes on for you:)

5. Velour leggings....need I say more? They should probably be illegal. It kind of frightens me that I've been seeing them everywhere.

6. I've been spending the other half of my naptimes working on christmas presents and making some very fun scarves. I should probably stop blog stalking. If I did, I would not find so many fun new projects that I want to do. Then I would have more time during naptime for scrapbooking! I have too many hobbies as it is! Not nearly enough hours in the day to do what I want to get done!

7. Our Christmas cards are done! Now I just have to get them in the mail in a couple of weeks....that should be the easy part...I hope:) Stay tuned for those.

Ok, I'm off to do some photo editing. I have not done any scrapbooking since my craft weekend in October. I am going through some serious withdrawls! I have a little bit of catching up to do:)

Some bunny's crawling

Okay, so that was a kind of dorky post title, but the first time Kamdyn actually crawled was when she was dressed up as a bunny. She had been very very close for several weeks but hadn't put all of the pieces together. But as of Halloween, we officially have a crawler on our hands...we now have two mobile children, ready or not. I can't really say I blame her, Eli was eating candy and Kamdyn was not getting any. I had the other half of Eli's kit kat on the floor and Kamdyn decided to take matters into her own hands because I wasn't giving her what she wanted. So, she just started crawling towards me and got her little hands on the kit kat. Pretty cute stuff. I have been no where near ready for Kamdyn to meet this milestone, but I can't hold her back forever:) Besides, it's pretty cute to see her crawling all over the house or crawling to climb all over you. It makes my life a little bit busier...now I have to constantly keep her away from Eli's train table, I have no desire to fix his train track several times a day. Oh the joys:)


P.S. These pictures don't really show her doing a whole lot of crawling. If you haven't seen her moving yet, you'll just have to believe me:)

Halloween

I figured I should get some halloween pictures up before Thanksgiving, so here you go. We didn't really go "trick or treating" this year. I figure Eli is still too young to know the difference so we might as well get out of it as long as we can (and he definitely doesn't need the sugar. Heck, who am I kidding...I have poor self control, I would have eaten most of it and I REALLY don't need it!). Besides, he won't even say trick or treat....that's kind of the whole point (besides looking so adorable all dressed up). So, we loaded the kids up and went "trick or treating" to see family. Eli was Thomas the train (is this a big surprise with his on-going obsession:)), and Kamdyn was a bunny. Eli was less than thrilled with wearing his costume. He may love Thomas, but he didn't really want to wear him around. Every time we put it on him, he just said, "mommy.....off." We had to bribe him with the promise of candy to wear it to the door so grandmas and grandpas could see him:) His costume was big enough I think he will even get to be Thomas again next year unless he just really hates it. So, enjoy the pictures of our less than enthusiastic children on Halloween:) (Kamdyn gave plenty of smiles, she just wasn't sure why the heck I kept dressing her up.)

Our happy little Thomas
Seriously mom, you had to put up the ears?!?!


We went to my dad's house to and met my brother and sis-in-law and nephew. This was about the best picture we got of all three of the kids:)