At Whitten's End

us for photographs on the day that Casey turned 10 months! Here are the sneak peek proofs that she sent me: I found out when it was time to do a clothing change that he has grown out of his 18 month clothes in the last week... must have been a BIG growth spurt because they fit fine a week ago and now they're about 2 inches away from being able to snap shut... :( It's a good thing I got some clearance clothes at Carter's and Children's place in 24 months last week "just in case"!

I realized as I was getting the kids in the bath last night that I have very few pictures of Emma or Casey in the bath, so I decided to enlist Kayla's help in blowing some bubbles so that we could have a little bit of bathtime fun! Emma loved the bubbles and had an almost-magical way of catching them without making them pop. Casey enjoyed watching Emma play and batted at those that came near him. Unfortunately he was the victim of Emma's swatting at times, but he took it in stride and enjoyed the bubbles, too. (I'm sorry that I'm not showing you the best of the pictures that I took... those needed a bit of editing and I am just trying to get the blog updated so I'm not taking the time to edit now)

My brother in law Matt is a huge Coke fan and Brad is a huge Pepsi fan. For many years now they've given each other Christmas gifts that reflect their passions for their respective pop choices. Last year I thought Matt reached the pinnacle of this game of soda rivals when he hand-carved a picture of Brad holding a Coke bottle and made it into a letterbox that was placed beside a Coke bottling plant in the Quad Cities. Though that was incredibly time-intensive and probably the sweetest (or most villainous!) gift he could have done since it's the gift that keeps on giving to those who letterbox and to degrade Brad's integrity ;), this year's gift surpasses even that in the creativity realm... Mom's cousin, Lynn, turned this photograph of Brad riding an elephant at the zoo in an orange Illini shirt into a Polar Bear with Brad wearing a red Coca Cola shirt and holding a Coke bottle. Brad couldn't believe it when he saw it and got a good laugh out of it (it's...

Brad bought the family a Wii for Christmas and we've had a blast with it thus far. After toasting an early happy new year to Casey and Emma, we put them down for the night and Kayla, Brad, and I watched part of the "Three Amigos" and played some family games on the Wii until midnight when we watched Ryan Seacrest and Dick Clark for the ball drop and we enjoyed some grape juice together.

As a child, I used to love playing in the cereal cabinet. When Kayla was small it was the tupperware cabinet. Now it's become our plastic cup cabinet that's the hub of activity for Emma. I was surprised to find that Casey was actually IN the cabinet on 12/30 when I took this photo as he had been just leaning into the cabinet on previous days. For whatever reason, this cabinet holds a world of wonder for the kids as Kayla also enjoys playing with Emma in there! On this particular day, I grabbed the camera and (looking at the LCD screen) took many pictures. I immediately loaded the pictures on my computer as they continued to play. I was shocked to see that Emma had NO DIAPER on and I hadn't even noticed amidst the excitement of Casey being in the cabinet! She prefers to be clad in just a diaper and sometimes a shirt but typically leaves the diaper alone!

Better late than never but man oh man, I HATE being late for anything, so posting something so late kills me! Christmas Eve was low key. We 'read' Memaw and Poppy's "Night before Christmas", Kayla opened and started to work on the 750 (749 actually!) piece Christmas Eve Princess Puzzle with Daddy, and Casey & Emma received their 'Bob Bob' (Spongebob) jammies to coordinate with Kayla's jammies. This is how Emma welcomed Christmas morning! Christmas morning was both an amazing blessing with the gifts that were received while also a stresser with the little kids being out of control and very emotional. Brad and I joke that we don't want to watch (or have anyone see) the first half of the taping that we did Christmas morning as our kids were less than ideal and we sound like terrible parents! Emma kept sneaking off with presents that weren't hers to secretly open them by herself. Casey was gorging himself and choking on every little scrap of pa...