2015 Holiday Season

I've unintentionally taken a few months off. The busiest time of the year has come and gone. I have more than 100 pictures that haven't been uploaded, so here is my futile attempt to make up for lost time. Last minute, on my brother, Chris', birthday he invited everyone to a special dinner. It was fun and something we don't do very often anymore so thanks for the invite!

 Thanksgiving happened. 

It was delicious and lots of fun to see everyone. Elyce and Anita were here for their first Thanksgiving (in Arizona) in like 20 years. We had a ridiculous amount of delicious food and pies. I have zero pictures to show for it, must have been busy eating or something. I do remember Oliver being sick and grumpy though. We ran down the street to Rogers' Thanksgiving festivities so we could all get a picture together. So I do have that!

(Ollie refused to look at the camera. Awesome)

After Thanksgiving, my sisters & I all met up in Anaheim to celebrate my big 3-0!!!

Beth & I drove over Saturday morning just in time to pick up Elyce from the airport that afternoon. We spent a day at Huntington Beach, people watching, shopping, eating, and hanging out on the pier. We made an appearance in Orange County for lunch and dreamed of living in its cute downtown houses all next door to eachother. We had the most amazing pedicures and then we ended the trip with a bang at Disneyland!

It was busier than we thought it would be, but once we got in the groove of things we did pretty much everything we wanted to get done. At night, when all the Christmas lights were on, the place looked amazing. It was so fun to be there and I was so grateful to get to spend the time with the some of the girls I love best. Thanks to everyone back home who kept Oliver alive and happy. I brought him back this hat that had his name written all over it.

{Obviously his name isn't Woody - it was just a saying.}
Once I got home from that, it was time to start taking Christmas seriously. Ollie was a helpful little sidekick. He went shopping...

 this is a Jordan face 100%...

 sat in the front yard and watched me put up Christmas lights

 "Mom, don't fall off the ladder. Okay?"

 and loved decorating the Christmas tree. He especially loved these Christmas bells my parents have had on the tree since I was a wee youngin. He insisted they be turned on most of the time.

 

I had a fabulous birthday. I turned THIRTY years old! I dragged the boys to the Nutcracker with me. Ollie sat really well for the first half, but the 15 minute intermission killed it. But to be honest, Ollie did better than Jordan. ;)
Elyce got me another charm for my Pandora bracelet {the Disneyland castle}

 and Jordan spoiled me rotten. I have wanted a Bosch for years and this year he and my mom surprised me with one. I love and adore it.
I told Jordan I used to get Black Angus chocolate cake every birthday, but I haven't had it in YEARS. He has never had it so we went out and devoured the beast. It was just as yummy as I remember. My favorite chocolate cake ever.

Jordan practiced and practiced songs for the Christmas program at church (he is the choir pianist). He loves his picture being taken.

I dressed Ollie up for Christmas Sunday. 

He only lasted the first hour of church (Jordan played perfectly) because he and I were sick on and off a lot of the month of December and January for that matter.

Christmas was great. On Christmas Eve we did our Mexican food feast and had the Shill Family nativity. Ollie was a sheep dog.

 Which he was super excited about...

 ...

 What he does get excited about is Quincy. They are good buddies. I loved their little interactions during the nativity.

Ollie was really into Christmas this year and just as sweet as can be with getting presents. He actually cared that other people opened presents and wanted to take turns seeing what other people got. Once again, Jordan brought his A-game and just days after presenting me with a Bosch, he got me a sewing machine for Christmas! You done good, Jordan!

 Ollie got a bike! He picked it up so stinkin' fast and loves to take his bike on "long" rides.

Oliver liked playing with all the nativities. My mom has hundreds and even has a Peanuts Gang one that Ollie loved to play with. He spent a day at Grandma Rogers and this is what he did to one of hers. 

There was one in the hallway here that he did the same thing to. So sweet.

Jordan and I celebrated 9 years of marriage on the 29th! We took Ollie out to dinner with us since our babysitters were at the hospital awaiting the arrival of Baby Zeke. We will finally be actually going out to celebrate it tomorrow. It was fun though to have Oliver with us - he was a nice boy and has been seriously delightful lately. New Years was spent ordering pizza and watching San Andreas. Awesome! I think I woke up really sick on New Years Day and literally laid in bed for two days straight. The next weekend after that, my mom and I took off for Denver. It was a low key, relaxing couple of days. My flight cost a whopping $90 round-trip! I used every spare minute putting this puzzle together

{that's just how low key it was}.

Anita made us an amazing dinner one night. Just look at it...

Prime rib {the first I've ever had it}, risotto, cheese biscuits and balsamic glazed asparagus. It was the best dinner I've ever had.

Thanks for the vacation ladies! And another thanks to Jordan, my dad, and Aunt Beth for entertaining the Oliver. He didn't hardly miss me.

That sums up the big events of the last few months and almost catches me up on this old thing!

Taking the Jeep for a Walk

Jordan has been taking Ollie to the park around the corner to drive his Jeep.

Oliver drives it perfectly down the sidewalk. 

Then he goes around and around in a giant circle.

Beanie Baby Stash

We've been Spring Cleaning over here and I asked my dad to help me dig out my old collection of Ty Beanie Babies. We found them in a shed in the backyard, and thankfully no scorpions were hanging out with them. Oliver has had fun jumping on the piles of them ever since.

 I haven't counted them yet {it's difficult with Ollie around}, From what I remember, I think there are 300-400. Wow!

Nora wanted to come over one afternoon to play with Ollie and the babies and played for hours.

 It was great! They might not be worth thousands, like predicted, but they sure have brought lots of smiles so they are worth something, right?!



Peanuts Gang, But Mostly Linus

We had a fabulous Halloween.

The month before I asked Oliver what he wanted to be for Halloween and he quickly said, his best pal, Linus. I thought up how to make that happen, found the perfect red t-shirt at Target for $5 and got to work. The blue shirt was in Jordan's drawer and the yellow shirt I stripped off my dad who wore it one day and I saw it as the perfect color of yellow and took it.

As Halloween approached, however, Oliver changed his tune. He was over Linus and wanted to be Count Mickula {the Mickey Mouse version of Dracula}. In an attempt to change his mind I dug out last year's dinosaur costume and he quickly became obsessed with being a "dragon."

 

 I learned he was easily swayed and stuck with the original plan to be the Peanuts Gang. I knew once he saw Dad as Charlie Brown, Cadbury as Snoopy, and me as Lucy he would be excited to be Linus.

{For the record: He was pouting because of the pictures being taken, not because he was Linus.}

 Cadbury/Snoopy

When he was asked what he was going to be for Halloween he either said Count Mickula or a dragon.

BUT,

like I predicted once he saw all the details of his costume, and all of our costumes, he hopped on board.

He loved it and I loved that my many hours spent with a permanent marker, smelling the fumes, were not in vain.

We started October 31 with some pumpkin carving.

Ollie was into it and we baked up some pumpkin seeds for snacking. Jordan loves them and Ollie gobbled them down as well.

I wanted Ollie to get a good meal in before all the junk became available later that night so for lunch we went to Ollie's favorite Café Rio.

 He literally shovels the black beans and rice into his mouth.

After a large photo-shoot {as you can plainly see}

 

family started arriving for mom's homemade doughnuts and for trick-or-treating. This neighborhood is insane and this year we passed out 1,000 pieces of candy {only one per trick-or-treater}. The weather was 100% perfection and at 8:45 we shut off the lights, came inside and watched all the cousins gobble up their candy. Ollie went to bed at about 9:30 and I spent the rest of the night picking up candy wrappers and vacuuming glitter off the couch and floor. It was a great day and so much fun to see everyone's costumes and make memories with my little family.

The next morning looked like this...