Warning!!! Christmas Explosion!!

By Christmas Explosion, I mean it's going to take several posts to get all these pictures posted in somewhat chronological order in a timely fashion. (I'm already being bombarded with requests for pictures!!)

This first post is from Christmas Eve.Van and Kristin were going to be flying out on Christmas Day with her family to go skiing in Breckenridge, CO! Kenzie had a blast with her Uncle Van and Aunt Kristin. She can say both their names...mostly...I mean you can tell what she's trying to say. OH!! My biggest (and BEST) present came from mom and dad! They took Brian and I and Van and Kristin with them to the Trans-Siberian Orchestra concert tuesday night! Dinner at the Hard Rock Cafe set the tone for the night and the rest was sensory overload with music and lights and lasers and THE best pianists I've ever seen. Really made me miss playing the piano (though I could never play like that!). It really was the best concert I've ever been to and it was even more special because I was able to share it with my parents, husband, and brother and sister-in-law! Allison babysat Kenzie and they had a ball. I don't think she missed us at all!

Ok, let me explain that picture in the middle. Kenzie opened one of Van and Kristin's gifts and...I kid you not... as SOON as she saw it was clothes she started jerking her clothes off to change!! We were able to catch her doing it on Christmas day on video, but I don't think that would be appropriate to post, so you'll just have to ask me about it later! hahahaha So in the next picture you can see that she successfully got the cute pj's on. It really was hysterical.

Van was excited to get his Carharts (for work), but thankfully he jerked them on OVER his clothes. Guess I know where Kenzie gets it from now! Kristin was pretty pumped about her gift card to Ann Taylor Loft, that's a moment of bliss you see there. Mom and Dad are great shoppers!!

Backtracking...gobble, gobble

I tracked down my dad and got pictures from his camera from Thanksgiving! Happy, Katie? ;) He didn't take a whole lot of pictures, but I snagged a few cute ones! Just about everyone was there and we had the best time! Rachel and I looked at her bridal portraits (more pictures coming from her Dec. 20th wedding soon!) and Kenzie chased Carmen around. Carmen is Steve and Kim's Golden Retriever. Anytime Carmen was out of her sight, she'd start calling "Ca-men? Ca-men!". It was so cute! She and Lanie "played" foozball alot, though I don't have any pictures of that! Sorry. Kenzie's a sticker fanatic and only likes to stick them on skin, so we end up walking around with them on our cheeks, nose, elbows, whereever she decides they look best.

Van will eventually figure out how to get the grandfather clock to his house.

Christmas Time!!

It's my favorite time of year!! Kenzie is so excited about all the lights and the tree and baby Jesus's birthday! She likes snowmen ("momen") and santa ("ho ho ho") and penguins. She loves all the fun ornaments we have around the bottom of the tree! These are just a few random shots we've taken recently.

Night, night time with Daddy. "May we HELP you?" And today was unseasonably warm (low 60's!) so she wore her cute new vest!

We took this video of Kenzie playing with her daddy's deer grunt call. Yes, he's breaking her in early. Thankfully she still loves to shop!

Kenzie's stylin' and profilin'...

Kenzie had her first haircut today! Of course we took her to Belle Ame and had Helen do it! Kenzie was very good and watched Helen's digital frame click through picture after picture of Presley (Kenzie's friend). It was a great distraction...well...that and the raisins. She had no desire to sit in the big girl chair, so she sat on my lap. Afterwards, Helen rewarded her with a sucker (her first sucker as a matter of fact). She worked on that sucker until our food came at El Porton! The grainy pics are from Brian's cell phone, sorry!

Big Girl Bed!

After catching Kenzie with her leg hiked over the rail a couple of times, we coverted her crib into a toddler bed a couple of weeks ago. She's loved it from night one!

Fall Break

I LOVE WORKING FOR THE SCHOOL SYSTEM!! Fall Break was this past weekend and so we took a much needed break and escaped to Greers Ferry, AR. Mom went with us since she's on fall break all week (lucky!). It was nice saturday and sunday, but rained all day monday and tuesday. But we found things to do inside...like nap, watch movies, nap, hide and seek, did I mention nap? "Come on, Mom! You're missing the fish!!"

Brian fishing at "The Narrows"

Kenzie put on her halloween costume, our own little "stinger"! That's Northaven's mascot, by the way. The little yellow puffs on her antenna came off and she tried and tried to get them back on...we'll super glue it before halloween.

Pumpkin Patch part 1

Well, it's that time of year again! We went back to Cedar Hill Farms in Hernando to hopefully get a picture of Kenzie AWAKE in the pumpkin patch! Last year she fell asleep on the hayride and didn't get to see the actual pumpkin patch (like she cared). Brian's parents went with us and we had a great time! The weather was wonderful, but got hot towards lunch time. We fed and petted the animals, saw the chicken show, rode the "train", and then took a hayride over to the corn maze and pumpkin patch. When we got back, Kenzie meticulously picked out pumpkins to take home. We're visiting another pumpkin patch in a couple of weeks with Kenzie's Nana and Pop, so stay tuned! Kenzie had a hard time seeing the rabbits because they didn't come out of their cages much, but she sure tried!

We took a snack break and Kenzie got to sit in a real chair! She barely came up to the top of the table, but she got the job done.

She started getting sleepy on the hayride, but perked up when she got to run around in the pumpkin patch. She kept chasing after bugs...doesn't get that curiosity of bugs from me, that's for sure!

Kenzie was very particular about her pumpkins. She really didn't know what to think about the gourds! "Check these out, Grandpa!"