Hello from Arkansas!

Ok, not making any promises here but trying to get back into the swing of things! Here's a few pictures from some of our latest activities. I was out looking at Heather's pictures and noticed how much her kids have changed since I saw them last (which was just in June!) hopefully you'll still recognize Dr. D and the Princess!


These two are from a fall festival a couple of weekends ago in Little Rock. It was at a place similar to the Botanical Gardens in Huntsville one of the things we REALLY miss there!

As you can see Miss Olivia still loves to pose for pictures and she decided to get her hair cut short again. Which I really like and think suits her very well. She likes that it shows off her earrings which she can now put in and take out by herself!! YES, I AM VERY glad of that!

The one above is from last week, I was lucky enough to accompany both Liv and Dave to the pumpkin patch on their school trips. Olivia drew the face on and I carved it out while Dave provided Spooky noises for us :)

This is one of my favorite pictures of them together - hamming it up of course and from that same session I got the one of Dave below doing an impression of one of the guys from the Village People. He's wearing Olivia's cowgirl skirt and shakin' his booty for me. Come on, none of you could have resisted either!

He's the man! As I said, trying to get back into the swing of things with the blog so more to come! Please feel free to email if you haven't already - haltomatm@yahoo.com

Funny Faces and Getting Ready To Go Out

These are just some random shots from the past few weekends. As you know by now Olivia loves to pose for the camera and every once in awhile I'll get some good ones of Dave like these below. The first one is a nice shot of 'Big Chief Thunder Cloud' as Mom would say :-)

This next one had me laughing pretty good. Apparantly I've got the best shoes in the house, they both love to try any and all of them on. At least once a week it seems like David goes for my boots so he can be a Pirate. It's 50-50 as to whether or not the Pirate has pants on.

Here's Princess Sparkle, got her little back pack on and is all ready for school.

I think I spent about 20 minutes chasing 'Scooby Dooby Dave' around this particular morning trying to get clothes on him. He felt that the Circus hat, Scooby PJ's and Elmo slippers were the perfect outfit for school that day.

Olivia's favorite make believe game is 'Mommy and Baby'. I'm wondering how long he will agree to be the baby.....



The last two are just good pictures of their smiling faces which just happens to be my most favorite thing in the world to see.

Mommy, why are you taking FOR-EVER!!!

That's what I hear from Miss Olivia all the time now, apparantly I take forever to do most things, get her presents, come home, update the pictures on my blog... I've been traveling for work lately and spend most of my home time just playing with these guys and not doing much of anything else!

I was working on hemming some pants and found out the cut off legs make great hats!

Here's Dave's classic "CHEESE" pose.

This one is his "Mac-N-Cheese" pose :-)

Had to put this one in so you could see the new hairdo, below you can see where Livia came in the other day 'dressed up like mommy'. I had not actually realized that I looked so much like Alice Cooper before now.

Not too much else to report, as I said I've been traveling quite a bit lately and haven't had time to snap very many pictures. I'm home all this week so maybe we'll get some good ones, there's a Valentine's day party at school this week too. Today Olivia was nice enought to point out the $45 heart shaped box of Godiva Chocolates that she wants, that's what I like about her, she always sharing her good 'i-dids' (that's idea's if you don't speak pre-school).

Christmas Morning

Ok, finally had a few minutes, here's the Christmas Morning shots. Dave woke up first and found the new kitchen from Santa. He didn't even notice the tree at all and the presents underneath, he went straight for the kitchen on the other side of the room.

He also had to wear his new Spider Man PJ's he had gotten the night before.

He was all over that kitchen for about 20 minutes, inside, outside, checked out all the cabinets, new cookware and the little stools at the little bar too. Had to sit on each one just in case they were different. Of course Olivia is still asleep. I finally talked him into waking her up. He ran into her bedroom toting his gift bag full of tools that Mamaw gave him and informed Olivia that Santa had been there.

She noticed the tree first thing and that's when he finally saw all the presents.

Santa brought the Singing Belle!

Dave's been opening presents but still won't let go of the gift bag of tools :-)

Ok, this one's my favorite, while shopping I found this bedroom set at Target, it's got a camping theme to it with bears and a tent that straps onto his bed. Dave gets to sleep in a tent each night! They had a ball when we set it up, Olivia told me that she was going to be a big girl and sleep there all by herself, Dave could sleep in her bed. That's what I like about her, always trying to help out and thinking of others ;-)

Much like the kitchen earlier that morning he had a ball going in and out of every door, flap, etc. There was also lots of jumping and screaming.

Last but certainly not least here's Olivia in her new pink sparkly dress. She picked out the tights to wear with it. And that is how she looks most of the time now. She wears it to school one day, comes home the next day and gets it out of the dirty clothes hamper to wear around the house, we finally get it through the washer and it's on her the next day ready to go to school again.

Christmas Eve at Mom's

We got to spend a few days before Christmas at Mom's house and the Chris's came over too. Olivia had a great idea of bringing dress up clothes so that's what we did first. She decided to wear her Christmas dress, Emma has on the Sleeping Beauty pink dress, Chloe is the Snow White in the corner and in the middle of everything, as always, is Buzz Lightyear!

Mom is nice enough to let the kids use her spare room and she put a couple of blow up mattresses in there for them to 'sleep' on.

Buzz is getting a little help from the Christmas Queen with his glubs.

This costume is great, I got it at the Disney store after Halloween, it's got everything, suit, hood, boots (with built in knee pads), gloves and little lights that blink on the back wing. It's a little big but I'm afraid it's going to be too small for next Halloween.

I had a really hard time getting Snow White to turn around. While the rest of them are literally running around like banshees she's just sitting there quietly playing. Every once in a while she looks over at them like 'You guys are nuts' then goes back to playing.

Everyone decided to change back into their clothes so they could go outside but Buzz just felt too naked without his hood and gloves. We can always use a few more laughs so I said why not!

Ok, they went outside and after awhile I look out the window and I see them setting up lawn chairs at the fence. So I snapped a few shots then went outside to see what was going on.

You're going to love this one - 'We've made a nest and we're waiting for the birds to come and live in it!' Emma and Olivia had gathered a nice little bed of grass, leaves and twigs on a small paper plate and perched it in an old bush. The then pulled the chairs up to about a foot away so they could wait for the birds. They actually sat there for about 20 minutes then they moved it do different places in the yard.

After that it was time to come inside and decorate the Gingerbread house and cookies!!!

Everyone did a fantastic job. I took Heather's advice and I put the icing on and they all put on the candy. I think they did pretty good, Dave put a few on then decided that he would rather eat them. Olivia decided we should take the gingerbread snowmen they decorated and put them around the house as well.

Later that night we helped Mom decorate her Christmas tree which was lots of fun. She got one she can plant just like the old days.

Christmas Eve morning the kids woke up ready to go, Mom had put all the presents out under the tree the night before while they were asleep and they were of course dying to open them up.

We had decided to wait until the Chris's came back over to open things up. Olivia decided to make her post on the present Mom told her was hers underneath the tree.

Dave didn't stray too far either. His face says it all - how much longer do we have to wait?

They made it!! I didn't actually get many pictures of the kids opening presents, as soon as the first was opened I was busy trying to undo the yards of metal ties, tape, boxes, etc so that we could actually get the toys out of the packaging.

Chloe got her a baby doll from Mom and wasn't interested in much else after that. I enjoyed her lounging pose below.
We all had a great time at Mom's, thank you to everyone for the gifts, the kids have been having lots of fun with them all. I hated to leave but wanted to get back so they could see that Santa had been to their house Christmas morning.

A Visit To Santa's Village

Huntsville has the Alabama Constitution Village downtown which is a living history museum of a working village circa 1805. At this time of year they turn it into 'Santa's Village' for the kids and have characters around, reindeer, Mrs. Claus and Santa. We took a trip there last week with the Smiths. The only problem was that it was about 75 degrees the evening it went so it was a little hard to get in the Christmas Spirit for the grownups but the kids seem to really enjoy it. Below are a few shots of them with some of the characters, as you can imagine Frosty the Snowman was an immediate hit, almost couldn't get Dave to leave him alone and go see the rest of the place.

This picture below is the kids holding their hands out to catch some of the fake snow they were shooting out while it was 75 degrees :-)

They have a working blacksmith shop in the village which they were running as Santa's that night and there was a gentleman making shoes for the reindeer. Anna, Olivia and David were enthralled. The walked in, sat down on the benches and hung out listening for around 15 minutes which is as you know pretty long in toddler time.

For some reason they had to maul the inflatable Moose family.

They had different rooms set up around the village and I really liked this one, it was the elves room with this tower of running trains. Very cool for Dave since he has just recently become a big choo choo train fan.

Mrs. Claus was on had to tell stories to the kids and she was nice enough to let us snap a couple of pictures during her break time. They had a room with big postcards laid out where the kids could write letters to Santa, Olivia and I filled hers out with the 'Singing Belle and Singing TeaCup' request of course. They they told the kids to go put them in one of the mailboxes on site or give them to one of the elves in the village and they would make sure Santa got them. Pretty cool.

The got to ice a gingerbread cookie and they showed them off for me to snap a picture.

This last picture cracks me up, anytime I ask him to smile for the camera now this is what I get. It's also a bit funnier when you know that he had icing all over his face and hands. All in all the Village was pretty neat, they did a good job of coming up with different activities for the kids. I'm a scrooge and didn't want to stand in line for the 45 minutes it would take to see Santa so we didn't do that. It was already past Dave's bedtime and Livey had a 'bad grass tummy' too.

Sorry about the funky layout on this one, not sure what I did different, I tried to fix but gave up after a bit. It was difficult for me to get the pictures uploaded this time. Anyways, enjoy!