all wrapped up

Lewis says 'Merry Christmas' and 'Happy birthday, Jesus!'

countdown to Christmas

Once again we've gotten too busy to blog. But lots of good has been mixed in with the holiday stress. Owen has started using a cup! We have tried a ton of different ones and finally got one in a party favor bag at a birthday party. He loves it! Now he is drinking from a couple different straw cups. Since he just turned 18 months old, it is a welcome ability.

We had our annual Spencer's Christmas party and won some awesome gifts in the dirty santa game (a snuggie and a mannekin head). Luckily we passed them off to some other lucky recipients at a family gathering last week.

On the 13th, Justin and I headed to Nashville for the Titans vs. Rams game. The Titans destroyed them, and it was really no contest, but we enjoyed seeing them scored a bunch of touchdowns and kick a ton of field goals.

Our view from our seats. We were way up there, but we could still see really well.

Owen decided to eat Lewis' apple the other day. He took some real big bites! He is definitely interested in trying whatever Lewis is doing.

Lewis made his debut in a Christmas program at school last week. His class sang "Jingle Bells" and "We Wish You a Merry Christmas." Lewis did not sing at all, but clapped and smiled enthusiastically. As soon as we left (and off and on before and after) he has been singing these songs and several others. He loves to sing!

We had Christmas with the Tinnells (Justin's mom's side of the family) over the weekend and Owen got to open some presents for the first time.

He got a really cool airplane (and lots of other neat things).

And yet another pic of Owen tonight with Grandpa patting some cakes. We'll be opening gifts and celebrating with the Shepherds on Christmas Eve. Lewis is very excited to open the presents this year. It should be lots of fun (although we are expecting some fights in the process).

'tis the season

We have had a crazy start to our Christmas season already. We got out for the annual "Light up the Square" event in downtown Bowling Green. Justin was working at Spencer's that night, so our friend Priscilla came along to help corral the boys. We stopped first to see the nativity scene. Lewis loves fake people of all kinds, but seemed frustrated by the gate that kept him from actually touching the baby Jesus and everyone else. I think here he was saying something like, "Hey, Jesus!"

Priscilla holding Owen while he looked at the lights. He really loved the lights this year. He was mesmerized.

We ran into our friends, the Cahoons.

Some other friends, Whitney Winkler and Stephen Gordon, played some music at the event.

Owen liked the music. It was a cold, but fun night!

Then on Saturday, the boys and I headed out to the Christmas parade when Justin had to help out at the shop again. Lewis loved the parade. He loved the marching bands especially, but the candy some of the people handed out was also appreciated.

Later that day we went to the train depot for the model train show. Both boys LOVED seeing the trains.

Lewis spent quite a bit of time trying to get a train placed on the track correctly so that it would go. It took a while, but he got it! On Sunday, we went to Shepherdsville for the annual Shepherd family Christmas party. We forgot to take pictures, but it was a good time.

On Monday, I got to go on my first field trip with Lewis. His class went to the mall. They rode the escalator at Macy's, then the carousel, and then they got to see Santa. Lewis definitely liked the first two things better than the last. He loved the carousel and laughed giddily as they went around and up and down.

He was not impressed by Santa, but sat on his lap briefly. If we get that picture, we'll definitely post it!



We also took some random pics in front of the Christmas tree in their matching vests from Grandma Shepherd. They are so silly!

two more videos

Here are two more videos. If you are reading this on Facebook you will want to go down to "View original post" and go to our actual blog to see the video. Anyway, we had trouble uploading these the other day, but they're working now. The first is Owen toddling around outside. It's a nothing particularly earth shattering, but he's at a cute age!



The other one is Lewis counting while putting Kix cereal in a bowl. He is not counting totally correctly by any means, but he is counting in the 80s and 90s which is impressive. We hear him doing this all the time. Just another quirky Lewis thing.

all that we missed

Wow......it's been a while! Thanksgiving has come and gone and we hardly got any good photos to post. But back-tracking......Justin and I celebrated 6 years of holy matrimony on November 8th. We had a fun date in Nashville and returned to Bucca di beppo (the site of our rehearsal dinner--well, not the actual site, we got married in Louisville) for some yummy Italian food. We also had a night cap at Fido's (part of Bongo Java, the folks who supply us/Spencer's with freshly roasted, organic, fair trade coffee). They have a drink called the Milkbone, that knocked my socks off. It is double-shot latte with honey, vanilla, whipped cream and graham cracker crumbs sprinkled on top! It was absolutely delightful.

And the celebration continues. We are heading to Nashville for a Titans game in a couple of weeks. After six years of watching NFL football, and the Titans in particular, Justin has won me over and I have to admit I really enjoy it! So I made a back alley deal and scored some tickets with a local who had season tickets and wanted to get rid of most of them after Tennessee's 0-6 start. Since then they have won five straight games, so we are looking forward to seeing them live and in person. It will be my first NFL game! The best part was Justin's surprised look when he opened his gift. Priceless.



Since then, we also went to a Shellac show in Louisville with some friends. In fact, three of Justin's groomsmen (Nick, Nathan and Derek) were there, and we took this photo. If you were at our reception and saw some "new" dancing you didn't recognize, it was to this song:



Rest assured, it was the choreography of Derek Holt and not the latest craze in pop culture. It was fun to see Shellac live, but it was a late night!

So otherwise, we have been taking lots of video and not many pics. Owen learned to stand up by himself finally (thanks to the determination of our DI, Krista). He's been playing tons outside and LOVES it. Now that it is colder he stands at the door and grabs at the knob hoping we'll give in. I had trouble uploading our outdoor videos, but this one is cute (with some obnoxious mama parts for which I apologize).



Lewis has been looking at toy ads in preparation for Christmas.



And after a fun visit for Thanksgiving (of which we have no record!), the boys were jabbering non-stop on the way home. This clip was taken as we pulled off the highway to take a potty break.