Family Ornament Exchange

This past weekend we had the annual ornament exchange on Jay’s mom’s side of the family. It was decided that we would have the gathering at a hotel in Appleton for those coming out of town and so that no one would get saddled with having to everyone come to their place. Even though Jay’s parents don’t really live far enough away from the hotel to justify staying at the hotel, we did anyways. It was a lot of fun though because the hotel had a great pool and hot tub area and a nice place for everyone to sit and visit (that and Jay’s mom wouldn’t let us help pay for the room, although I think that evens out with the fact that I slept like crap because we had to share the room with everyone and I wasn’t in my own bed).

Ayden had a blast with the pool and it was actually pretty awesome. He literally spent ALL day in the pool! He was a wrinkled prune by the time that he went to bed and because he was SO tired, he even ASKED to go to bed! He NEVER asks to go to bed, hehe! I know that he had a great time playing with his cousins, especially since he doesn’t get to see them all that often.

Sadly, I didn’t take a single picture. Even though I love my camera and at times can’t put it down, I have a problem with not getting it out at family functions and taking any pictures. I need to work on that, might be nice to have some pictures of Ayden AND other people.

I also got some baby time in! Little itty bitty two month old baby! He was SO cute and tiny… baby fever setting in again, need to calm that down, haha! The only sucky thing is that the next time I see that cousin probably won’t be until May or June… boo!

I had an impromptu photo shoot with Ayden the other day. I needed something to edit and I hadn’t put him in front of the camera in this type of set up since before his birthday, so I thought that maybe it would be time again. Ha, like I really NEED any more pictures of him! I edited them all in a black and white vintage look because I thought they all looked pretty neat that way.

Here are some of the cute ones that I liked!Unfortunately, my six and a half year old son is starting to pick up the ‘fake’ smile that my brother and grandpa are famous for. I had to ask him to smile for real over and over… can’t have that ‘fake’ smile in any of my pictures, hehe!I love his little gap tooth smile more and more everyday! Now if he would just stop growing…This is one of my favorite of the bunch. I can’t believe that I haven’t ‘shot’ from above before. I’m so used to getting down to his level and taking pictures from straight on, but I really liked how this one turned out, especially since he is smiling normally!I really like the picture below this as well because its another good smile, but the one below that has become my absolute FAVORITE!!!THIS picture is my favorite right now! He really isn’t crabby in the picture. I just told him to give me a crabby face. If I had to pick something that I don’t like about it… it’s the fact that he looks so much older than six and a half and we cannot have that. I already talk about how he is growing too fast for me. Some days I just can’t wrap my head around the fact that he is six years old ALREADY!I really like this last picture as well. I think it shows his innocence more and that he really is still just a young kid.

I sent him to school this morning not feeling good. Only a part of me feels bad for that though because I woke him up, he watched TV, had his chocolate milk, at breakfast, got his hat and mittens on, and then tells me he doesn’t feel good as we are headed out of the door for school. Umm… why didn’t you tell me that before we were walking to the car. And to top it off, he looked pretty pathetic when I left him at his before school care program.

I told him that he should try and make it through Great Escape and then if he still didn’t feel good when school started that he could tell his teacher and she would call me or Jay. I figured, someone would notice if he really wasn’t himself and would call us if he didn’t tell anyone and as far as I know, he made it through the day… I know for sure that he made it to at least 1:30pm because school hadn’t called by then, which makes me believe that he made it through the entire day because he only had an hour and a half to go after that. It was probably just because he ate his breakfast fast.

And because I’m still in class right now… I think I’ll just post this and try and pay attention for the last 20 minutes!

CIAO! LOVE ME!