Bummer

A man backed into me in a parking lot today. *sigh* Everyone is fine - but it was a bummer.

(Not my beach cruiser in the reflection. I'm holding that for my neighbor because it's his wife's Christmas present.)

Don't Expect a Christmas Card From Us

I am a bit of a humbug when it comes to Christmas cards. I don't see much point in printing off pictures and giving updates to people that I see or keep in touch with on a regular basis. Anyone who cares to be updated on our lives can read this blog and get much more information than a card would give them. There are a handful of people who are an exception to this statement. That handful of people MAY actually get a Christmas card from us one year. But probably not this year.

At Thanksgiving I had hopes of getting a decent family picture taken, but as it goes each Thanksgiving, my children were sick. We still went out with my Mom to get pictures, but I didn't dress everyone in their "holiday" or "picture" attire because I really didn't expect it to go well. Ryan had super red cheeks and puffy sort of eyes. Katie's nose was raw from wiping.

I'm not saying we didn't get a cute picture or two. Consider this your Christmas card from the Bayles Family. We'll try again for a decent family picture later. Have a Merry Christmas!

O' Christmas Tree

Wow, Ryan looks pretty short next to his pal Ethan. I never noticed before.

Book Lover

I am posting these pictures, not because they are great pictures, but because they say a lot about Katie right now.

First, notice that she is no longer in a crib or playpen as she used to be. She officially figured out how to climb out of it and I figured that I didn't want to fight her to stay in the crib just to fight her later on about staying in a bed. So, we just went to the bed. This one actually belongs to our neighbor but we're borrowing it because Ryan isn't quite ready to sleep on the top bunk.

She does get out of it, but doesn't try to leave her room. (I put up a little kid gate just to help remind her that she needs to stay in the room.) I don't mind if she gets out of bed because they don't really have toys in their room - only books. I will say that last night she woke up in the night crying and bawling for me, but never got out of her bed to come find me.

The next thing to notice (but how could you miss?) is the myriad of books that she insists on sleeping with. She doesn't give us much trouble going to bed at night because she REALLY enjoys flipping through a bunch of books until she gets tired and falls asleep. We'll read to Ryan in his bed 2 feet away, but often Katie prefers to go over and look at books on her own.

She also carries them around all over the place. She usually has at least 4 books at a time and asks me to read them to her every 30 minutes or so. She is anti-discriminatory and will flip through big books or small books or board books or whatever. She also carries around that blanket with her all over the place. That just started.

The Power of Advertising

Katie Singing "Mr. Peanut"

Here is another song. When she sings it at first - she misses a line which I put in parentheses. Don't get too confused.

"Here's Mr. Peanut sitting on the tracks, (his heart was all a flutter, when along comes a chugga chugga) choo choo train and SPLAT, peanut butter."

Katie singing "Jack and Jill"

It was nighttime so the picture quality is poor - but I did it more for the audio anyway.

If you are unfamiliar with the nursery rhyme:

Jack and Jill went up the hill, to fetch a pail of water. Jack fell down and broke his crown, and Jill came tumbling after.

I have two other videos to post but it took a long time to download and I am feeling impatient tonight. I'll try again later.

Gingerbread House

I love these goof-balls. This was our little FHE project on Monday.

Sea World Saturday

Last Saturday we visited Sea World for the second time this year. It rained non-stop on Friday and had a high of 59 degrees Saturday so we expected it to be cold and possibly rainy. It rained only once for about 15 minutes. It wasn't too bad, but enough to get all the bleachers soaked so we all got stuck with wet bottoms for a while.

Some highlights of the day:

Katie got to touch a dolphin. She REALLY enjoyed that but was pretty mad at me when I helped her touch the bat ray.

Gee, from this angle it looks like I must've really flung her over the edge to get close enough to touch one of those guys. Nevertheless, one got close enough to us.

They had fun playing with the puppets and things in the gift shops. Somehow we managed to stop and "play" at about 4 gift shops without one meltdown. I don't think the kids even asked for anything ever.

Shamu.

A goofy looking picture of our kids on our lunch break. Ryan insisted on wearing shorts the entire day (even though it was cold enough for me to wear a sweatshirt and coat). I was only able to convince him to wear his jacket while it was raining.

When we got back from our lunch break, we noticed Jack Hanna. He had just finished up a presentation and was handing out autographed 5x7 glossy pictures of himself. Ryan got up on the ledge right in front of him and was passing by him to check out the camel. Mr. Hanna handed a picture to Ryan and Ryan looked at it with a "huh?" kind of expression and looked back at Jack Hanna. I prompted him, "Say, Thank you." In a nice and enthusiastic voice Ryan said, "Thank you." and walked back over to Derek and I. "Why did he give this to me?" We got a pretty good kick out of that.

And of course, the dolphin show.