O Christmas Tree

We were early birds this year and put our Christmas tree up the weekend before Thanksgiving. We're going out of town so much that we wanted to have some time to enjoy it, so up it went. Jack really likes it and gets over to it whenever an opportunity presents itself. At first we let him play with the branches and some of the wooden ornaments (w/o hooks) but then he went after the lights, so now the tree is a NoNo. :( Poor guy.

As you see, we don't have a tree skirt yet, we can't find one that we like. We just found some really cute stockings at Cracker Barrel. We are really short on Christmas decorations, but maybe we'll find some good deals after the Holidays and stock up. ? I'm just not in the full Christmas spirit yet. But I'm looking sooooo forward to Christmas morning with Jack! It is going to be awesome!!!!!!!

Jack's first Turkey Day

This is my Mom's Mom. She had never met Jack until Thanksgiving Day and she ate him up!
My Dad's Mom and Jack. A few days before Thanksgiving she thought she had the flu, but Praise God she didn't, and we were able to see her.
The Bodin Clan chowing down!
More eating.
Uncle Michael and Jack. Since we aren't going down for Christmas Katie and Emily gave Jack his presents early. They were so excited! His first 2 Christmas presents were a penguin bowling set and a stuffed ball with shapes that fit into it. He loves playing with them!

We made the trip down to the MS Gulf Coast for Thanksgiving and spent it with my family. We had a BLAST! Thanksgiving Day we had lunch at this really nice clubhouse which was fun and different for us, we usually have it at my Maw Maw and Paw Paw's house. The food was incredible! We had the traditional turkey, dressing, cranberry sauce, etc... plus some yummy seafood gumbo, marinaded shrimp and crab claws, and this aspargus and crab casserole. It was sooooo good. I hurt myself I ate so much!

The rest of the weekend we spent at my Uncle Stephen and Aunt Patty's house relaxing, eating leftovers, and playing Wii. If you don't know, Wii is a video game where you have to get up and move around a lot playing tennis, bowling, baseball, and all sorts of stuff. It is really fun! Everybody was sore from playing so much.

We were busy and Jack saw a million realtives, but we had a great time and I think Jack really enjoyed his first Thanksgiving.

Our Big Boy

CLAP! CLAP! CLAP!

We say "Yaaaaaaaaaah" when he claps and he loves it!

Big Boy Jack sitting up. I still put a pillow behind him most of the time b/c every once in a while he'll just dive backwards head first. Hopefully he'll stop that soon!
I LOVE THIS PICTURE! Daddy and Jack under the coffee table "fixing" it! Jack is already so much like his Daddy, and Papa, and Grandpa! :) (check out Jack's socks--they are always like this hahahaha)
The guys are discussing what needs to be fixed under the coffee table. I was informed that no girls were allowed--so I just took pictures from outside the "man zone".
Jack army-crawls his way into any tiny little spot that he'll fit. Here he go in between the chair and ottoman. He's saying, "Mommy, get me out!"

Jack is growing and changing like crazy! He does something new every day! He started sitting up by himself about three or four weeks ago which was sooo exciting! He hadn't quite gotten it yet when we went to a Halloween party and our friends' son who is 2 days older than Jack was just sitting there in the middle of the floor by himself. Well, Mommy's competitive drive kicked in and I was determined that Jack WAS GOING TO SIT UP! So we started practicing more, and he did! Yeah Jack! Now he can go from sitting up, down to his stomach and "army-crawling" as we call it. He doesn't crawl on hands and knees yet, but he gets where he wants to go, and FAST! Earlier this week he started clapping!!!!!!! I was so excited! It is the CUTEST thing I've ever seen, and he's so excited about it! And then today I gave him some Gerber sweet potato puffs to try (his first finger foods) and after playing for a while he got one, and then later several, into his mouth! Yeah!!!!!! Brian and I are so proud of Jack! He's learning so many new things and he's so much FUN!

Jack's first Halloween!

Halloween is a BIG deal in Rison, and we had a great time! We had a few Trick-or-Treaters and then we went to our church where we had Trunk-or-Treat (everybody decorates their cars and trucks and hands candy out in the church parking lot) It was really fun. Jack was a horse and was PRECIOUS! He had a fantastic time! I hardly saw him b/c so many people were holding him and walking around with him! He LOVES being around lots of people and in the middle of the action! Brian and I just wore orange shirts, we didn't feel like getting all dressed up. A lot of other people were though--our friends Rickey and Diane were clowns (you can see Rickey in the bottom picture), and Paige and Scott were dressed up as an angel and a gorilla. We had a really great First Halloween with our jack man!