Mimi the Halloween Fairy

One of the things that has been rather depressing about not being in our home for the past 4 weeks is not being able to properly decorate for Fall and Halloween. Normally our porch would be decorated with pumpkins and all things harvest related.

My mom, who is the most awesome Mimi ever, came over to the Destin-house one day last week and worked her magic. The kids were thrilled! They loved the surprise!

Thank you, Mimi, for this wonderful suprise! I wish you had been here to hear the squeals!

December 6, 2008 DPP

I threw some pictures up earlier - but they were from last night and I finally found a camera cable- so I'm rearranging.

Today was Wyatt's first time decorating Christmas Cookies! My dad is the resident cookie maker in our house and he got up this morning and made cookies for the kids to decorate. Wyatt really got into the decorating, but refused to eat them. Maddie more than made up for his lack of cookie eating, though!

I think one of my dad's favorite Christmas movies is Chevy Chase's Christmas Vacation - He tries every year to outdo the Griswalds. This year he had a lot of front yard to work with and Wyatt and Maddie are ecstatic. I love that he gets such a kick out of decorating the house and yard for them!

I took a picture of this arrangement that Maddie made in the fire place den - I'm not sure what it is, but it was picture worthy.

Love Notes

Tonight as I was putting Maddie to bed I noticed a piece of paper stuck to the wall over the head of her bed.

It was from my mom and said, "I love you Maddie, love Mimi."

I remarked about it to her and she said - rather aloofly - yeah I know it's there - like it was nothing out of the ordinary.

However I think it's pretty special and a symbol of all things wonderful in the world of family and grandparenting.

What a blessing to have my parents so close by - it was something I never got to experience as a child - the extended family. I'm glad my children have this experience.

Thanks mom - that was very special :)

Just a few more pics

My mom comes over fairly often and she came by yesterday to hang out for a few hours. Often she'll yell out "Photo Op!" and I have to scramble for a camera before the magical moment is gone forever.

This was a very cute photo op... disregard the mess on wyatt's face - i still can't remember what he was eating...

Pictures from dinner tonight

My parents are great about coming over to spend the evenings with us when Mike is gone. It's a much needed break in the monotony of just mommyness - for the kids and for me.

Tonight they came over and we had from scratch chicken and dumplings with homemade wheat dinner rolls. It was oh so yummy!



While I was finishing up dinner Papa and Wyatt played with his trains. He loves Thomas (although has no thomas engine that works on this track...yet) He has some generic trains that work just fine, but he has shown a preference for Tommy - as he calls him :) It's so cute.. He has Thomas plates and cups and books and seeks these out over anything else. He has a little Thomas engine that you pull back on the floor and it goes by itself. He also has a thomas blanket that he sleeps with everynight (thanks grandmomma!)






Wyatt also loves his Mimi :)

Family Love

This past Sunday we all got together to celebrate my mom's 30th birthday. I won't tell you how old or rather young - she really is - because she might shoot me.

It took a while for everyone to show up at the Destin Olive Garden - my father mistakenly drove to the one in Fort Walton Beach, claiming he wasn't aware there even was an Olive Garden in Destin... Where has he been??

I'm not sure who was looking out for us that night, but we ended up with a semi-private room and it was perfect for Mr. Wyatt who will not sit still for very long - but all in all he did wonderfully that night and we were there for a LONG time...

So here are some shots from the night along with some necessary commentary...

I'm not sure what Wyatt was doing, but I thought this picture was cute!


My dad arrived and checked out the bottle of wine that my sister Natalie had ordered.


I asked Mike to take some pictures of me and Wyatt because let's be honest - I'm always behind the camera! He was using a funky angle and this was the only one that even halfway turned out...


I like this one, because it encourages me that my hair is finally getting some length to it and actually looks nice!


Maddie and her Mimi - they are inseparable and have this bond that amazes me - it's profound


My father - does not "believe" in blogs and refuses to look at mine - which offends me greatly. Therefore I feel justified in posting these dorky pictures of him - because since he doesn't believe in blogs, they must not exist and therefore these pictures are just a figment of his imagination :) He's so silly - you should have heard Wyatt cracking up when Papa was doing this!





Just as Maddie and my mom share a special bond, Wyatt is all about his Papa. He asked to get up on his lap and stayed just like this for about 5 minutes - holding tightly onto my daddy and patting him on the back at times. It was so sweet. I love those kind of hugs!



After the sweet moment, they had quite the conversation and Wyatt is very expressive with his hands - you can almost hear what he's saying:



kisses for papa



Caught him mid-sentence


Papa, you're too funny!


Maddie lounging with Mimi


Mike getting some love from his little buddy