Santa Pictures!

Every year (you know all three of them) that Christmas rolls around we head up to the mall to take Santa pictures.  One year I went to several malls to get the best Santa.  Another year I tried Bass Pro Shop, but it was just a little to Camo-y for my liking.  Well the Santa here in Florida is not bad but the photographers usually don't know how to get the kids attention nor do they know how to take good pictures.  You get one pose generally and have to pay way too much for that.  Well back when I did Ashton's 6 month pictures at JCPennys, they told me Santa comes there.  I was really excited because I knew they would do a better job and with their a la carte plus military discount pricing, I can get sheets for $4!!!  You just can't beat that!  So after taking forever to find outfits, today was finally the day.  After Caden went to school and both boys took way too short of a nap, I had to go force them to be happy.  Caden started the car ride in a horrible mood but luckily one sight of Santa changed his spirits.  Nick, luckily, got off of work in time to meet us right when we were going back to take our first pictures.  They were pretty busy and had appointments on top of each other.  But Caden turned on the charm and fired away with cute poses.  Ashton didn't cry but he didn't really smile.  I really need to train him that I love pictures and smiley ones at that.  They took so many pictures, some cute some really stupidly posed.  But overall I was really happy with them and glad I made this choice.  The best part of all is that I got 4 sheets for $16!!  That is really good and wasn't supposed to happen apparently.  Military discount didn't apply today but they already had rung me up before their boss could yell at them.  Score for something going right for me!!  The pictures don't come in till the ninth so you will just have to wait till then.  Post and Carry on with the rest of your day!  

Countdown to Santa!

Today Santa wrote a letter back in response to the boys' letter.  I know they have a fast turn around at the North Pole!  I thought to keep it fresh in Caden's mind, waiting a day was a stretch!  So when Caden woke up from his nap today we went and checked the mail.  Our letter was gone and there

was one in its place.  Of course I have to keep their letter to show them when they are older, I just hope I can keep it hidden for years!  I wrote this letter saying they should be good boys and he will bring them their presents.  Caden was so excited.  I love how excited he is about Christmas.  I guess that is why

I keep coming up with stuff for them to do because he is so excited about it.  We had to read the letter several times, I am sure he could tell you what it says too.  At the end I made sure to emphasize how much Santa loves cookies, so Caden will be excited to make them.  And he wants to make them now, so Santa will come now!  I thought that was cute and led me to my next project.  I decided to make an Advent Calendar with a twist.  I had seen one online of a Santa picture where you add cotton balls till its full and then it is Christmas.  But I thought Caden would do better with the total number of days left and take a cotton ball away

 for every day.  It made more sense to me too.  So I reversed the one I saw and changed up the poem that went with it.  So parts are stolen but the majority of it is my cleverness.  I was pretty proud of myself.  I pretty much used everything around the house but the cotton balls I had to buy, can you believe it?  I only have the round disc cotton things so I had to go buy the cotton balls.  I think it turned out pretty cute.  Caden loves pulling the cotton balls off and gets so excited.  Anytime he talks about Santa he has to go count the number of cotton balls, even if he just did it five minutes before.  He is so cute, he thinks if he does more than one a day then he will come sooner!  Post and Carry on with the rest of your day!

   

Dear Santa!

Over the past few weeks I have been bribing my son to be good in stores through Santa.  I would like to believe every parent bribes their child with Santa, but I am sure there is some perfect parent out there with some perfect child who doesn't believe in bribing. . . haha!  Anyways when we go into a store and Caden sees something he wants I then take a picture on my phone.  I tell him that we will send Santa a letter of all the pictures of what we want.  Now he doesn't throw fits or fus in any store he simply says mommy take a picture!  He has gotten to the point where he does it with everything, but he doesn't have to know that Santa has a spending limit! : )  I have been done with the boys since around Thanksgiving so I figured I should put together the letter and send it off to Santa.  The boys are scheduled to go to JCPennys on Wednesday for pictures, so I thought I should make sure that Santa already had the letter incase Caden says something.  I was pretty excited to put this together because I like crafty things and I think this will be a really cute tradition to start and I cannot wait for the boys (or their appreciative wives) to look back on it later on.  I had about a million pictures to choose from so I only put the pictures that I knew I had already gotten them in the letter.  Caden was so excited to see the pictures printed out and was so excited to mail the letter off.  I am so glad I decided to do this and look forward to doing this every year.  I can imagine making my teenage boys come up with a list for me. . . haha!  Post and Carry on with the rest of your day!

Blue Hat, Green Hat!

Sandra Boynton has the cutest little books.  We would read several of them to Caden when he was younger and he loved them.  Well he recently found them on Ashton's bookshelf and has fallen back in love with them.  They are really easy to memorize so he reads them to us all the time now which I love.  One of his many favorites is Blue Hat, Green Hat.  It is about four animals describing what they are wearing so it teaches both colors and clothing.  The turkey in the book always puts the wrong piece of clothing on (i.e. shirt on as shorts).  So it goes something like this "Blue hat, green hat, red hat, oops!"  Caden laughs so hard every time it gets to the oops part and this in turn makes Ashton laugh.  It is so great watching them together now.  Well now Caden does a new thing every night before bath.  He comes out of his room with nothing but his socks on and says he is ready for his bath.  And now every time, because my son is super routine boy, has to have the following exchange.  "That isn't right.  No pants, No shirt, No underwear, Oops!"  The first time I did it he thought it was hilarious and now we always have to do.  Sometimes the routines he comes up with are annoying because they take time to accomplish and his OCD tendencies worry me, but this one is just too cute not to do.  Post and Carry on with the rest of your day.

Beach Bargain!

We woke up early today to try and sell Nick's huge collection of baseball cards.  We heard through a local store that nobody really buys post-1980 cards around here but we may have luck going to vendors selling them at the local flea market and see if they want them.  So off we went to the flea market.  I

do not want to sound snobby but this post is going to do just that.  I make fun of how country it is here and it isn't till people visit that they are like it really is country here.  Locals think that being from Texas that I should be used to country but I am not used to this at all.  It is not even how small the

town is but how weird it is set up.  There are no zoning laws here.  So a nice house will be built on a street by a trailer park, by a convenient store, by a liquor store by a school by a neighborhood.  It is so weird and random.  One second you think you are in a good area the next you are secretly making sure the doors are

locked.  This flea market was huge and brought out a Pensacolian population that I had never encountered.  I was just hoping we could find someone to take these cards and be done with it.  Unfortunately we found no one and left disgusted with tons of baseball cards.  Anyways after our interesting adventure I decided today was the day to go take Christmas card pictures down at the beach because it was so nice outside.  I knew that it was going to start getting really cold and I thought we should act on the last day of warm weather.  I am very glad we went because it was nice but it was windy, the red flags were even out!  I got some okay pictures, not

the best.  I really am just ready for my new super nice camera we are getting from my parents.  Expect super nice pictures very soon, until then I have to live with my little point and shoot camera.  I think a better camera would have made better pictures, but instead I was too picky.  I loved my boys coordinating outfits, of course.  Ashton was too distracted by everything to really give a smile, so instead he snarled in most of the pictures.  It was too bright for Caden, so he looks like his eyes are closed in every picture.  I still managed to get some good ones and came home immediately and made the Christmas card and have it already!  I am sharing only pictures that I did not use on the card, because I want the others to be a surprise! : )  Post and Carry on with the rest of your day!    

Shopping Solo!

Today was Black Friday.  I really am pretty much done with both of the boys so there was not anything that I needed to stand in line for hours waiting to get.  I also am not a big fan of shopping by myself and the thought of standing outside of Wal-Mart or any other store at midnight, pretty much scares me to pieces.  After looking through the adds yesterday we saw a few things that we wanted to check out but nothing that stood out to us.  So we decided whenever the boys were up and we got ready we would leave and check some places out.  We started off at the NEX because we thought they may have something and we had to see what the unknown would be.  Turns out we wasted our time and gas because they had nothing.  We then went on to K-Mart because they had a present for Ashton half of the price I paid for it.  I had already went and checked on their policy and they told me that I would have to re-buy the gift and take back the original one.  I thought this was ridiculous since all I wanted was a store gift card but none the less we got the same gift.  We also bought the rest of the batman accessories through Imaginex for Caden since they were buy one get one half off.  Nick went and stood in line while I distracted the boys in the car.  After an hour I was ready for Nick to leave.  Mind you this is at 11 in the morning, so I was confused, all the crazies should be at home sleeping.  Turns out he picked the "I'm going to argue every price, run out of paper, right a check line..." It was annoying.  Anyways, the boys were hungry and ready for a nap and I was disappointed.  I wanted to go to more stores and just spend the day browsing.  The boys had other plans.  So I decided that I would be brave and go shopping solo.  All I ended up going to was Wal-Mart, Target and Kohls.  I didn't really get that much of anything because we didn't need anything.  But it was nice that I got out of the house by myself and browse at my own leisure.  I still like shopping with other people better and would have preferred company than by myself but oh well.  I really need to get Ashton like Caden was, used to shopping.  There is no way while Nick is gone that I can be home-bound, I will go stir crazy.  So I need to retrain the children so I can shop!  : )  Post and Carry on with the rest of your day.

To Be Thankful!

Happy Thanksgiving!!  Today I was pretty sad and depressed being without family and not having a very successful doctor's appointment the day before.  We had seen that Cracker Barrel did Thanksgiving so we had already decided we were going there.  I assumed (and you know what happens then) that going at 11 when they start that we would be okay.  I mean they have a store with toys to entertain the children so a little wait wouldn't even be bad.  Well we showed up and couldn't even get to the restaurant because of the traffic.  We ended up having to turn around because of too many people!!  Can you believe that many people go there??  I had no idea that many people in this tiny town that all seem to live by their family would go out to eat on Thanksgiving.  I was super bummed because it was Ashton's first Thanksgiving and we weren't even able to celebrate it.  I was bummed that we weren't with family.  I was bummed that we couldn't have any yummy food.  We ended up eating sandwiches which made me even that much more depressed.  I was just in a horrible mood and having a really hard time being thankful.  I was sad and trying to be positive seemed unimaginable.  I knew this was one of my last holidays to spend with my family of four for possibly the next five years because you can never guarantee that a sea duty husband will ever be home.  I was sad that no one realized this.  That instead of spending one last holiday together as a family people were selfish.  That is right, I was in that kind of mood.  Again you can all get mad at me, but hey this is my blog and my feelings.  I really just could not believe that no one realized that my son's first Thanksgiving could be my husband's last.  I mean I don't want to talk that way but anything is possible.  Now to not end this post on such a sour note, I will try and be better.  I am very thankful that my husband and boys are together.  I am glad that we may not be at our healthiest (Caden) that we definitely are better than most.  I am so glad that we were together and have each other.  After naps, Nick put us in better spirits and we decided to go see Happy Feet 2.  We were the only ones in the theater which was nice because Caden could run around and Ashton could be loud.  But a family came in late and they were just as noisy, so it was okay.  Ashton ended up sleeping through most of it, Caden was bored and I was under-whelmed.  It was cute, but just a little too long or the big finish needed to happen already instead of keep dragging it out.  I am still glad we went because we all had fun and I forgot it was Thanksgiving and I was happy.  After the movie I decided we should give Cracker Barrel one more shot, and I am glad we did.  There was a little wait but nothing the store couldn't help pass the time with.  The food was pretty good, no family Thanksgiving, but still good to get Turkey.  Ashton loved the sweet potatoes, Turkey, and bread.  Caden had a hamburger, very fitting for him.  We left with full bellys, sleeping boys and leftover, a pretty great dinner!  Post and Carry on with the rest of your day.

The Long Awaited...

Hand Turkey Cookies were made today! : )  I kind of cheated and bought sugar cookie dough and just used some sprinkles and frosting I already had.  None the less Caden loved it so much!!  I am so glad I did it because he had been asking to make these for awhile.  He loved decorating them and eating the M&M's, the frosting he wasn't much of a fan of.  But between the sugar cookie batter, candy, and cookies. . . dinner was pretty much ruined.  But who cares, he had fun and loved it!  I really had fun too, I love baking and decorating things.  Nick had fun too, whether he would admit it or not! 

I think I am not ready to talk about the appointment right now.  If you really care or want to know then you are more than welcome to contact me and ask.  I have been pretty down lately and very disappointed with people and myself for letting people affect me the way they do.  Post and Carry on with the rest of your day. 

My Ashy Kolby!

I thought when not much was going on that I should start having more blogs on what one of the boys has been doing lately or something new or cute they do.  I have a lot of random pictures of Ashton and thought I would share.  His brother is obsessed with Nutrigrain Bars, so I thought I would share one with Ashton.  He absolutely loved it and made the cutest little mess!  He really loves anything his brother has, so when Caden is at school we play with some of his stuff.  Shhh!  Ashton loved riding around in his car, which Caden was just 

a few months older than him when he got it and still loves it!  Ashton would not stop laughing while he was in it, like he knew it was our littlesecret.  Ashton loves to destroy anything he can get his hands on, so the Christmas tree is one of his favorites!  I try 

and keep him away from it as well as I can, but he is pretty fast.  I really need one of those baby gates around it.  I thought the other day I was being clever when I put him in the walker so I could do the dishes.  No, that just meant he could reach more, higher and faster!  Ashton also has quite a little personality and attitude for being so little.  I feel as though he already throws little fits.  If there is something he wants and can’t have or if you are holding him and he wants down, he throws his head back and screams.  I had a video to show this but once again it won't upload, I need to figure this thing out!  I love my little Ashy and am so blessed to have him in my life.  He really keeps me on my toes and shows me that he wants to be the center of attention at all times.  I love how much he loves his brother and cannot see how their relationship evolves with time.  Post and Carry on with the rest of your day. 

Oh Christmas Tree!

Today I got an urge to decorate for Christmas, so I went with it for fear that I would not want to any other time.  Sadly, I had to first clean my house before I could put the Christmas stuff out.  My house is generally pretty clean, with everything put up.  But I must admit my OCD tendencies have calmed down since the arrival of Ashton since I do not have the time or energy to clean like I used to.  Mainly dusting has suffered from my lack of cleaning.  I decided that I should first put all my regular knick knacks up, dust, and then put the Christmas

stuff out.  It worked out pretty nicely while the boys were napping but once they woke up it was not as fun to keep them away from everything.  In fact just since I have had the stuff out, I have decided that I am already ready to put everything up.  My Christmas stuff is a lot more breakable and a lot more appealing to get into.  Santa is coming early to the Evans’

household since Nick leaves right after Christmas and we more than likely will be in Texas.  I wanted the boys to all be able to enjoy their new toys with their daddy before he had to leave.  I am glad that I do not have to keep the stuff out that long because I can pretty much guarantee that I will be putting up the Christmas stuff up before the 25^th.  I tried to let the boys help 

me as much as I could and I think they had fun.  Caden was amazed by everything and kept saying how pretty everything was.  But now he thinks every five minutes it is Christmas and gets to open the presents.  I am pretty sure we are going to wake up one morning with everything opened under the tree. . .  There is also a few pictures of around the house.  And the last picture is of my storage closet.  Those who read this regularly may remember how proud I was of my storage closet.  Well one garage sale and Christmas decoration weekend later, it looks like this!!!  I guess I will be reorganizing very soon!  Post and Carry on with the rest of your day.   

Ready for Answers!

When I first thought something was wrong with Caden, it was because of his size.  Seeing him compared to the other kids in his class he is just beyond tiny.  I know that people think I am stupid for thinking that, but it is very concerning especially if you look at the recent pictures of his school's Thanksgiving Program.  I noticed that he had a lot of poop and it is weird colors and consistency, TMI.  I was concerned enough to take him to the doctor and I am beyond thankful that I listened to my mommy intuition.  I was able to catch with many tests that his poop tested positive for hemoglobin.  This basically means there is blood in his poop and his doctor doesn't know why.  We are seeing two specialists, a GI and an allergist doctor.  I have had appointments with them both for months and finally going into the GI this Wednesday before Thanksgiving and the allergist on January 3rd.  I have not looked up anything online because I know half of it is false and the other half is the worst case scenario.  With nursing school I already know enough to be scared and I really don't need to fill my head with anymore scary thoughts.  This has really consumed every waking thought I have and I am beyond scared for this day but also ready to hear what is next.  I know this appointment is not going to give me answers but rather the steps to take next, but I am still ready to get the ball moving.  I really just want my baby to feel better.  When I first took him in, Caden never acted sick or like he felt bad.  Now on a daily basis he acts sick, says how bad his stomach hurts, poops more times than I can count, and have spent numerous nights hugging "the bucket."  Most times he doesn't throw up, but he does feel what I can only guess is extremely nauseous.  Even tonight he fell asleep in my lap after spending over an hour with his head in the bucket.  It is one of the most sad and pathetic things to see and makes me feel absolutely horrible.  I have a tremendous amount of guilt right now thinking that it is my fault he is sick, something in our genes made him this way.  But I know I have to stop myself because I do not now what it is yet.  I really hate when I do tell people what is going on that they say he will be alright.  Like this is no big deal.  We don't even know what is going on and you can tell me everything will be okay, really??  His own doctor said this is not normal and something is wrong, but you know it will be okay.  I really hate how not serious people are taking this.  Wednesday is the big day as I said before, the day before Thanksgiving.  Do you know what I will be doing?  I will be by myself with two kids trying to get answers.  I can only hope that Nick will be off in time but he can't promise anything.  As I type this, I am realizing how hurt my feelings really are.  People's lack of sincerity and cooperation is really frustrating right now.  I have bit my tongue for awhile but I am sad that no one is here for me.  I know Nick is trying his hardest, and I hope it works out that he can make it.  What scares me also is that after we get answers with this, Nick won't be here for any other appointment.  He leaves December 27th and then I am by myself.  I really hope I find the strength to get through this because right now I am scared.  I am sorry to piss anyone off with this but my boys come first.  This picture shows how often Caden goes to the bathroom. . . yes he fell asleep.  Post and Carry on with the rest of your day.

     

Making the Money!

Today is the day I have been planning and prepping for, for a very long time.  I have had a lot of stuff in a give away pile when my friend approached me about doing a joint yard sale.  I was completely on board because I didn't have enough stuff by myself but had enough stuff to make some money on.  I was hoping the sale would help my Christmas fund.  So for about the past week I have been cleaning, organizing, and purging every room in the house.  I really have gotten rid of a lot.  Partly for the money, partly because I am tired of clutter, and partly because I know that I will never have a house this big or with this much storage again while living the navy life.  My stuff is on the right and her stuff is on the left.  We have spent every night organizing and pricing stuff to make everything look appealing and priced to go.  We got several comments on how organized and nice our stuff was, I think that made both our OCD's tendencies feel good.  We had a pretty big turnout and I got rid of a lot of stuff.  The only problem was the rain.  There was no forecast for rain and it managed to rain the entire time and then get pretty cold.  I think it deterred a lot of people from coming so we decided to open back up on Sunday (tomorrow) and see if we get any more people.  I had a lot of toys, all my movies, of course the baseball cards, a TV, baby stuff, random odds and ends and a porch swing for sale.  I managed to sale all of that but the huge porch swing and the very time consuming baseball cards.  I hope we can sale the rest tomorrow!  I am so tired from all the work I put into this garage sale and from the sale itself!  I am ready for a relaxing break!  Post and Carry on with the rest of your day.  

Too Many Baseball Cards!

So I don't know if I really have conveyed how much of a nerd my husband is.  I hope this picture proves my point.  I love him, but if I would have known. . . I am kidding!!  Nick decided that he is ready to part with many of his baseball cards in our upcoming garage sale.  I was shocked because I didn't even ask him to.  But hoping to make good money for them, I was all on board.  Sadly this huge box of cards, I think I managed to buy or was with him when he bought the majority of them.  He has spent the last several days going through and organizing them.  He is setting aside any Astros (his favorite team) or cards worth money for him and the boys.  Some cards that are worth a few dollars that he doesn't care about he is planning on taking to a shop to sale for some quick cash.  But that still leaves a lot of cards.  So I have been helping him put the cards in stacks of forty into little snack baggies.  I feel like I have been doing this forever and you would think that this wouldn't be that hard of a process!  But it really is!!  You see I finished tonight and my husband managed to have a153 bags of 40 cards each equaling 6,120 cards!!!!!  Can you believe it???  I sure couldn't!  And these were just the cards he was willing to part with there were still many cards he is keeping!  I really hope all of this hard work pays off or I may be a little mad.  Post and Carry on with the rest of your day.

 

A Thanksgiving Program!

Today was Caden's Thanksgiving Program and Lunch at his school.  I have been so excited for this for a long time.  I knew they were practicing songs at school to sing but Caden told me they were a secret so I was really clueless of what he would be doing.  They did a really good job of organizing where to sit, the decorations, the food, and the singing.  Sarah and Neyland, my mom, Ashton and I all sat at a table in the back, which turned out to be the front where the kids were singing, so it worked out perfect.  They came in and sang a song together, each class had their own song, and then did the prayer together.  It was by far one of the cutest little things I have seen.

All the kids were off so we heard the same song several times.  When it got to our kids' class, they were absolutely adorable.  Caden and Baylor thought it was a competition to who could talk more and louder into the microphone.  They were both seeing who could get the most  attention.  I

recorded it all but for some reason this blog uploads a lot slower than my Facebook and frankly I am too tired to wait for it to upload so as of now you won't be able to see the cutest little video of it.  After the singing we had some pretty yummy food.  It was potluck style with no real sign up so

 we had many stuffing options and not a lot of other options!  Caden of course did not eat anything and just ran around chasing the kids in his class and his princess.  I had a lot of fun today watching Caden be so independent on stage and performing.  It makes me so happy and proud even if he 

didn't know all of the words, I just wish Nick could have gotten off in time to see it.  Of course, I had us all matching because those make the best pictures and I have some sort of compulsion to make the boys look similar.  I thought they looked very cute in their similar Thanksgiving attire!  The last picture is Caden's Thanksgiving artwork that decorated the table and himself.  Post and Carry on with the rest of your day.