A Christmas Lesson

I had an interesting conversation with Parker yesterday that I wanted to share. I adopted an child from the Angel Tree the same age as Parker with the same interests. The idea was to help Parker understand the meaning of Christmas through giving to an underprivileged child. I began by explaining to Parker why we were buying for this little boy. I decided to explain things as simple as possible and started by explaining that this little boy's parents did not have jobs. I went on to say that Santa would bring one gift to him, but that would probably be all he got. He was signed up for this program in hopes that someone, such as us, who had a little to give, would buy him something special for Christmas morning. I went through all the people that buy for Parker at Christmas and told him that this little boy didn't have all those people, so WE were going to get him something special to help make his Christmas morning special. Here is the dialog that took place after the explanation:

ME: This little boy likes Spiderman and Iron Man just like you. What would you like to get for him?

PARKER: quite and obviously deep in thought. (This was it, I just knew he was going to say something sweet such as "We can give him some of my presents...) "Mom, I wish you didn't have a job so that other people could buy me presents"

Great!!! Lesson learned...for me!!

Baby Miller and a Christmas Tree

The past couple of weeks have been pretty calm around our household. Sawyer is successfully potty trained and we got to welcome our new friend Miller Jayne Campbell into the world. We went to visit Mommy and baby last Tuesday. The boys had a great time playing with all of baby Miller's brother's toys (he wasn't there) and they finally got to "hold" her before we left. They were so proud...I think they have some distortion of who she actually belongs too...Sorry Trish!

We have a small tree that we put in the boys' room so that they can decorate and touch THAT tree and not Mommy's..it has worked so far! The boys helped me put up the tree and decorate it with some old and new ornaments.

Parker did the high up ornaments and Sawyer did the ones toward the bottom...the tree looks, well.....interesting!

Cheesing for the camera as usual

The finished product. There are actually colored lights on there, but they think they are magic because they are on a timer that come on at 5pm. That is my way of not allowing them to see where it is plugged in!!

Well...Christmas is underway!!

A Prayer to the Potty Training Gods...

For those of you who have potty trained little boys, you understand the need for a silent prayer as you start the day. Sawyer has been telling us that he doesn't NEED diapers any more.."I BIG!" he says...so today (with excitement and apprehension) we have taken to potty training. We went to Target and bought our favorite underwear and discussed that Thomas would not like to be peed on, so hopefully this will go well.... Sawyer paraded around our room this morning so everyone could see his big boy pants! We went out to breakfast (I don't know why) and he made sure any one in ear shot knew he had Thomas underwear on....even showing a nice, understanding gentleman to our right...

So big...kind of sad!!!