Happy New Year!

We've had an awesome Christmas and New Year and we hope you have, too. I'm going to kind of try to catch up on the holidays. We've been pretty busy. Last week Mike's family had a Christmas party and that was a ton of fun. I got to show off the dress I made for Autumn:



Speaking of Autumn, her grandparents' house is like her own personal kitty heaven:


I love Bella's face here.


Oh, and there has been much Rock Band-ing the last 2 weeks. The best lead singer prize absolutely goes to Mike's Uncle Allen who is a musician in real life--unlike most of us. :P Here he is with Mike's mom singing backup.


Tyler and Autumn are into the music big time. Tyler likes the drums and Autumn kind of does, too, but she always wants the microphone. I don't think anyone's real shocked there.


Here's the Colley Family Band. lol. Mike and I got a copy of Rock Band for the Wii and the band made up of Mike, Liz, Donnie and me is called The Angry Monkeys. Hehe! If anyone has seen it--it's an invader zim reference. That's also our guild name in Warcraft for anyone who even has a clue what I'm talking about. Wow. That's a lot of nerdiness in one caption--Rock Band, cartoons, and games!


To wrap things up, have some Daredevil Monkey. This might be one of the last photos of Autumn in her little cheerleader pose because she's gotten a leetle too wiggly.

Merry Christmas!

Christmas with the Italians

Wow, it's been a busy week! Miss Autumn had a sore throat, I finished pretty much all my shopping, and this weekend we went to Birmingham to visit with Mike's extended family. It was, as always, a blast. If nothing else, it's worth the drive for the people watching. Ha!

One of Mike's cousins turned 40 yesterday so, of course, there was cake:


And the ritual defacement decorating of the birthday person's vehicle:


Autumn did a lot of snuggling and watching. I think the crowd freaked her out a little. :)




Here are Brad and Mr. Tyler. Tyler was little less shy than Autumn was.


Tyler and Autumn were pretty cute together. By Sunday night, Autumn was trying to rub his tummy. Which, as many of you know, means he's "in the club." :P


Well, happy Christmas week everyone! I'm sure we'll be posting again soon. Papa D and Mama Lainey are having more fun than the kids are preparing for Christmas so there will be many cute moments to share.

Dancing with Autumn

Well, since the Glamour Monkey post is freaking Mike out a little, I decided to go ahead and post this video so that we have a new top post. :)

We listen to a lot of music. Deezer, Pandora, and Last.fm are a few of our favorite internet radio sites, if anyone is interested. They are cool because we can build playlists and find new music--I've found some of my favorite bands through Pandora. Aaaanyway, it's not unusual to see Miss Autumn suddenly burst into wiggles and bounces and hums. It's kind of funny because she seems to have seriously eclectic taste (I guess kind of like her mama and papa).

For example, I think one of Autumn's favorite songs is Paralyzer by Finger Eleven. She will drop anything and start dancing to that one. Once we were at the mall in Collierville and walked by an outside speaker playing Paralyzer. Autumn stopped, turned around, marched over the speaker, and started wiggling and bopping.

But then, one time, we were watching Tristan und Isolde on PBS. When the lady started singing, Autumn dropped what she was playing with, came over to where I was sitting on the floor, and plopped right down in my lap. She spent the next several minutes just sitting there, staring with her huge baby eyes, and occasionally waving her hands to the music...who needs Baby Einstein, right??

So, anyway, this video isn't so much a dancing video as it is a compilation of the bops, head bangs, wiggles, bounces, finger and toe taps and flails that we see throughout the day. It was really hard to even catch this much because her dances can be either random or short or over by the time I get the camera on. :P But, I hope you enjoy this leetle snippet of some of the best parts of our days.

Glamour Monkey says...

Check out this site--Free Shipping Day is December 18.

Links and Videos

Got a couple of links for you. I know I've already mentioned this but if you aren't using rss feeds to read your blogs, I highly recommend looking into it. A feed reader is awesome because I don't have to keep visiting the blogs I read--I visit a page and anything new I want is right there. Google Reader is probably my favorite right now and it's pretty easy to learn.

Anyway, I bring all that up because I wanted to share a blog with you called The Bargainist. All they do is post deals, coupons, and sales. It's a pretty cool site that shares everything from free Arby's roast beef sandwiches to discounted couture clothing. Thought it might help with Christmas shopping and all. :)

And, since I think that no one reads any entry that doesn't have Autumn in it, have a short video:

November Photo Dump

We hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving!! Ours was pretty quiet which is a little bit of a change from the usual but change is good, right? :) We're well rested and ready to jump into the shopping/parties/carols/gifts/decorations scene. Well........I'm ready for all that. Mike maybe not so much. Ha! Yay for Christmas! Anyway, here are some photos from last month that we didn't get to post. I have a couple of videos in the works so hopefully I can get those posted soon.

First up "Pictures I Laughed At." No one else might but I at least giggled a little. This one cracked me up because they both look so...chilled. Or something. Bored? Ignoring the mama who doesn't ever seem to shut up or put down the camera? "Maybe if we don't look at her she'll go away?"


Call me a 9 year old, but that piece of spaghetti that looks like it is hanging out of her nose made my day. Can you see it? You might have to enlarge the photo...


Second set is "Helpful Baby is Helpful." We have leaf collection:




And mopping!


Mopping...the carpet. Sure. That's cool.


And now we can close out November!!