The Christmas Season has official begun!

I think I mentioned this before, and I know it is so silly, but one of the things I actually like about winter is that Molly is much friendlier. She's pretty much constantly seeking heat sources from like October to April.


The funny thing is that occasionally, you can actually see Molly weighing her disdain for humanity with her need for heat. It really freaks out some of our friends because, usually, she's like this.


Wednesday night, we had our community group Christmas dinner. Molly came in and didn't just sit in the room. She draped herself over Mike's knee and chilled out.


Even weirder, she kept her eye on one of the guys. Whenever Brad would move, Molly would shift so she could see him. /psycho music. We were quite baffled by the whole thing.


Anyway, back to the human Colleys. We went to Birmingham for Christmas with the Italians! We had a really great time with everyone, like usual. Autumn was beside herself with excitement over getting to see Tyler.


Do you like her pink stripe on her eye? She went a little crazy with the markers in the car on the way down. She had marker on her face, along her arm, and on both hands. Oh, and Aunt Mary made Autumn's day even more when she gave Autumn an Aurora doll.


She was so excited she gave Aunt Mary a hug and posed for a photo with her.


We tried taking pictures of the 5 kids but this is how the first one turned out.


When I looked and saw Mike scowling I was like OH NO WE ARE REDOING THIS. The second one went better. :)


He's so silly. This one of everybody (except Kyle WHO IS ON A CRUISE, lucky) is at an odd angle but I think it's cute!


Autumn looks a little stricken there, doesn't she? Hahaha.


And so begin the holiday festivities!

A Winter Wonderland! For A Few Hours, At Least

This is what we woke up to Wednesday!


It was our second snow of the season which is just crazy for Memphis. I'm not complaining. It's fun and pretty and Autumn just loves it.


I had to go to the gym which meant that we didn't have a ton of time but Autumn and I went out and made a snowman while oatmeal was on the stove. Mike was, by the way, seriously disappointed to have missed the oatmeal.


We got a pretty good snowman built, height-wise buuuuut I think I made the head too big and by the time we left for the gym, his head (her head?) was on the ground. Autumn wasn't too upset. She had fun eating oatmeal and giving me updates on how far the snowman was leaning.


We're still doing the weird smiling thing, as you can see. :) One fun thing about the cold weather is how friendly Molly is. She's basically a heat seeking kitty so she spends a lot of time with me since I usually have a blanket or fuzzy sweater on.


I bought this shirt for Autumn a really long time ago. For some reason, she would never wear it but she wore it twice this week! I am sooooo excited because I love this shirt so much I want one for myself.


We've been trying to get a good balance of the Jesus and not so Jesus parts of Christmas so I've been reading Autumn the Christmas stories from her little bible. By the way, if you're looking for a Bible for a kid, I highly recommend this one. The stories are well done and the illustrations are beautiful and have people of all colors and looks. Anyway, I love it when she sits down and is all, "I'm reading my Bible!"


How cute is this? Here she is ready for church in her cute coat, hat, and boots. All courtesy of Lainey, of course!


Tonight she and I worked really hard together dusting the house, getting it ready for some more decorations and our community group Christmas party. She really is a big help and she told Mike, "I love to dust!" I hope she keeps that up, for real. By the time she was waiting on her Sunday Night Grilled Cheese, she was done.


Poor thing! Such a hard life!

Christmas Crafts and Chores!

Oh, man, I have to confess I have hardly taken any photos. We've been really working hard getting the house cleaned up and ready for the holidays. Autumn's been a bigger help than one would think a four year old might be. The first thing we put up was her pink Christmas tree. :) I promise I didn't buy this...it used to be her Aunt Lauren's!


Getting things ready for Christmas has involved things like cleaning out the pantry. Totally random but it's something that got out of control while I was sick and I need everything in its place as we get ready for Christmas dinner with my family and then our New Year's Brunch. Autumn spends entirely too much time asking me when Christmas is going to be here so I decided we'd make a little Advent craft. We've never really done the advent calendar but it seems like a good time to start. We did it really simply with strips of construction paper, crayons, and stickers and then we made a chain with the strips.


Please don't laugh at my drawing! We didn't have any red paper so we decided to decorate the white paper. We used this sticker book that had all kinds of stickers in it. I was pretty tickled by some of Autumn's decorating choices. My favorite is where she wrote the word Jesus and then used black cat stickers! Also, right below, note the Christmas watermelon.


I'm attempting to work on a project for a friend, I'll eventually post it on the other blog after it is done. I'm not so sure it's going the way I wanted but we shall see. Anyway, I went to take some photos. Autumn was going to be in one but she was less than cooperative.


She did the same face today when I tried to take her picture while we did the Christmas craft.


I don't feel too bad because she did this with Elizabeth, too, haha. We got our gorgeous cd of photos this week. Here's one funny one.


Our daughter is a lion.

I do have to include one pretty one!


So cute!

Thanksgiving Weekend!

Well, we are officially wrapping up Thanksgiving and getting ready for Christmas! Can you believe it's that time already? I have to confess that I was feeling rather bah humbug about the whole thing but seeing Autumn get soooo excited about the Christmas trees...well, that helped. :) It was funny, when we got in from Birmingham on Thanksgiving night, Autumn went into Mike's parents' foyer for the first time since their tree was delivered. She looked wayyyyyy up (it's a huge tree) and said, "this is the best."

Anyway, we left for Birmingham on Thursday morning and made it to Aunt Mary's. We had a really good time seeing all the Italians for the first time since May. It was, of course, a little hard to go down without Garrett but not as painful as it could have been. Autumn helped, as she always does. She was soooo excited about seeing Tyler because "he's my best friend and I love him." Here they are playing in the bushes. Someone tried to scare them out of the bushes by saying there were snakes but that just made them have a good time running in and out of them screaming.


We got a pretty good family photo. Autumn was the ornery one in this one, haha. She had her hand over her face in all of them and I never noticed! Tyler had his tongue out in all of these but this one. They are so silly.


How sweet is this?


Two little turkeys, gobble gobble gobbling.


Friday we did Thanksgiving with Nanny and Boppa and it was delicious. We also celebrated Lainey's birthday. I've been looking forward to this for forever because, for one, Lindsay and I went in together on a cool gift like, three months ago. And for another, I got Lainey this.


Ha! The story is that, long ago when Mike was a roly poly baby, Lainey's first Mother's Day rolled around. P'd gave her a hot dogger. And a poem on a paper bag (Mike wrote me a poem on a paper bag our first Mother's Day as an homage to his dad). So when I saw the hot dog toaster at Penny's garage sale, I immediately asked her how much it was. :) She just gave it to me. Seriously, I laughed so hard when Lainey opened it. And then we gave her the real gift. At the end, Lindsay got in on the joke gifting with this knee and elbow pad set. :) For those of you not in the know, Lainey has taken some epic spills so they are getting her ready for the winter ice!


Here's Hudson. Oh, excuse me. Baby Huzzon. I was calling him Hudson on the way home in the car and Autumn informed me that his name is NOT Hudson. His name is "Baby Huzzon." Anyway, Baby Huzzon was being cute and not wanting to eat his squash (smart kid). I tried to get a photo but it didn't really work out. I got this one of him looking ridiculously like his dad, though.


And, to wrap up Thanksgiving, this is what Tyler and Autumn did all weekend:


They were darn cute, giggling and laughing like crazy monkeys. Autumn stayed over there most of the weekend and Mike and I came over every night for dinner. Every time she saw us, her eyes would fill with tears and she would say, "I don't want to go home, I want to stay with Lainey and P'd and Tyyyyyylerrrr!" She's lucky I have good self esteem!

Oh! Have some vintage Autumn from November 2007, sporting a mohawk and chubbeh chubbeh cheeks of cute!

The answer to world peace? Owls.

Sigh. Don't you feel better now? Seriously, Autumn and I watched this together twice and I've watched it **mumblemumblecough** times on my own.

P'd has been out and about doing worky things and when he came to see Autumn a week ago, he brought her a present.


She was very happy. :) The first thing she did the next morning was hop into her tent. When I came to get her for breakfast, she popped out and goes, "I'm not a caterpillar anymore!" As a side note, I think we're going to do one of these.

Someone else has been enjoying P'd's gift. I didn't realize she was in there and heard her rustling around, getting ready to watch the sanitation workers, which I assume she does every Thursday? Kitty routines.


So, Autumn is a hoarder. I think a lot of kids her age have a tendency to do that and it totally cracks me up. She'll stash things in her backpacks or bags--I had to limit her to one bag at a time because we'd get into this deal where she'd "lose" something when it's just in one of the bags she's stashed around the house. Or in the pile she's made in her closet. Or possibly in the pile she's made on her bed in the dark during nap time.


Or maybe under her pillow?


Ha. Here she is "being comfy" with her blankets and pillows. I think I've told the story here before but in case I didn't, here goes: not long after we first moved here, I was looking for Autumn. I heard her, all muffled, say, "I'm in my room being comfy!" I went in and found her sitting in her basket of stuffed animals.


Oh, this was kind of fun. Right before I got these pictures of her, this little guy was hanging out on the tree right outside the window. We watched him go to town on the seeds or whatever it is that's on that tree.


Cute stuff!

Well, I hope everyone has a great Thanksgiving if I don't get to post anything here before we doing some turkey devouring! Be safe and take care!

Doing some catch-up...

Due to coughing like there's no tomorrow, I have done absolutely nothing blog-worthy this week. Which means I have taken zero photos, except for some I took at Cheri's shop The English Garden to make her some postcards which will probably show up over on my other blog sometime soon! So I think I'll take this week to catch up on a couple of things we did before Halloween!

First up, Aunt Penny's house! Autumn goes over there to visit Aunt Penny, of course, but she also gets some fun play time with the dogs. Mostly Conan because Ace is kind of shy. I need to get video of this but Conan will bring her a toy and Autumn will say, "leave it! Sit!" And then Conan will do it.


And then she tosses it, he leaps in the air, and she giggles maniacally.


Fun times.


Also in October, Autumn finished up her first sticker sheet (I talk about her sticker sheet in detail here) and her last item in the treasure box was a trip to TCBY. She had been wanting a cone since she saw Pinkalicious eating one in her book.


She actually did a great job although it got a little messy. What's not showing up in the photo is how much is in her hair. Mike is continually amazed and baffled at how much food gets distributed in her hair...I used to have her eat in a hat, I should start it up again, hahaha.


And it took a seriously long time so the ice cream melted and this happened.


There was much sadness.


But I think she had a good time trying out her cone! That being said, the next time we went to TCBY (after her flu shot, I should write about that when I am less gross), she got a cup.

And, since I can't end on a sad, spilled ice cream note, have this picture. :) It's all grainy because I took it with my phone. Molly was staring intently out the window the other night. I turned on the light and saw this big, grey cat that I think lives at the corner house. Autumn ended up taking Molly's place and she and the cat stared at each other a while. Autumn said, "what's up kitty cat? My name is Autumn."