5 days of Christmas

Our Christmas was full of family, food, presents, and fun! We had 5 days of Christmas, literally. Every time Austin opened something he'd say "This is what I've always wanted!" Andrew was a little confused throughout the whole thing, but he'll get the hang of Christmas next year.



We started our Christmas celebration on the 23rd with Nea and Dede. The kids got many cool things and they had a great time playing with Ella.




Our 2nd Christmas was with Grandma and Grandpa on the 24th and with Santa on the 25th. Austin got a remote control dinosaur. Andrew has discovered dinosaurs and LOVES Austin's gift!



Christmas Eve was fun! Austin's at a great age because he was so excited about Santa coming. After much convincing, he finally fell asleep and Santa came. Christmas morning, Austin ran into our room and said "Mommy, Daddy. Santa came! And he left toys! Come, come, come!" We came down the steps and he saw everything he asked for under the main tree. Everything, but his bike and helmet. Santa left that next to the kids tree in the playroom. Austin went into the playroom and turned on the tree and said "WOW! It's not the one I wanted, but yea!" Santa was good to both kids. From Santa, Austin got some Bendaroos, Pixos, Legos, a new bike and helmet. Andrew got a shopping cart, a giraffe learning bike, an Elmo and Elmo steering wheel.

We got Austin some tornado/weather stuff (a book, a movie, and an "I love tornados" t-shirt). Austin opened the shirt and saw it was just a box and said "Mommy, next year just get me toys." I told him that he would like what was inside the box and, of course, he did.

On the 26th, we did Christmas with Nonna and Papa. Papa made Andrew a much needed bigger toybox. Austin got a storm chaser jr. t-shirt and an autographed picture of Reed Timmer. (For those of you who don't know, Reed is an extreme meteorologist on Storm Chasers). Austin loved it! He's put the picture in his room.


Our 5th and final Christmas was with Gene's brother. Austin got a new Sorry Sliders game which is pretty fun. We've already played it a few times and Austin loves it!

Our little shepherd

Our church has a children's Christmas Eve Mass where there is a children's choir and the kids perform the Christmas story. This year, Austin was a shepherd. His only job was to come into the church and point at the star and then when the Angel Gabriel came to kneel. Very simple.

I was a little afraid because the church was packed with people and Austin gets a little shy in front of a large crowd. But, he performed his part wonderfully!

Hermey's return

Hermey, our elf, returned this year around the first of December. So far, he hasn't caused too much trouble. Mostly he's been snacking during the middle of the night. He's gotten into the mini-marshmallows, had some hot chocolate, ate some popcorn and Hershey kisses, and ate a candy cane. On one of his last nights with us, he made some mischief. He dumped out our cinnamon pine cones, pulled the stockings off the manel, pulled the pillows off the couch, and put on Andrew's tennis shoes! He was pretty busy in the night!

But, you're a Mommy

Austin's teacher sent home a calendar of the month of December with 24 M&Ms. On each day of the month, there was a task (i.e. name the 5 senses, count the steps in your house, etc.). Austin would get a M&M for each day if he answered the question for the day or solved the problem or whatever.

I have to admit we'd fallen behind on the calendar, so tonight we were catching up. One of the questions was to name the months of the year. Now, Austin's known the months of the year for a long time. So, imagine my surprise when Austin got to May and then said that he didn't know the rest. I kept pushing him to remember, reminding him of the song that he used to sing to remember the months and giving him hints. He got frustrated with himself and with me. He says "You're a Mommy. You're supposed to help kids. I'm a kid; you're supposed to help me." I couldn't help but get tickled. He's such a smart kid.

I then explained to him that, yes, Mommy's do help kids, but I won't do the work for him. I equated it to cleaning up the playroom. I would help him clean up but I'm not going to clean up all by myself. He nodded like he understood. We'll try again tomorrow!

Gingerbread house

Our second attempt at a gingerbread house worked out a little better. We had more icing and more decoration. Again, I told Austin that the house probably wouldn't look like the picture. He didn't care. He had a great time decorating it!

School Christmas party

Andrew had his class Christmas party. At first, he was pretty upset that I came in and didn't immediately leave with him. When I say upset, I mean throwing the biggest fit of his whole 19 month old life complete with red face, stomping feet, spinning around in a circle, and screaming at the top of his lungs. Once snack was served, all was well.

The kids decorated cookies. Correction, I decorated cookies. Andrew ate the icing and spilled the sprinkles all over.

Every year the kids have a book exchange instead of exchaning presents. It's nice because we come home with a brand new book to read! Andrew had a good time opening the book.

Mommy's little helper

Austin and Andrew love the vacuum. Austin loves it so much that he wanted to help vacuum his room. Who am I to deny such a request? I took this picture mostly to prove to him one day that he did enjoy cleaning up his room.

Santa Visit

I took Austin and Andrew to see Santa at the Bass Pro Shop. They had all sorts of things to do there like remote control cars, laser firing range, and cool snacks. As predicted, Andrew had a come apart at the sight of Santa. But he didn't do too bad when we were sitting on Santa's lap. I say we because I had to sit too so Andrew would take a decent picture. Here's take 2.
Austin made sure to tell Santa everything he wanted for Christmas including the blue and yellow bike and red helmet we saw last week.

Andrew's 18 months old!

Andrew is 18 months old today. It's hard to believe that a year and a half has gone by since this sweet boy was born. And when I say sweet, I mean sweet. Andrew's the most good natured, laid back, easy going, loving child. He gives hugs and kisses to everyone. He says he's sorry with a hug. Everyone at his school says how sweet he is both to the teachers and his little friends.

Andrew loves books. His favorite still is Mr. Brown Can Moo, Can You? He says the different parts of the book (moo, pop, dibble dibble dopp, boom boom boom). He's started looking at My World (companion to Goodnight Moon) and Knuffle Bunny (a personal favorite). He's discovered Elmo and thinks that Nemo is Elmo! He still loves the Wonder Pets and has started liking The Backyardigans.

Andrew loves his gloworm. He calls it his baby. He presses it's tummy to make it light up and play music and rocks it back and forth. He's saying all kinds of things. He knows where his ears, nose, toes, mouth, head, feet, arms, and legs are. He says Amen when we finish saying the blessing at dinner and after we say his good night prayer.

Andrew loves to color! He has his own coloring books and crayons and loves to draw and color. His favorite thing to eat at the moment is fruit. Any kind of fruit will do. He still doesn't like green beans but has started liking mashed potatoes.

We love you Andrew and can't wait to see what the next few months have in store for us (and you)!

18 month appointment

Gene took Andrew for his 18 month check up today. I can't believe he's already 18 months! It seems like just yesterday we brought Andrew home for the hospital and were in the middle of colic and hours of crying non-stop and diaper changes and nursing and sleeplessness all the other things that goes along with a newborn.

The doctor said he looked good. He has some eczema but that's normal this time of year. Andrew got 4 shots yesterday. He weighs 28 pounds and 6 ounces (75% percentile). He is 34 1/2 inches tall (95% percentile). (To give you some idea of how the kids compare at the same age, Austin was 25 pounds 4 ounces and 33 1/2 inches tall at 18 months). Andrew's a pretty big (and tall) boy!

Love letter(s)

Austin wrote his first love letter this week. Actually, he wrote two. One to Gracie (his girlfriend from school) and one today to Abby, a girl on his soccer team. Gracie's love letter was a little more thought out than Abby's. To Gracie, he wrote "I love Gracie" and drew a picture of himself and her (he with brown hair and her with yellow/blonde hair). Today's love letter to Abby was similar. It said "I love Abby" but only had a picture of her. I hate that I didn't get a picture of either letter. I'm sure these won't be the last love letters he writes!

1st girlfriend

Austin has his first girlfriend. When we first talked to him about this little girl, he said she was his best friend. He's kissed her on the playground (twice). But, last week at his fall party, she told me "Austin said I was his girlfriend." I guess it was official then. I met her mom last week at the pumpkin patch and luckily she thinks it's cute and sweet also.

Last night at soccer practice, Austin was running back and forth to the field next to ours and kept hugging this one girl. Of course, it was his girlfriend. On the way out, I talked to her mom. She said that her daughter came home yesterday and said "Mom, I'm freaking out." Her mom asked her why. She said "Because Austin is going to be at my soccer practice tonight!" We laughed about this of course, but it makes me wonder. If this is what it's like at 5 1/2 years old, I can't imagine what it will be like 10 years from now!

Happy Halloween!

Austin got the idea for his and Andrew's costume when he was looking through a costume magazine we got in the mail. Austin would be the policeman and Andrew would be the criminal. I started hunting for a white or orange sweat suit, but couldn't find one anywhere. Gene came up with the idea of making Andrew an old fashioned bank robber. I made a black mask for him and a money bag (white pillow case stuffed with crumpled newspaper and a $ drawn on the front). It turned out pretty cute! Andrew didn't want to keep his mask on very long, but I did manage to get a picture.






Austin did get his first trick last night at one house. The kids threw snap pops at him and scared him. As the mom, this upset me. I know it's all part of Halloween, but still. Austin didn't want to go to any more houses after that. But he did start planning how he would trick people next year!

Pumpkin patch

I chaperoned Austin's first field trip to the pumpkin patch. I met the bus at Old Baker Farm for our trip. The kids had a blast. They picked cotton, petted a baby goat and rabbit, ran through a hay bale maze, and took a hay ride to the pumpkin patch to find their perfect pumpkin. The day started off pretty chilly but warmed up A LOT. By lunch time, we were helping kids take layers off so they wouldn't be too hot. All in all, the trip was great!

Fall party #2

Today, it was Austin's turn for his fall party. Kindergarten parties are quite different from daycare/preschool parties. At Andrew's, we pretty much watched them eat snack and then left. At Austin's party today, we had 3 activity tables: cookie decorating, slime making, and pumpkin painting. I didn't get to see or visit with Austin much since I was helping the kids decorate cookies.

Here is Austin's cookie creation.

Fall party #1

Today was Andrew's fall party and costume parade at school. The kids came to school dressed in their costumes and paraded to each classroom collecting goodies. The party was in the afternoon at snack time. Andrew was a skeleton for this party.

He loved the mini cupcakes!

And, of course, the cheese puffs!

Gingerbread haunted house

I've never proclaimed to be creative or artistic in any way. But, Austin and I saw this gingerbread haunted house in the store a couple of weeks ago and we just had to buy it. I convinced him to wait until closer to Halloween to do this project. We have two cats that love to nibble on things they shouldn't. Last Sunday, we pulled out all the parts and pieces and the instructions at about 4:00 p.m. I decided it was best for me to read the directions thoroughly first before attempting to put this thing together. So, we decided to wait until yesterday when we had plenty of time to work on it.

I explained to Austin that ours probably wouldn't look as good as the houses on the package. I also told him that we could decorate it however we wanted to. It was our haunted house, so we could do what we wanted with it.

First, you mix the icing of your choice and then use it as glue to hold all the parts of the house together. This was interesting because none of the pieces really fit together as they came in the package. I didn't do any trimming; I'm not a patient person and me trimming gingerbread pieces would probably end up more disastrous than leaving them as they came. So, we managed to get the bottom of the house together and then came the waiting. ONE LONG HOUR for the "glue" to set! We set the timer so we'd know when it beeped it would be ready to put the roof on. We got the roof on and then waited a little bit before mixing the green icing for the slimy roof. The icing was a little too thin but Austin didn't care. He was anxious to put all the decorations on the house. When we were finished, he asked if it was time to eat it!

Here's a picture of what it should have looked like.

Here's how ours turned out. Not bad for our first try. I'm sure our Christmas house will be better!

Brotherly love

Here are some recent pictures of the boys together. Aren't they just so sweet?!?

Austin's artwork

A couple of samples of Austin's recent artwork. This is a mermaid. Notice the two brown spots on her. I'm sure you can guess what those are.

This is supposed to be a spooky, scary house. It looks pretty mean, right?

Again with the bags

I have no idea what's up with Andrew's fascination with plastic sacks. Hmmm....which one to fluff first? So many to pick from.

Pumpkin project

Austin hasn't had many homework assignments yet. So far we've had two big project assignments. The first was around the first of September. It was an All About Me book. We had to answer some questions about Austin and he got to decorate the pages.


The second is due next week. We were to decorate a pumpkin like a character from his favorite nursery rhyme. Austin picked Peter, Peter Pumpkin Eater. To refresh your memory:

Peter, Peter pumpkin eater
Had a wife and couldn't keep her
He put her in a pumpkin shell
And there he kept her very well


So, we started thinking about what we could do to decorate our pumpkin. He didn't want to do just one character from the story. He wanted to do the whole story. So, last weekend, we purchased a craft pumpkin, a girl doll, a boy doll, some fake flowers, and hot glue. The doll was a fairy doll and the only boy doll we could find at the dollar store was a wrestler action figure.


Today, we put it all together. Of course, Austin was involved as much as he could be. He couldn't use the glue gun, but he drew and cut out the door and the curtains for the windows. He wrote his name on a piece of paper so the pumpkin would be labeled. And he put all the stuff inside for the wife.


Here is our creation. It's tacky, but it was all his idea. Actually, it turned out pretty cute.

Team spirit

Andrew doesn't mind wearing hats or really anything on his head. He will keep it on a lot longer than Austin will. Here are some cute pics of Andrew wearing Gene's Georgia hat.

Favorite past times

Three things Andrew loves to do:

Try on shoes (mostly Mommy's flip flops)



Fluff pastic sacks (I could never get a picture of his face while fluffing...it's hilarious)

And color

Austin cut his hair

Austin cut his hair today at school. He wasn't even 30 minutes into the school day when the principal called to let me know. Austin said that a friend told him to cut it. All day I was wondering what it looked like. Actually, I can't really tell that he did anything. He said he didn't cut much.

First soccer game

Austin had his first soccer game tonight. Actually, the first game was last Friday night. It was a makeup game from the previous Saturday. Austin was sick so we couldn't make that game.

They played at night so we didn't get many pictures. Here are a couple. Austin's in the bright red shirt; the coach forgot to bring his team shirt.

New phrases

It's so funny the things that Austin picks up from people. Of course, being in school, he's picked up all kinds of new words and phrases. Here are a couple of funny ones.

- Austin has 2 teachers, his regular school teacher and his extended day teacher. And both of their names sound pretty similar. So he just says that there are two Mrs. Haswells (his regular teacher's name). The way he tells them apart? The real Mrs. Haswell is "the one with the lipstick." She always has lipstick on no matter the time of day.
- The other day, Austin was putting something away and it fell off the shelf. He said, "my bad."

Sans computer

A few weeks ago our new, less than 4 months old computer started having problems. Luckily, we still have our dinosaur of a computer but it's SO SLOW and takes forever to load a web page. Needless to say, posts have been non-existant. Here are a few updates from around the Fambrough house:

- Andrew got 4 more teeth!
- Andrew's saying more and more words every day and is signing a lot more. He's says color, Austin (and it sounds more like Austin), tree, that, this. He knows the signs for eat, more, please, hat, book, and baby.
- Andrew is SO loving. He hugs and kisses everyone at school before he leaves for the day.
- Austin went on his first field trip yesterday to...WalMart! The kindergarteners went around the store finding and reading environmental print such as cereal boxes and signs.
- Austin has a "best friend." He's not familiar with the terms girlfriend/boyfriend, but the little girl is his "best friend." Their teacher said that they do everything together. They even sat next to each other on the trip to WalMart. Austin likes the blondes. :-)

We haven't started soccer yet. We were supposed to start practice a couple of weeks ago but have been rained out every day. We hope to be able to practice today and have a game this weekend. Austin's really excited about getting started!

12 Days of Christmas

Andrew is starting to really squirm on the changing table. One day, for some reason, I started singing the 12 Days of Christmas. And he loves it! Austin has started joining in on the singing too. Of course, he gets a couple of the lines wrong. he says two turtle ducks and four calling bursts.

Today was the first day of Sunday school and Austin drew this. The moment I read the title of the picture I knew what he was talking about and it's hilarious. Do you think he's a little confused?

No, No Baby Andrew!

I didn't know that the days of Austin barring Andrew from coming into a room or a fort or just generally being around would start so early. Here is Austin's sign blocking Andrew's admittance from his fort. It's a pretty good sign and he even wrote no.

Brotherly love (or something like that)

I don't know why Andrew doesn't look thrilled.