Christmas in Dayton

On Sunday we traveled to Dayton to conclude our holiday festivities at Aunt Jeanna and Uncle Steve's house. Gavin did a super job in the car ride down and is even in better spirits then past few days. He is still crying out in his sleep occasionally but not waking up.
Be gentle Gavin, this is much nicer than your play set at home. It's amazing how he went for the same pieces he plays with at home though. The angel, cow, momma (Mary) and the sheep.

I love this picture of Daddy and Gavin hanging out reading a new story.

Tim and Mike.

This is the back of Tim's new dress shirt he got for Christmas. No wonder he was willing to "dress" up. I see this going with us on vacation this Spring!

Kristie had a fabulous poem to read that kept everyone paying attention during the gift exchanging process.

I left my gift right next to Mr. Right's right-hand man's, left boot...... omg, someone make it stop! haha

Aunt Jan...no one has ever been so excited with a Snuggie:)

Hi Mike and Matt!

Worst puzzle ever. I may have kept trying had it been a larger bill in the middle. I still haven't figured it out.

During the white elephant gift exchange, Danny ended up with a collection of 5 and a quarter floppies. They are making a return Dan! Get yourself a Commodore 64 and let's play some Ghostbusters!

What got everyone excited this year to get together was to see little Bennett!! Bennett is my cousin Holly's son. They live out of state and it was there first time traveling so far with the little man.

I'm not sure if Gavin just told him a joke and Bennett thinks it was dumb, or maybe Gavin is smiling at the bomb in his pants and Bennett is saying, Dude, you stink!

It was fun seeing the boys together for the first time! And Holly had the most fabulous teething drops with her that they had been using with B. She let us try them while we were there for the afternoon. Holly, I'd like to bow to you...they have changed our home. We went out last night to get some and for the first time, we ALL slept through the night. Wonderful Wonderful Drops!! And all natural makes them even better. I don't know how they work, but they do!

Mommy and Bennett :)

Everyone say "flying pig house!"

A Teething Christmas

Last night was quite a rough night. Gavin woke up every hour or so. I could tell he was miserable, uncomfortable and hurting. I tried giving him Orajel, he hated it. I tried the warm washcloth, cool washcloth, wet washcloth in the freezer for ten minutes, teething rings, letting him chew on his toothbrush, and much to my dismay and frustration, nothing worked. Poor baby's gums were beyond swollen and red, they were almost purple and after chomping down on the washcloth once, were bleeding. I felt awful and had no idea what to do. I gave him a dose of Motrin and rocked with him and sang some Christmas songs. (It's Christmas (very very early) morning after all!) When he finally fell asleep for a bit, I went and researched the Internet. I discover teething tablets by Hyland's are highly recommended. We go get some after brunch when we can find anywhere open. Here is our morning in a nutshell...

Good Morning Gavin! It's Christmas!!
Maybe a fun Santa pancake will cheer you up!

Nope! I don't think he likes whipped cream, besides from feeling awful. I know he loves bananas, pancakes and fruit cups, which make up the rest of this breakfast delight.

OK, so no breakfast, just a big glass of milk. Let's go see if Santa snuck in last night during one of your cat naps.....

He made it!

He went straight over to the block wall.

He sizes it up and then crashes it down.We've now come full circle from waking up. It's been less than an hour. Oh boy....

Tim has already run to the store, but naturally nothing is open..yet. We are lost on how to ease our boy baby's discomfort.

We pack up and head to Grandma and Grandpa's house for Christmas. Here, he naturally starts eating his mini frozen pancakes!

Afterwards he displays the ONLY smile of the day.

While he is eating some breakfast, Tim is busy blowing up his ball pit toy.

He climbed right in after pancakes.

This may have been the happiest he was all day...and you can see he just isn't himself.

Not even cruising around being busy and curious. Just sitting. No sparkle in these eyes today.

No joy today. I've given Tim the opportunity this afternoon to calm him down, as Tim slept through the last 3 nights, and I am exhausted!! I'm just feet away in the chair, wishing I wasn't so tired and more importantly, I could make Gavin feel better.

Here I am. Gavin does take interest in his sing along book for a minute. We will surely have lots of fun with it in weeks to follow:)

He is exhausted, so around 1, he goes down for a nap. Miraculously, he sleeps til just after 3!

This is how he woke up :( Doesn't this just break your heart for him! So so so unhappy.

He comes downstairs and moves around a bit. During his nap, we have found some teething tablets at the one store open in town, and have our fingers crossed for relief. He HATES them. We are trying to make him feel better and I feel like we are torturing him. After calming down, he wants to help Grandpa take pictures.

Grandpa doesn't need any help so we go to play some hoops with one of his new toys while Grandpa finishes up. Can you see the excitement here?? What a happy holiday!

Merry Christmas!! It's one we won't forget.

New Toys

Our new Flip!

I haven't had the energy to post the Christmas pics yet, but they are coming. It's been a rough few days. Gavin is teething to the extreme and not handling it gracefully. We discovered teething tablets and other remedies and we are making progress. He has over 7 pearly whites popping through right now :(

He went down for a nap so I took the opportunity to play with our new toy today. We got a flip video camcorder. I had learned of these little gadgets a while aback from my Uncle Mike, but never went and got one. It appears VERY user friendly and it just plugs directly into your computer for download. The plug for the computer pops directly out of the side of the camcorder! You can't lose it! It also comes with a cable to plug it directly into your TV for viewing. How easy can it get! Here is my test video to practice taping, downloading, and sharing. I'll play with the editing and creating and all that fun stuff another time. Like when I know he is going to sleep more than half hour.

Not an exciting little number, but I promise to get our Christmas pictures on SOON!

(and don't mind my narration..I was testing the recording as well) Oh, and I do mean Spring for the bubble mower.

Christmas Eve with the Johnson's!

Christmas Eve is finally here! Gavin and I have been hanging out the last few days anticipating the holiday. Unfortunately it was due to him being sick. We finally went to the doctors on Wednesday and low and behold, he has an ear infection...on top of some major teething.
We decided to play with the Santa hat to take our minds off the discomfort.

This project I saw from my friend Kelly, and I just couldn't resist copying. Isn't it too cute?! I wish I could say we had a great time making it, but it was the first day Gavin wasn't feeling too well. I had all the paint out before getting him up from his nap, so although he was a bit cranky, I went through with the project. Luckily, my mom happened to stop by right at that time and lent me a hand:)

After his nap today, we packed up for our Johnson Christmas Eve. Every year, we head over to Tim's dad and Kathy's house for dinner and gift exchange. Gavin is playing with one of his new cars.

Here he is telling his little cousin Jasper how much fun he is going to have with his new cookie jar toy. Gavin got one of those last year for Christmas and still plays with it!

Here he's just taking in the room.

Gavin and Grandpa Johnson.

One picture of the three brothers and families before we leave:)

We are getting ready to pack up to head to Uncle John and Deb's house to continue the Johnson Christmas fun! Tim's grandparents had 10 children!! So every Christmas Eve it's a big deal to get everyone together. I know I'm going to be off with numbers but when you only see people once a year in a big group and everyone lives in different places it's hard to keep track. I do believe that Tim's grandparents have nearly 20 grandchildren and at least 7 great grandchildren. If any of the Johnson's are reading this, I could really use a list of names. To others who may be reading, don't think I don't know my family, but I married into this one, and once a year gathering of over 50 people is tough to remember. However, I do know who everyone is when I see them:) I can't believe how much everyone changes from year to year! I wish we could get together more often.

We've been at Uncle Johns for two minutes and Gavin is already making himself at home by checking their cupboards. He then went for a tour through the house. Which I might add is GORGEOUS!

There is Tim's older brother Ben and his family. (Laura, Corey, Adam and Jasper)

I just liked the fireplace so I threw this picture in.

Nice to see you too, Chris.

The kids did their gift exchange first. I don't think we could have held them off any longer:)

Hi Deb! Love your house!

The grown ups have a voluntary gift exchange. If you bring a gift, you'll leave with a gift. Everyone that wants to participate brings a $10-$15 gift. Aunt Joan has been in charge the last two years, and here she is passing out numbers.

The way they do the exchange is fun. She has a poem/rhyme that gets everyone picking a gift, and then swapping with another number or person to left, or darkest hair, etc. I googled it and its called the White Elephant Exchange Poem. It's way too long to type here and you can adjust it to the size of your group. It's a neat way to do the exchange. We have had fun with it the last two years. Here is Aunt Jackie comparing her number with Tim.

Gavin took to Aunt Jackie really well and quickly:) But then he wanted his daddy again.

End of the night, we are ready to head home. Gavin did a wonderful job considering his discomfort last few days. When I say end of the night...it's just after 8. Ha! But someone looks like it's bedtime.

We get home and in jammies and then I remember we forgot to sprinkle the magic reindeer dust outside. I had already made some up, so I threw on some shoes and put a hat on Gavin and we stepped outside quick. We didn't even go in the yard. We sprinkled it in the driveway super fast.

I made it with some instant Quaker oats and red and green colored sugar I had on hand from decorating cookies. I've also seen it made with oats, sugar, and sprinkles. I've heard about using glitter, but that is dangerous to animals to eat, so please use sugar.

Just sprinkle this food on the lawn tonight.

The moon will make it sparkle bright.

As Santa's reindeer fly and roam.

This treat will guide them to your home.

What other way to end the evening than to read 'Twas the Night before Christmas!

Please sleep through the night Gavin. We all need rest.

Merry Christmas Everyone!!

Scary Santa??

After thinking about it for weeks, we finally decide it's time to take Gavin to go see Santa Claus. We load up late this past Saturday morning and head to the Bass Pro Shop. They are very nice there and let my dad come in and take his own pictures, even though they were offering free photos with Santa. They were also very well organized as I had heard stories of extremely long lines to see the big guy. We went in and picked up our Bass Pass for Santa and headed over to Santa's shop. The Bass Pass is a card they pass out with a time on it. They pass out so many per half hour intervals so no one is waiting exceptionally long times. They have tons of crafts and activities on the weekends for kids, so if you get there and can't get a Pass for the time you want, walk and around and check out the displays. We were able to go in immediately and got a Pass for exactly the time we walked in the door. We had to wait in-line almost ten minutes, but where could you go and wait less the Saturday before Christmas.

Now if you were 15 months old, and this Big Guy in Red you keep seeing pictures of in books and on TV, makes this face at you, what do you think you would do?? Remember....you're 15 months old.
I didn't expect anything less. Santa made the funny face after the picture, but I thought it was funnier to put it before this snapshot.

Here is Santa telling Gavin that he is going to come visit him this year for being such a good boy. It almost appears as if he is listening and is going to stop crying. But he didn't.

Gavin was pretty weary of Santa last year too:)

Uh-Oh!

All day long, the words Uh-Oh were repeated and repeated and repeated. Naturally I thought it was cute and funny at first. The "uh-oh," I knocked over the stack of blocks after building a tower and "uh-oh," I need more to drink because it's all gone were fine. Then the intentional uh-ohs began. The "uh-oh" I threw my sippy cup on the floor next to my highchair on "accident" one, the "uh-oh" I threw my toys over the gate for the dogs, "uh-oh" I know I'm not supposed to open the DVD and CD drawers and empty them on the living room floor, to name a few. We were having fun with it and also working on "No" and learning how to put things back as we get them out. He is getting better at putting things back in baskets and being able to go and retrieve item/toy when we ask him.

Now for the rest of the day. I must tell you how lucky I am that Tim volunteered to run some errands after returning from seeing Santa at Bass Pro. I'll post some pics of that next. If I can stay out of stores for any reason possible this time of year, I do. Crowds make me crazy. So off Tim went to get a few things. Here come the Uh-Oh's again. Tim had to park in the farthest possible lot at Levis Commons to go find the Game Store. What a long cold walk. Then he forgot to take the number for a store at the mall to see if they had a size to exchange for us. I looked up the number at home, but impatient as he was, he had already started driving out to the mall. Naturally, the mall is a zoo, and "Uh-oh", he parks on the wrong side of the mall as to where the store is located. We have a very large mall in Toledo too. I say Uh-oh because it was Tim and not myself. I would have been beyond "uh-oh" had it been me, or I may have just went home. (the store didn't end up having the right size to exchange, what a wasted trip and headache) Uh-oh would definitely been not a strong enough phrase.

So Tim gets home. He did manage to get 5 gifts we needed to get for Christmas exchanges and at one store they even gave him an additional military discount. Bonus for his stressful shopping trip. He gets home and we realize we need laundry soap to finish up laundry before going out of town the next day. I volunteer to go, because I can see the "I've been gone all day, and I may snap" look on his face. But he just turns around and walks back out the door. I continue to play with Gavin at home. I decide he has had the TV on too long and turn it off. Uh-oh, this does not make him happy. I tell him its time to play with games and books for awhile. We keep it off until daddy gets home. His trip for laundry soap took an hour due to traffic and crowds. You would think this is as bad as the night could get, but he returns home while Gavin and I are making something in the kitchen, and I hear the dogs going crazy by the front door. Finally I pick Gavin up and come up front to see if maybe he had forgotten his key or something. We can't open the door! Not even from the inside!! (Mind you this is why we turn the TV back on for Gavin, just to keep him occupied and busy while we work on it.) We twist the lock back and forth and get nothing. It's broken in the locked position. Uh-oh. It's late and there is no where to go to fix this tonight. Tim comes in the back door and takes the knob and lock off...yep, it's broke. Although I feel bad at his misfortune, I am super glad it didn't happen when, lets say, I was coming home to empty house, or Tim was getting home with Gavin from daycare and there wasn't anyone home to open the back door. It could always be worse.

First thing in the morning, Tim ran out to buy new knob and lock set. Door was fixed before heading out of town! He got a set to replace the back door as well, so we have keys for both now.

Ok, door is fixed, lets get ready to head to Cleveland for Christmas!