Merry Christmas...

To all our family and friends (or whoever actually reads this thing), wishing you a fabulous Christmas! I hope Santa is good to you and your children, hopefully they end up on the "nice" list and not the "naughty" list (we have been working VERY hard on that this week in our house)... We leave early Thursday morning to drive to Ann Arbor to spend Christmas with my family. Please be thinking of us during our 12 hour drive with 2 young kids, its going to be interesting... Safe travels, peace, love and joy to you all!

p.s. this is what your Christmas card was SUPPOSED to look like... the numbers are a secret code that we will have to kill you if we told you what they meant...

Fun in the Car...

Who knew? Some of the best pix we got all weekend were in the car coming home on Saturday night...

Festival of Lights...

I have tried to post this since Thanksgiving, where has the time gone? I won't write much, but we went to a place call Edaville Railroad of Thanksgiving weekend and had a blast. It is an old school carnival type place with rides and a train. They have a festival of lights event where the whole park is lite up and I thought it would be fun to try this year. Audrey absolutely LOVED it! Which kind of surprised me honestly. She LOVED the rides and had Charlie and I wait in line for 20 minutes to go on the ferris wheel... Best part was I was scared to death and she was in heaven!

Giving Thanks...

I have so much to be thankful for... A wonderful husband, 2 beautiful healthy kids I am able to provide for, loving parents, wonderful family and friends, and so much more. Hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving and have taken the weekend to reflect on what you are thankful for...

Audrey had a feast at her pre-school that Charlie and I went to last week. Really really cute...

My New Favorite Place...

So I have lived in Boston for close to 10 years (that makes me sound old, eh?) and I am kind of embarrassed to admit I just found a new cool place. Recently I found my new favorite place, Castle Island in South Boston. Ok, my neighbors introduced me and told us about a fun and free Halloween festival there at Halloween time. So it is my new favorite place because it is thee best place to take pictures. There is this awesome stone castle which is an awesome back drop, the water, a beach, grassy hills and a play ground for the kids to play at after the photo shoot... In fact I just dragged the family there last Sunday to do a photo shoot for our Christmas card. I don't want to spoil our card this year (if you want a sneak peak look at Chase's 18 month pix) but here are the pix from the Halloween festival a couple weekends back...

Eighteen Months...

{note, this was written last week but I never posted it!} So Chase turned 18 months this week. And he is one busy little boy... He is a momma's boy and a crazy man all in one... He continues to be a boys boys, and loves trucks, balls and to throw things (which kind of drives me nuts). He loves his big sister and loves to do whatever she does, right or wrong. He loves to eat, not veggies but just about anything else that you put on his plate. He is still not talking with words... He has a couple basics, momma (of course), hi, bye, ball, da-da... But he communicates just fine and gets his point across with no issue and certainly understands everything we say. He just started to really like books which is fun since Audrey has never been a huge book girl, especially at his age. Our big issue right now is he is hitting which I am less than thrilled with. It is not malicious most of the time, he thinks it is playing and funny. I keep blaming it on a kid at daycare but he is a boy and I guess this is the phase? Hopefully... We had his 18 month well visit and I am happy to report that he is finally on the chart for weight after all this time! Stats are: 31 lbs 2 oz (95th percentile) and 34" (90th percentile).

The Fairy and the Dragon...

We had a successful costume year in the Dennison household... Audrey picked out her costume for the first time which was exciting for me. She chose a fairy costume weeks ago, and joined the other 90% of 3 year olds that were fairies & princesses this year. I'm totally ok with that. She loved it, looked adorable and it even proved to be a great costume for layering which was key since it was freezing out when the sun went down.


Chase was another matter. We had 3 costumes for him at one point, a lion, a monkey (both hand me downs) and a dragon I bought. He hated them all. I finally got him in the monkey costume last weekend and it seemed that was a go. I returned the dragon even though I loved it but couldn't justify the money when who knew if he would wear it. Fast forward to Saturday night before Halloween and I was in Old Navy with the kids returning something and stumbled upon their costume rack. All at $5. And there was a dragon. And it was freaking cute. I put it on him in the store and he ran off and left it on til we got home. So Chase was a dragon, and darn cute if I do say so (the tail was the best!). It again was a warm costume which worked well and he kept it on all night so what more could I ask for...

Halloween 2010...

Happy Belated Halloween to everyone! Hope you all had as much fun as we did... We had a full day of pumpkin carving, pre-trick-or-treating party at our neighbors and of course some trick or treating... Trick or treating was different than normal this year. First of all Charlie's mom was in town, which was great to begin with, but was doubly great in that she manned the door while Charlie and I both went out trick or treating with the kids. I usually stay home and give out candy and I have always felt like I was missing out so I was excited to go this year. I will say it was much different then I was expecting. Honestly it was exhausting! I never realized how many steps people in our neighborhood have (I'm talking 10 steps on most houses)! This is tiring enough, but I ended up carrying Chase up and/or down the steps trying to keep up with the group (we still were way behind but that is another story). Second of all, Audrey has always had a fear of dogs which lately has become really bad. The first house we went to had a dog that was at the door and Audrey screamed like she had seen a ghost or something. After that we saw multiple dogs and she was not happy and wanted to go home. We finally calmed her down, skipped the houses we knew had dogs and walked her up to each door because she was freaked out. Definitely not the experience she had last year running with her friend Izzie from house to house. Which is ok. She had fun and got PLENTY of candy... But Chase ended up being the trick or treating champ this year. He LOVED it and got mad when we went home! He was running down the street in between houses and went up to the doors and put his bag out for candy. If they let you take it, he took multiple pieces... It was pretty funny...

My attempt at getting a family picture. Everyone is at least looking at the camera for once...

Pumpkins...

Pickin' out their pumpkins... Fun that they actually want to do it this year! The squirrels ate Charlie and I's pumpkins this year which was pretty cool... Have I ever said how much I hate squirrels???

Halloween Preview...

We had a practice run of Halloween last Saturday so that Audrey could teach Chase how to properly trick or treat... It went well and the good news is both got in their costumes and wore them for awhile so I have high hopes for the day of (my kids are none for NOT liking costumes if you do recall)... Should be fun this year, I am really looking forward to it...

BFF's...

It is a rare moment when Audrey and Izzie actually ACT like BFF's (they talk about each other ALL the time, but when together the love is not always there)... And when they do, they couldn't be cuter, in matching fleeces and all...

Apple Picking...

I am so behind on pictures I can't believe it... We went to our favorite apple orchard, Honey Pot Farms several weekends ago with our friends the Careys... It was a gorgeous day and a ton of fun. We go there every year, but this is the first year we actual went and picked apples. Weird I know, but the kids have been too little and the farm animals, donuts and pumpkins are usually just about all we need. The picking was fun, though I ran after Chase the majority of the time... They had actual ladders to climb up on some of the trees which I thought was cool. Good photo opts at least... Needless to say we have been eating apples since then...