Several posts below.

I just posted 4 or 5 blog updates below.. Finally, caught up to todays activities!

Playdate with icing......

Jessie & Olivia invited Hudson & I over as well as Hillary & Reynolds. These three are probably going to grow up thinking they are siblings & thats okay with me! :-) They really play well together! Jessie slaved all day yesterday & baked homemade sugar cookies & homemade icing. She said it was not her cup of tea, but they tasted great!! It was quite funny seeing the 3 of them trying to decorate cookies. It is so amusing to me to see the way all of their personalities play out in these activities. Here is how it went down-

Olivia is so sweet & dainty & calm. She just sat in her chair & watched Hudson go wild. After the boys were finished, she went to town eating the icing with a knife!! Instead of calling CPS, we all took pictures! lol!

Reynolds is the worker in the group. He has some serious concentration & always works hard to finish his tasks! He is also calm & so sweet!

And then we have Hudson! My oh my. Jessie & Hillary just laugh. I'm not sure if they are laughing at Hudson or me. I am constantly having to caution him, tell him to slow down, etc. He is FULL SPEED AHEAD! He could have cared less about decorating the cookies.. He just wanted to eat them & see how much icing he could get all over his face! If he doesn't remind you to find JOY in everything you do, then I don't know what would!

Thanks Jessie for having us all over! I'm sure you are regretting this decision as you vaccuum for the 3rd time tonight!! :-)

Blog worthy?

Only another Mom can appreciate this picture... But let me preface it with... Hudson has not fallen asleep in my arms since he was an infant. Because we did not start out rocking him, he has never really been rocked except when he is sick. Don't get me wrong, I would love to do it now, but he goes to sleep in his bed on his own & that's the way he likes it. Anyway. A couple of weeks ago he was not feeling very good. He climbed up in my lap & layed down on my chest... AAAAAHHHH. Pure bliss. I was basking in the moment! So glad Eric captured this picture!

A visit to The Childrens Museum

Last weekend, Jessie & I decided to take Hudson & Olivia to Monroe to visit the Childrens Museum over there. This was my 2nd time to take Hudson over there & he has really enjoyed it both times. I know as he gets older there will be more things he can do each time we go. I would have to say the "mouth" might be his favorite. He loves walking in there, sitting on the teeth, & brushing the teeth. Pretty cute! Since our visit was during their Christmas festivities, they had Snow, cookie decorating & Santa was even there! This meeting with Santa went a little smoother than the first meeting. He would not sit in his lap, but after some coercing, he did go take a piece of candy from him! I call that a big improvement!

Breakfast with Santa

We attended our 2nd Squire Creek Breakfast with Santa this year & it was great!! Last year, Hudson was a mere 6 months old, so everything was SO easy. He sat in Santa's lap with no problem, we enjoyed breakfast while he sat in his high chair & looked around. This year, not quite the same experience ;-), but equally as wonderful!

To say that Hudson was afraid of Santa is an understatment! I was shocked though!! If you've been around Hudson at all, you know that he does not have 1 shy bone in his body & he will go to anybody. He loves people. He loves Santa.. Or so I thought! He goes around our house pointing out all of the Santas & my parents have a talking & waving blow up Santa in their front yard that he cannot get enough of. But the "real" Santa... Not so much! The second I put him in Santa's lap, he started screaming! I even tried to hold him in the picture but no luck. We haven't received the pictures from Squire Creek yet, but I have no doubt they will be a priceless memory! We did enjoy a wonderful breakfast afterwards & he enjoyed running around with his buddy Reynolds!

Later that day, we met up with Hillary, Jessie & Olivia for lunch at Sundown.

Thanksgiving!

I think this is my last post to play catch up with! We totally had the untraditional Thanksgiving this year, but it was really relaxing & fun! My family has spent Thanksgiving day with our closest family friends for years. This year, their children were not coming in for Thanksgiving & neither was my brother, so my Mom & Jo decided they'd rather have a relaxing day of NO cooking rather than the traditional, slave in the kitchen all day, kind of Thanksgiving. So, we all headed out to Squire Creek for Thanksgiving lunch. I will say I was skeptical for several reasons. Number 1- This was just a break in tradition & I wasn't sure how I felt about that! Number 2- Hudson is not at a stage of doing great in restaurants. It really is not fun for me to go out to dinner with him because I cannot relax for fear of what might come next! He does not love sitting in the high chair & just wants to get out & run around. But, I'll have to give it to him. He did great on Thanksgiving! He was treated to several breaks from the high chair from his Poppa & so his time in the highchair was spent eating instead of screaming! lol! He even got to visit the Pro Shop at the club & picked out some new clubs! My Dad really cannot wait until the is old enough to start teaching him the game of golf. You've never met anyone who loves golf as much as my Dad. But that is a whole other post!

Here are some pictures from our day!

First Haircut!

Hudson's Daddy insisted that it was time for a haircut! Personally, I think we could have waited a little longer, but I figured I could compromise on this since he lets me dress him in what I choose even though he doesn't always approve! :-) Hudson was getting a little tail in the back so that is all we had to have trimmed! My wonderful hairdresser Crystal was happy to trim up Hudson's neck before my appointment with her. As you'll see, it took a sucker as well as Eric "holding" his head still! Crystal had to kind of chase him around a little bit!

Be sure & see the posts below! I've been on a roll tonight!

Halloween

Our neighborhood hosts a Halloween party every year, and this year it was at our house! We had a blast! It was lots of fun getting the house ready & we had a great turn out! We had about 60 people come to eat, play games & then go on a Hayride! So much fun! I'm sure I've mentioned it before, but we LOVE our neighborhood. A large number of the homes are occupied by young families with small children & at any given time, you can drive through & probably see people outside either walking, playing in the yard & giving you a wave as you pass by. It's wonderful!

Anyway, back to the party! Here are a few pictures from the evening! My little Charlie Brown was cute once again!

Tubes

The month of October was an awful one for us as far as illness. Poor Hudson kept an ear infection for about 6 weeks straight- obviously we tried several antibiodics & nothing would clear it up. Our pediatrician suggested that it was time to see an ENT so I immediately called Dr. Neal's office at Green Clinic. Dr. Neal is very special to my family because we have been seeing him for almost 30 years! He was my ENT when I was little, did my tubes, adnoids, tonsils, etc. He is just great & so wonderful with children. I called on a Thursday after leaving the pediatricians office & we were very blessed that Dr. Neal's office worked us in for he following Monday. We went in & after a short visit with Dr. Neal, he said Hudson was definitely a candidate for tubes & that he could do them that week! WOW! Although the visit with Dr. Neal was short, the visit to Green Clinic was not. After an audiology test, blood work, & x rays, we finally headed out of there 3 very long hours later. We arrived bright & early that Thursday morning to the surgical hospital & we were Dr Neal's first surgery Hudson did fine while we were hanging out in the room & he left with the Nurse just fine. About 30 minutes later Dr. Neal came to get us & he warned us that he might be a little upset as he was waking up. UNDERSTATEMENT OF THE YEAR! Seriously. It was really bad. Between me, Eric & my Dad, we could each only hold him for a couple of minutes before passing him on to the next. He was FIGHTING mad. He was beat red & just plain furious. His eyes weren't even open for the longest time, but finally after an hour, he finally began to settle down. Dr. Neal had told us that he would wake up & then go back to sleep, & when he woke up the 2nd time we could go home.... Well... After they saw how mad he was & how much it took to settle him down, Dr. Neal suggested that we head on home because he assumed he probably would not go back to sleep at the hospital. He was so right! So, we headed home & after he woke up from his noon time nap, he was back to normal! Amazing what modern medicine can do! I am so happy to report that it has been 6 weeks since his surgery & he has been WELL with no ear infections! Yippee! Praying this continues!





Poppa taking Hudson on a wagon ride is the only after picture..... We were quite busy trying to calm him down until this point!

Kaden's Monster Mash

Excuse me for being so late.... I hate backtracking but have got to get caught up before the end of the year! Please bear with me.

Kaden's Monster Mash!

Some friends of ours, Nicola & Jeff Smith, have a beautiful son named Kaden who was diagnosed with Congenital Muscular Distrophy at the age of 3 months. For Kaden's 1st birthday, Jeff & Nicola wanted to have a fundraiser for Cure CMD rather than a normal 1st birthday. They put together a great event at their house (which is in my neighborhood!) with a petting zoo, jumpers, etc.. Lots of fun things for kids to do! It was the weekend before Halloween so they asked all the kids to wear their costumes. They raised almost $5,000 for Cure CMD! Awesome! I pray that there will be a cure found to help Kaden & many other that struggle with this terrible disease.

Is this not the cutest little Monster you've ever seen? This is Kaden!

Hudson loving on Kaden!

Hudson & Reynolds wrestling as usual!