Fireworks

Christmas

Happy Birthday Tanner!

You are 4 years old today!

The things you love each day seem to vary but mostly consist of Mater, construction trucks of any kind, cars, tools and your Leapster.

You told me your favorite color today was blue.

You have a super fun imagination. You tell me hilarious stories all the time. Sometimes I wonder if you think they are real because you tell it with such enthusiasm. You also love to embellish events that actually happened and try to convince us that the said event really did happen that way.

You love your blue "Mi-mi" blanket but you are not so attached that you HAVE to have it ALL the time but you sure love to snuggle with it especially after I've washed it. I'm not sure where the name "mi-mi" came from, you just started calling it that one day.

You love to play with Lana all the time and miss her on the days she goes to school and you don't. Most of the time you play well together. You two currently argue over who sits in the coveted seat on the gray table (the seat where you can see the t.v. the best).

You are most likely to go with dad to run an errand when me and Lana want to stay home. You are a good shopping companion except when we walk past the toy isle. I try to avoid walking past there when you are with me.

You have recently started learning sight words. We started you so early mostly because you want to do homework just like Lana. You can read 30 sight words so far. You are such a smarty pants.

You love preschool and your current teacher Ms. Melanie. You have lots of fun each day and always come home happy and eager to share something about what you learned.

We are so happy to have you in our lives, happy birthday Tanner-manner!

Mississippi Autumn

One of the few things I love about Mississippi is its fall season. (Except apparently "Fly Season" happens around the same time, putting a slight damper on my happiness.) The weather has finally cooled off, the humidity is low and my windows and doors are open most days (which means I have a TON of flies to kill) and the kids spend lots of time outside playing with friends. The few hardwood trees we have around here change color, making me miss our South Carolina home and the beautiful Smokey Mountains.

I looked in our backyard and noticed the blanket of leaves. So we broke out the rake (while Paul broke out the leaf blower) and made a pile of leaves for the kids. They LOVED it.

We also noticed the massive amounts of pecans lying in our grass. The harvest last year was late and small so we really didn't pick up any. Our neighbors have a massive Pecan tree in their yard which drops pecans in our yard but this year we discovered that two of our own pecan trees bore nuts! So my new time-out punishment? Go pick up 25 pecans. The kids HATE it. I LOVE it!

Happy Fall!

Flies - 0
Michelle - 37

Happy Halloween!

This year Lana was Cinderella and Tanner was Mater. He really wanted to be Mater the firetruck, so I told him to wear his fireman hat with his Mater costume, but he didn't want to give up the Mater hat. He was fine with it though and that's what matters most.



He was also having issues standing/sitting/just in general being still for pictures.



Lana was fantastic. Except for the squinty eyes. But I finally got some good pictures of her.


Did I mention she lost another tooth? This makes 4 in total and she has another one loose already.


Squinty, cheesy Tanner.


Crooked smile, squinty Tanner.


Fidgety, squinty, cheesy Tanner.



Blurry, dancing Tanner.



Finally! A good picture!



I am not going to lie, I am so glad that Halloween is over. What happened to when Halloween was JUST trick-or-treating in your neighborhood? We have Fall Festivals galore, Halloween activities coming out our ears, the Primary Program, church stuff and more things that I can name right now! It's been a crazy last couple of weeks and I'm excited to move on to Thanksgiving and a house bursting at the seams with people and then I can FINALLY put up my Christmas tree!

Disney World - Monday

First stop of the day, Hollywood Studios. When we first arrived, the park wasn't quite open yet so there was a big crowd of people waiting to dash to the much anticipated Toy Story ride. So our first goal of the day (thanks for the tip Morgan) was to go straight for the Toy Story Fast Pass line. By the time we got there our times were 10:55-11:55am. So we wandered around, went to Disney Junior, and stopped to take pictures in New York and San Fransisco.



Grandpa in his hometown, kind of.

So after this, we went back to Toy Story but were ushered out because the ride was broken. Nice. So we went to Honey I shrunk the Kids play area. After about 20 minutes I was getting hot, sweaty and irritable so I made everyone leave. We decided to go check on Toy Story again and just as Grandpa was asking the status, the doors opened and we were some of the first to get in so our wait wasn't bad at all. The ride was so fun, I rode with Tanner and he really had no idea what he was aiming at but we had a blast. It's a 3-d ride that whips you around to different screens and you shoot at targets. Some how Paul beat me.



After Toy Story we headed to the Indiana Jones stunt spectacular.



That was very neat and pretty funny.



Lightning McQueen! I think Tanner would've loved to have had a Cars ride. I'm surprised they don't have one yet.


Mater - Tanner's obsession. He keeps telling me he wants to be Mater the Firetruck for Halloween. Not sure how I'm going to pull that one off.

Other things we enjoyed while at Hollywood Studios, The Great Movie Ride (a little scary for the kids) and Voyage of the little mermaid.



After Hollywood Studios we decided to head back to the Magic Kingdom to ride what we missed in the rain and to ride a few of the kids' favorites again.

We caught the parade right after lunch. Lana wasn't really that interested in it until the Princesses started showing up and one of them waved at her.






One princess waving to another.


Waiting in line to drive a "race car"


Paul letting me chauffeur him around. I had a hard time keeping my eyes on the road while taking the picture. Good thing I couldn't hit anything.



The family in front of Cinderellas castle.


Posing with the Grands.



Ah, the sword in the stone. I know somewhere there's a picture of me posing in front of one when I was 4.





Other things enjoyed at Magic Kingdom, Buzz Lightyear (not as good as Toy Story but still fun. I beat Paul this time. Somehow Grandma beat us all by a couple hundred thousand points. Still not sure how that happened :) ), It's a Small World, Dumbo again, Mad Tea Party, Aladdin's magic carpet ride, Monsters Inc., Laugh Floor (this show was really funny. It's done live and the people that do it were really quite good. Their comedic timing and improvisation was awesome.) and The People Mover.

We had such a fun time and of course didn't even get to everything we wanted, but there's always next time!