Presents!

Joey fell asleep one night before Christmas when we were out looking at Christmas lights.

For my birthday, Joey got me books. :)

My mom got me a nice warm sweater!

Earl got me awesome Ugg boots in the very color and style I wanted...hmmm, wonder how he knew. ;)

On Christmas Eve night, Joey got to open one present. He picked one that Aunt Angie had sent him: Giraffalaf Limbo.

CHRISTMAS MORNING:

Joey had forgotten it was Christmas because when he woke up and came to our room, he only wanted to get something to drink. Santa brought him many things that he wanted, like a play tent (that folds out much bigger but doesn't fit in any room in the house--we can't wait till it's warm out so he can take it outside!)

Santa also brought him another horse on a stick, an airplane toy, and those awesome zhu zhu hamsters.

Monkey's in a barrell!

Earl got a Get Back Whip for his motorcycle.

Puzzles for Joey.

Earl's new jacket.

Travel art case from Aunt Darlene, which will come in handy on our upcoming long drives to GA and NC.

Warm scarves and hats and glove sets for me :)

Best Dad Ever coffee mug for the daddy, with special pics of him and Joey.

We had an awesome and cozy Christmas and hope everyone else did too. We can't wait to get to our friends and family in GA and NC to share in the Christmas spirit (and get more presents! LOL).

Other than Christmas fun, everything has been great here in VA. The baby, we now know is a boy, is a busy mover and makes sure I know he's in there all day and night. :) Joey has come up with a name for the baby all by himself. As far as I know, he hasn't heard this name from any TV show or cartoon or movie. It just made it up. He's decided his new little baby brother will be named Zoomer. It's hilarious. I hope we're able to bring him around to our side once we finally find a name (no, we're no where close to deciding on a name), otherwise, this little boy will always be Zoomer to his big brother. God help us. he he. Oh well, I guess there are worse nicknames. His exact sentence, after he informed me of his name choice is "I like the name Bom too, but most importantly, I like Zoomer better."

Joey's Preschool Christmas singing

My son is the kid that doesn't do what the other kids are doing. :)

Getting Into the Holidays!

This is the first year that Joey sat on Santa's lap without crying. He wasn't going to do it at first, but when he saw Santa handing out candy canes and Reindeer food, he decided he wanted too.
This was at Earl's Christmas party for work.

This is Joey and me after the party, posing with his new horse Santa gave him. He was so excited with that toy! He totally forgot about the candy cane and reindeer food, and just rode his horse all over the gym. He followed random kids around trying to get them to play with him, he tried to get in Santa's line again, to get another horse for another kid so that he'd have someone to play with (times like this I really miss our old friends at our old base).

He named his horse Joey.

You can see a little bit of my belly there on the right.

This was also the first year Joey did the crafts at the Christmas party. He made a stocking, a Santa face and a reindeer.

The other day we did Joey's very first gingerbread house. It fell apart pretty quickly, but he had a blast decorating it.

He still surprises me with how smart he is. He can write the entire alphabet on his own, pretty much. I think I just helped him with Z, W and X yesterday. We haven't really been working on that much, he just somehow knows. It's amazing. He's also figuring out how to do lower case and upper case and knowing the difference. He sometimes talks to the baby in my belly when I tell him too. He's very excited that he won't have to ride in the back seat by himself anymore once the baby is here.

Josiah's Christmas Portraits

I couldn't resist and ended up buying way more pictures than we need, so they'll be plenty to share. But until they come in, you can see the portraits here. Some of the poses are the same, but with different effects or borders. He's so handsome! He did so good, during the picture-taking, and afterwards when it took me hours to decide what I wanted. He he.

Back to School

Today Joey finally went back to preschool after being out sick for 2 weeks. The preschool was actually closed most of last week due to flooding and bridges being out, so he only actually missed 2 days of preschool.
Today was make-up picture day, and he was already in the mood to pose before we left for school.

He did fine at school, except when he was playing hard outside and had a coughing fit, which caused him to throw up. They had to change his clothes. Luckily, that happened after picture time. He had pictures made a few weeks ago too, but we didn't like any of those. The photographer didn't seem to wait for him to smile and didn't put all of him in the picture. It just didn't look very professional (but she was charging profession prices!), so hopefully this time, the pictures will look better. We should see the proofs next week. Tomorrow we're going to the Grand Illumination parade. Lots of lights!