New Year's Eve

I'm finally finding a minute to document our New Year's Eve festivities. Since we've had children, most holidays have been much more fun, except the one that keeps us up past our kids' bedtimes. Our kids are great sleepers, but we've worked hard to make that happen by being really strict with their sleep habits. So, though we enjoy a full night's sleep every night, we sometimes have to sacrifice a late evening out with friends to maintain that precious sleep. So, this year we decided to invite the friends in with us. The Perkins family came to our house to have a family sleepover!

Before the sleepover, though, we went to First Night downtown after the kids woke up from their afternoon naps. It was a fun family celebration, with lots of crafts, workshops and entertainment for the whole family. We played with hula hoops, wrote wishes for the earth (how Austin is that?), played huge musical instruments, ate great food (I'm so thankful for the samosa empanada, that was probably the only thing Scout would eat), sang on public access tv (G did a beautiful rendition of "The Itsy Bitsy Spider"), watched some fun musical and dance performances, and cheered as the parade went by. Scout's mood and the quickly dropping temperature sent us home before the family finale at 8:00, where they set a huge wooden clock on fire. People had written their resolutions on it, so I'm not sure why they burned it, unless that gives you an excuse to break them! It was a lot of fun.

Ryan showing G how it's done

Mommy hooping

Scout getting in the groove

Garrett giving Scout a ride

G making his wish

G's performance

Local musical celebrities

Hot parade entertainment

Dragons in the parade

G up close with his favorite instrument

Then the Perkins fam arrived at our house. We put the babies to bed pretty quickly and let G and Meredith stay up and play a little. We then put them to bed in G's room, with Meredith on the bottom bunk. Surprisingly, they went to sleep right away. The grown-ups played games, ate goodies, and watched the countdown on tv. We had a good family breakfast the next morning and hung out in our pj's for a little while. Then we headed to Chick Fil-A for lunch and to TDS to feed the giraffe and check out the other animals. It was a fun evening and we were sad to say good-bye.

Meredith, Garrett and Rowdy the Rhino

Feeding the giraffe

Stinky camels

Push-ups

Ryan just bought some new push-up bars and left them in the living room. I decided to try them out to see what the difference was. Scout must have liked it, because she immediately started imitating me. First, she just squatted down and bounced with her hands near the ground. Then she actually got on the ground with her palms down and bounced her head and upper body. It was so cute. Here are a few shots I got of her doing it today. She even added some grunts for effect.

The seated push-up

The kneeling push-up (or praying to the east)

Proud of all her hard work

Dead or alive

Tonight, Garrett was looking at pictures I have on my keychain. He is in three of the four, and was asking where we were in each of them. He got to one picture of Ryan and me before we had kids. When he asked where he was, Ryan answered him with, "You weren't alive, yet, in that picture." G responded with horror, "I was dead?!" He giggled when he found out what Ryan meant, so I think he's not scarred (at least not by this incident).

In his Daddy's footsteps

It's no secret that running is a big part of life at the Beard house, and Garrett is already into it. His latest pretend play scenario has been playing doctor, in which I'm the doctor, and he's the injured runner coming to me with some kind of gash from running into a tree branch during his "five-dy nine" mile run.

This weekend, Ryan has a 100K, and Garrett is signed up for a 1 mile Fun Run for kids the day before. Ryan signed him up immediately, and then we started getting concerned that he might not be able to do a whole mile. Our worries were laid to rest yesterday when Ryan took Garrett for a run on our neighborhood trail. G could hardly stand it, he was so excited to go running with Daddy. He insisted on carrying Ryan's water bottle for the long 17 minute jog. He got a little tired, but kept going (with much encouragement and a few Jedi mind tricks from Daddy) to finish the mile!

On the way to school today, I told Garrett how proud I was of him and asked if he knew that his race was going to be in the same place that Daddy ran Cactus Rose. He paused, and then said, "but there's cactus." I assured him there wouldn't be, but he said "but Daddy had cuts all over his legs." True. I explained that Daddy had to run in cactus because he ran 100 miles and that Joe, the race director, would make sure that the mile he was going to run would be in a spot with no cactus. Let's all say a prayer that Joe, the master of torture when planning Cactus Rose, had his head on straight and really did plan a flat, clear kids' course. Anyway, G said he'd like to run 100 miles. He added, "It takes a lot of power and energy and a lot of water and salt. If you don't have enough salt, you can't run. I don't really like salt, though. I like pepper better." Whatever the seasoning, I can't wait to see my sweet boy run across that finish line, just like Daddy.

Christmas Day Photos

Christmas Day

We had a very nice Christmas. We stayed home, and the family came to us. My sister had spent the night and was there Christmas morning, with my parents driving in a little later that morning. Garrett was very calm when he came to our room. I half expected him to wake us up at 5am, but he loves his sleep too much, I guess. We started rushing to get him downstairs, but he said he was fine resting a little in our bed. He's always liked taking his time waking up - he used to cry and shake his head if I came to get him out of his crib right after he woke up. We snapped him out of it, woke up my sister, grabbed Skittles, and headed down to see what treasures Santa had left.

The first thing they noticed was their new kitchen. Next, they saw the stuffed puppy dog for Scout and Whirly Pop popcorn maker for G from Santa. Then the wrapping paper started flying and stockings were shaken out. Garrett really got some great gifts this year, and he truly loved everything he got. We didn't go overboard with Scout, and I think she was happy with her gifts, as well. When my parents arrived, the mayhem continued, and at one point, I was frantically gathering up the wrapping paper just to give us room to walk. G's gifts definitely had a few themes of pirates, construction and Cars. Scout's was mostly Little People toys, Dora and puppies - her favorite probably being the newborn puppy from my sister that barks and wags its tail. She lovingly fed it a bottle throughout the day. It all sat out for a couple of days, and the kids had a ball.

We had a nice ham for dinner, which pleased Garrett to no end. He's really been into the Grinch book and movie lately. When he saw the ham sitting on the serving platter in the middle of the table, he screamed with delight, "The roast beast!" If you can't remember that far back into childhood and haven't rediscovered it with your own children, roast beast is what the Whos have for their Christmas dinner and what the Grinch carves in the end.

Then the "kids" sat around the tree for Christmas songs. My dad played the guitar, while Ryan played Garrett's new harmonica, that Santa left in his stocking (which he purchased at Cracker Barrel for a very reasonable price, if anyone's interested). We ended the day by letting Garrett pop some popcorn in his new pot. He was stoked to turn the crank. Finally, we all gathered in our bedroom to have "movie night" with G's new Veggie Tales movie "The Pirates Who Don't Do Anything." (I was finding popcorn in my bed for the next few days.) It was a relaxing and fun-filled day!

Three-year old confidence

Garrett spent some time at his friend Cole's house Monday, who is three years older than G. He doesn't usually play with kids that much older, so I was curious as to what he thought of it. He said that he had a great time, because Cole is so sweet to him. The high levels of testosterone in his blood, however, prevented him from being able to come up with any examples of the activities they'd done together, of course. I wasn't sure if G was aware of the age difference, so I asked him who was bigger, Cole or G. He responded with, "I'm bigger to his ear." I guess that means he comes up to Cole's ear, but just couldn't let himself admit that he was smaller. Now, why can't I be that confident and put that kind of positive spin on everything?