Christmas Eve 2010-- a lil late!

The last picture we took late Christmas Eve, after Santa dropped by!!

Jeremy's granny Jimmy, parents, and brother and sister

As always, we spent Christmas Eve with the Worley side of the family. We had lots of fun having everyone together! We ate a meal, opened presents, had dessert and just hung out. It was a lot of fun! So glad we got some good shots of the family, too.

Jake's 2nd Bday Party!

The invite - custom made by my good friend Rachel over at www.sweetteapics.com

Sugar cookies, peanut butter cookies and goldfish





favors in the basket, drinks and the cake. Also a couple of pics of Jake from this past year.

Cars ball pit

Colors and transportation coloring pages

A glimpse of the room, with the race track in the back ground

The cake! Half white, half chocolate! Oh, and not ready on time, by the way. 2nd year in a row at two different bakeries for that to happen!

The "race track" that Lissa and Jen worked so hard on. It was totally all over the place a few minutes into the party, the kids pretty much went off-roading I guess you could say. A few families brought some ride-ons to add to the mix after I took this pic, which helped a lot!

Food tables and "jakey is two" banner I made out of cars/travel/transportation scrapbook paper and cardstock

driving play mat!

picture banner, in order of youngest pic to oldest pic

"road" table w/M&M's and gumball centerpieces

Some of his presents just before the party got started

Jake giving sweet baby Tate some love

Tate's big bro Noah...love him!

Matt, Jen, Lissa, Mom, Haley--don't know what we would've done without their help and hard work, along with Gran and Dad!

This lil driver was in heaven!!

Ha! The cones were everywhere!

Friends and Family! The best part of the party!

Cute pic of the ball pit. Hayes, Emily, Ayla and Yuri having a "ball"! Hehehe I'm such a nerd!

Jax, Clint, Lily and Kinley

Family!

blowing out his "2" candle

Papaw and Jake

Our family, including a very messy bday boy!

opening his new toys, which he soon lost interest in after he kept saying, "Open, peasse! Out, peasse!" and getting no response.

This past Saturday we celebrated Jakey's birthday with a few of our closest friends and family. Over 50 people showed up and really helped to make it such a special day for us and for Jake. He had a blast and didn't even want to stop driving around with all of his friends! We held it at the YMCA, and it turned out to be the perfect location! The kids could run around and play but couldn't hurt anything and their parents could keep an eye on them pretty easily. We might have to do another party again there in the future, especially having a winter birthday where you can't plan for the weather at all!

Because his absolute favorite thing to do is drive, and he's obsessed with everything that has wheels and some sort of steering, we decided to do a driving party. This party was such a blast to plan and we came up with some really fun stuff, the kids seemed to really enjoy it and were not happy to leave. =)

A few of our fun and simple ideas included black table cloths with masking tape down the middle to create a "road" look. We came up with a color scheme of stoplight colors of red, green and yellow with a little black, blue and orange thrown in. We used accents of scrapbook paper and made centerpieces and banners of Jake's pictures over the past two years and some words that go along with the theme such as "honk" and "jakey is two". Those were truly fun to make--I will probably be making lots more in the future! I also jumped online and found some plane, truck, car and train coloring templates and printed them out for the kids to color. Super easy and ended up being fun for the kids, too. We also used a huge "car" rug and brought some of Jake's larger toy trains, cars, buses, etc and let some of the littler kids play with those while sitting on the floor.

His cake was simply a round race track with a motorcycle and car hotwheels placed on top. The other food was kept simple with some Paula Deen sugar cookies shaped into stoplights (with red, yellow and green m&m's) and cars, trains and planes, chex mix, different flavored m&m's, goldfish and peanut butter cookies with reese's cups on top. We almost ran out of food this year! We will have more next year, promise! =) I was upset about the food running out, but Jeremy assured me that all of our friends have the means to eat dinner or pick something up on the way home, and that they weren't going to starve that night because we didn't include enough pre-dinner snacks. =) I felt a little bit better after that, but still bummed we didn't do more food. There's always next year! =)

We are so thankful for our family and friends and their willingness to support and love our Jakey. We had a great time celebrating the past two years and are so happy to have these pictures of our fun memories! Thank you to everyone who made his day so special!

Our Birthday Boy!!

Can ya believe this lil fella is TWO?!? Me, neither. He's loving his birthday present from us, a "BIIIIKE!" He loves bikes and is pretty obesessed with this one. Daddy had to put his tennis shoes on so that it'd be easier for him to reach and grip the pedals. Too cute!!

More to come later--an update on our birthday boy--when Mama has more time to describe all that he's doing, saying, becoming...you get the point. A long, detailed book about all that I want to remember about our Jakey at this age. Coming soon! =)

Happy Birthday (yesterday) to our sweet, sweet baby boy!

Santa Pics...that will make ya laugh!!

You really need to work your way from the bottom up on this post. The top one is after Mommy came to the rescue. The actual sequence of the pictures is backwards.
I've totally already tortured my child two times this season by making him sit on Santa's lap. I already knew he'd cry, so last week when we went with Jake's friends Nico, Yuri, Kinley and Jax to the library for Santa story time I made Jakey sit on Santa's lap last--so we wouldn't scare any of the other kids with his reaction.
I LOVE these pics, I can't help it! I think they are flat out hilarious and they so make me SMILE!

attempted escape, squirming out of Santa's arms

WHY oh why didn't I use these for our Christmas cards this year?!? They totally would've gone great with a letter (that will not get sent out) about our year of tv's that die, computers that your injured son shatter, dog surgeries, longing for a baby#2 and of course we cannot forget Mommy's brain surgery!!!! =)

Does anyone really want a Christmas card w/a screaming kid and a totally debbie downer story of the major happenings in our family? ;)

No worries- I'm not complaing. I'm thankful that it's still all fresh in our memory and we can just laugh about it already!!

Bring on 2011...we've NEVER been soo excited for New Year's!

Hope this post put a SMILE on YOUR face like it did mine!!

Week In Pictures: Black and Blue edition

#1 Black and Blue thing: some homemade banners I'm beginning to make for Jakey's 2nd bday party that's about a month away!!

#2. Well, this is more bloody than black and blue but I'm guessing she feels pretty bruised. We found a 6cm abcess on the poor girl's neck and she had her first surgery on Saturday!

#3. Jake's comfort zone got a little bit bruised over his first haircut. He did not want to sit in the chair without Mommy and did not want Jasmin to hold him. And, they're both wearing black and blue! :)

#4 Last and least, my arm is black and blue. My MRI tech collapsed several veins while digging around trying to get some dye fluid in me via IV. What a fun way to start a 50 minute MRI. :) All that matters is that it's over, and it will be a while before I have to do it again.


Well, I really thought we were just having way too fun of a week not to record it in our family memory book. With Christmas and birthday preparations going on, and some health situations with me and Sadie, we've had a very pleasant week around here. :P

(Sorry if a couple of these pics are gross!)

Bye-Bye Curls!!

all wetted down!

the boy loves a good sucker! so glad she had them!

mid-cut

He did the same pose here as he did for Santa!! Haha!

We love Jasmin! Well, atleast Mommy does!!! Haha.

Well, since Jakey had to sit in Mommy's lap I didn't get very good pictures. He wouldn't sit on his own and was trying to dive off of the chair. :) He's pretty skeptical of most strangers these days, after never really going through much separation/stranger anxiety as a baby. Anyway, we chopped the curls but stil left his pretty blonde locks in place with a nice, even trim. I'm happy with it, and am glad we didn't go super short. He has great hair and I want him to still have some of it left. His dad, Papaw and a few others may say it's still too long, but if Mama's happy, everyone's happy, right?!? And Mama loves it!!!!!!!!!!!!!! =)

Shutterfly Shout Out!!

Shutterfly is offering 50 free cards if you do a blog post about them and their awesome products!

We in the Worley house LOVE shutterfly. They are my go-to for cards, photobooks, prints and also even for greeting cards. I personally love that lots of their cards have places for one or even several photos and come in tons of color choices and layouts. We have used shutterfly for cards before and have never been disappointed. There are always awesome codes out that you can save into your account to save you money and get great deals on quality, personalized photo products.

It seems that now that we have our sweet Jake, we use photo cards even more. This year is no different. I can't wait to show of this sweet face in one of the tons of awesome photocards they have. I like so many of them, I never even know how I am going to narrow it down!?! So excited to get to work on this year's card. I'll probably even make a shutterfly photobook of our Christmas season this year, since we have last year's sitting on our end table and can't stop reliving Jakey's first Christmas!

Who couldn't use 50 adorable Christmas cards? Wanna participate?

http://blog.shutterfly.com/5358/holiday2010-blog-submission-form/

Here's the link to my top 3 fave shutterfly types of cards!!

http://www.shutterfly.com/cards-stationery/christmas-photo-cards

http://www.shutterfly.com/cards-stationery/birth-announcements

http://www.shutterfly.com/cards-stationery/thank-you-cards

Merry Christmas!! So excited for this awesome deal!! =) Something I would've spent money on, anyway!