A wonderful Thanksgiving

One of the many bonuses of living in Oklahoma is that we are no longer so far away from many of our closest friends. In fact, we are now a pretty even halfway point between two of our favorite couples: Josh, Allison, and their 8-month old daughter, Emily, in Lubbock and Jeff and Rebekah in Houston. This Thanksgiving, we spent the holiday with these very wonderful people. Here is a brief synopsis.

Of course, most of the week was spent watching Emily and Shepherd and their budding friendship. This is the picture we will use at their wedding (hehe).
After getting better acquainted, Shepherd decided to sit on Emily.

After escaping the bazaar behavior of my goofy son, Emily likely questioned the wisdom of this friendship.
The adults played lots of board games. Their was a lot of strategizing going on.
Thanksgiving day brought beautiful weather, so Allie and I took the babies to the park. I ran around chasing my little guy trying to keep him from eating all the mulch,...

...while Emily and Allie basked in the sun.
Throughout the day, we three ladies cooked. We cooked a lot of food. A whole lot of food.

BJ, however, did the turkey. It was his first attempt, and it was delicious.
Soon after dark on Thanksgiving day, we sat down to a HUGE meal. Shepherd ate and ate and ate. He literally had three helpings of dressing and gravy. He is such a pig.

Before Jeff and Rebekah headed out on Saturday, we managed to get a group pictures. Emily was really into the whole picture thing.

All and all, it was a wonderful Thanksgiving. Thanks to everyone for the cooking, gaming, and fun times. And thanks to Allie for taking better pictures than mine (most of these came from her). I hope everyone else's holiday was as good as ours. Now I'm ready to get started on Christmas!

First Drawing

The other day, I took a pen, positioned it in Shepherd's cute little chubby hand and started drawing with him. After just a little bit, I let go and watched him do his first drawing all by himself. I then framed it and put it on the desk where I do all of my artwork. I am both a proud mommy and a proud artist. Go son!

The reason I'm behind on posting

Christmas season is approaching (yay!), so I've been trying to get some stationary up on my shop for gifts. Of course, that means doing the artwork, assembling the cards, taking pictures, editing pictures, and then posting them on Etsy. To make it all more interesting, Shepherd has started walking (running, really) this week, so I'm busier than ever. So anyways, I should be getting more cards up over the next few days. Keep an eye out for them! Here are a few shots of some cards that will be going up soon:

Exploring (Taste-Testing) with Shepherd

Shepherd is starting to really like spending time outside. I really like watching him spend time outside. Partially, this is the wonder of seeing a child discover the world. Also partially, it is because he looks so cute in his little coat and tennis shoes. Allow me to demonstrate:

When we venture out into the great outdoors, Shepherd starts examining everything: dirt, rocks, leaves, everything.

Then, he starts eating it.

To distract him from eating everything, we brought his walker out.

Unfortunately, while walking with his walker, he spotted a dandelion.

So he ate it.

He then resumed his search for more culinary delights (think rocks).

I'm not sure what he was doing here, but I hope this is him telling us that he found the taste of some of the dirt wanting.

To top off this particular outing outside, I took a picture of my two favorite guys.

I then joined the photo time myself, but that just made it crazy. Sometimes, I have that affect on them.