Meeting Lincoln

The day after Thanksgiving I went over to the Baker's house to hang out and meet baby Lincoln. Hudson was worn out from his busy travels and being off his schedule so he didn't wake up in time to go with me. Lincoln and his cousin, Sarah, just got a new horse to bounce around on. It was super cute! Beth is an awesome mommy and she has a beautiful family. I can't wait until Hudson and Lincoln can play together!

While I was there, I found out that Beth's mom, who was my high school English teacher, reads my blog. I'm sure she reads this thinking, "Gretchen, I thought I taught you better than this!". I feel so much pressure to ensure my writing is precise now. hehehe! Love you Mrs. Baker! : )

Happy Thanksgiving

We made it!! We got to my parents' house early Thanksgiving morning. It didn't take Hudson long to ask for a ride on the lawn mower. It is one of his favorite things to do...well, anything that involves driving something. When we are in Lowes, we always have to be sly and avoid the lawn mower section so he doesn't see them and throw a fit to drive them.

Here is Hudson giving Misty some love.

Grandma Holladay came over to spend Thanksgiving with us! Hudson really enjoyed getting to spend some time bonding with her. She gave him another singing card that he loved!

My mom cooked an awesome meal! We were all stuffed and decided it would be a good time to play some cards. Hudson had fun helping Grandma choose which cards to lay down while we played hearts.



Here he is telling her "Bye, bye, Grandma. Love you!". Then he gave her some sugars!
Some final giggles before Grandma had to leave. Thanks for coming over to spend Thanksgiving with us! We love you!

Over the River & Thru the Woods

Well, we had some unexpected illnesses that delayed my bloging even further. Jason and Hudson both had a stomach virus and I had pink eye. It was a little stressful struggling through all of that and getting ready for Christmas but we pulled it off! Now it is Christmas Eve and I have a restless mind so I decided it would be a good time to finally get caught up!

I'll start back at Thanksgiving! My boss surprised me and told me I could head out at noon on Wednesday. Jason picked up Hudson and they got fresh haircuts. Then, we loaded up our rental Jeep (my car was getting repaired from when Jason was rear-ended...a year ago) and by 2ish we were on our way! Except for the turn around trip that Jason always ends up making to check that we did infact lock all of doors. I have learned to accept that this will happen no matter how late we are running before we make a big trip because it will allow his mind to be at ease for the duration of our journey. Hudson was now 2 hours past his normal nap time so he was sound asleep when we loaded him up. We left at exactly the same time that everyone else in Houston decided to leave. The traffic was less than fantastic...cars everywhere. Stop and go. Stop and go. We remained postive in hopes that it would be better once we got a couple hours out of Houston. Not so. About 2 hours into our trip, Hudson woke up...very upset. He is all about his schedule and when it is disrupted he is not happy about it. We decided it would be a good idea to break down and purchase a portable DVD player! This would have been a great idea if it had not envolved getting him out of his carseat and then trying to stuff him back in. Eventually we got him settled down by turning on some Christmas music and singing. Because of the traffic and a few other delays, it was already 10:00pm or so by the time we made it to Idabel, OK. Since we had both gotten up early that morning to go to work, we were too exhausted to go any further. We got a hotel for the night and made our way to Wister the next morning.

Poor Eli got stuck in the very back because he got into our fresh mulch and was very stinky! We still love him though! He got to ride up with Hudson on the return trip. Hudson thinks its so funny when Eli rides in the car.

This is Hudson in our hotel bed. He woke up as we were unpacking for the night and got a 2nd wind. Daddy raided the vending machine and found some cheese-its to snack on. That is what he is showing me in the picture.

Thank you to The Black's!

Hudson got his birthday presents from Uncle Tom & Aunt Micaela today! He loves, loves, loves these cars! Thank you!!!

I am so behind on my posts...it's that busy time of year! I started on this one almost a month ago and never had a moment to finish. Tonight, Jason is off at an HOA meeting trying to get voted in as President (imagine that!) and is probably enjoying some good debate. Hudson has gone to sleep for the night so it's time to get caught up. I should be getting some Christmas shopping done but I don't have the focus for scrolling and surfing a million websites right now.

Cailin came over and spent the day with us today while her mommy was getting her hair cut. Hudson had such a great time playing with her and teaching her how his toys worked. He was very gentle and sweet. It was fun for me to observe him and see what a great big brother he'll be when the time comes! Cailin has the most content personality...she's always happy and is such a sweetheart. Her mommy and daddy have it made! There must be something about those November babies...they are just full of sweetness!

Here he is reading Cailin one of his books and teaching her about the pyramids:

Here he is teaching her how to shake hands:
Then he did a puppet show for her:

Then it was time to show her how to play with the boy toys...trucks!

He took her for a little cruise on his favorite truck.

And he gave her lots of love...hugs!

He taught her how to drive, turn the key, and play some music on this toy. They had so much fun playing together. Cailin was well entertained!

Birthday part II: The Butterfly Museum

I had to go to Dallas/Ft. Worth Nov. 5-6th for some additional training for my new job. Unfortunately, on my way to the airport I stopped to grab something to eat and got food poisoning. Not fun. So to say the least, I wasn't feeling my best on the 7th which was Hudson's birthday. I was really sad but my parents convinced me that it wasn't a big deal because we had all weekend to have fun...and we did! Saturday I was still a bit sluggish so we didn't follow through with my original plan to take Hudson to Moody Gardens and to eat at the Aquarium (hopefully we'll do that before Christmas). Instead, we enjoyed the beautiful day outside & played with Hudson's new toys while Jason and my Dad worked on building lattice above our back fence line. On Sunday, we had brunch downtown at one of our favorite restaurants, Fagarro's. After brunch, we took Hudson to the Butterfly Museum!! He had a great time! Of course my battery died on my camera b/c I had used it too much the past 2 days so all of the best pictures are on my mom's camera. I'll post some more pictures after I can upload their pictures during Thanksgiving time.

Happy 2nd Birthday!

I can't believe Hudson is already 2!! Time really does fly when you are having fun! We are very blessed to have such a sweet little boy. He truly has the sweetest soul and the most loving heart.

Last year we had a big bash for his 1st birthday so we kept it simple this year. My parents came down to help us celebrate and we had a really good time.


Here is Hudson's first taste of his birthday cake! As you can see from the following pictures, he really liked eating the squigglies on the cake. I accidentally ordered a bigger cake than I thought so there was plenty for him to dig into and do whatever he wanted with it! I would say he is a buttercream kinda guy. I don't think he has had this much sugar in his whole 2 yrs. of life!

Present time! He made out pretty good! Clothes, trains, planes, & automobiles, art stuff, games, and an awesome pop up fort with tunnels to crawl through!

Grandma and Grandpa Holladay sent a great birthday card with a dancing/singing guinea pig and some money to add to Hudson's piggy bank. Hudson LOVED this card. He has opened it and closed it countless times and everytime it is still just as funny to him as the first time he saw it.

Here we are singing Happy Birthday to Hudson. I kept hoovering incase he couldn't blow out his candles but since he's a big boy now he didn't need my help and he blew them out all by himself. I showed him this video as I was getting reading to upload it and he's been singing Happy Birthday ever since!

Trick-or-Treat!

Yeah! Trick-or-treat time!! Hudson had an awesome time this Halloween! It didn't take him long to figure out that if he knocked on the door and tried his best to say "trick-or-treat" or "happy halloween" then he would get candy in his bag. He doesn't get all that excited about the candy because I'm a mean mom and I never let him have any so he doesn't really know what it is. He really enjoyed the process of getting it though! Most of all, he enjoyed handing out the candy to the other kids! That was the best part for him!

He had a strict process (his rules, not ours) that had to be followed...he had to be holding both my hand and Jason's hand (he loves to hold hands now...I love it, it melts my heart every time!) while we walked up to each house & I had to be carrying the bag. Then, we both had to let go, I had to give him his bag back, and he had to knock on the door all by himself. Once he received his candy, he wouldn't go to the next house until we were each holding hands and I had the candy bag.

Here is a picture of his loot:
Our neighbors are so sweet and some of them made Hudson his own special treat bag. Mrs. Dawn, from next door gave him some chips that he was eager to eat. Again, I'm a mean mom and he doesn't get to eat chips very often (only sometimes, so he does know what they are and he loves them) so they were an exciting treat for him. Here he is showing me his chip and saying, "chip, mama, chip!".Waiting on pins and needles for more kids to come to our door...
Still eating his chips...
Digging into the candy bucket to give candy to the kids outside! He really loved this part!! hehehe, his spider legs crack me up! : )



Here he is calling out, "kids, candy, kkkkiiiiiddddddssss!!!!!". And soon, there were more kids! We had a good steady stream until he was so tired he just couldn't do it anymore and I had to put him to bed. He actually told me he was sleepy and asked for his bed...you know that's pretty tired when a 2yr. old asks to go to bed! It was a very Happy Halloween!

Hannah's Halloween Birthday Party

Last weekend, our friends/neighbors had a Halloween themed birthday party for their daughter, Hannah. Hudson and all of the kids there had a great time!! Here is my itsy bitsy spider!!

He was completely fasinated by the eyeball tree.

Jason taught him how to put the eyesball up to his eye and pretend his eye was falling out. He thought it was hilarious! Before we knew it all of the kids were pretending their eyes were falling out!

All of the kids got to make their own trick or treat bags. Hudson's had a vampire on it but I didn't get a good picture of it.

The skeleton laid his hands down and it didn't take Hudson long to find them. He kind of looks like a spider mime!

All of the kids got in a circle and played "Trick-or-treat". They had to draw a game piece out of the pumpkin. If they drew a "treat" then they automatically got to pick out a treat from the treat basket. If they drew a "trick" then they had to do the "trick" (act like a monkey, sing a Hannah Montana song, sing Happy Birthday to Hannah, etc) and then they earned a treat from the basket! It was lots of fun for the kids and entertaining for me to watch.

Here is the birthday girl showing us one of the Littlest Pet Shop things we got her for her birthday.