Introducing our little toddler!

OK-so I have missed a lot-more like a TON in the past month. In my defense-Max is now walking and sprouting teeth faster than I can keep up. Before I get to all of his milestones I need to tie up Christmas....

I said in the last post that I would explain what our "chairs" were. My whole life we have had them-it is just what mom does instead of wrapping all of our gifts. Each child gets a chair with their initial on it and on Christmas morning it is covered with all our little gifts like new socks, chocolate, a new flashlight, a few books and other smaller items that were from mom, dad and "Santa". The items on our chairs were what we got to enjoy before Mass-the gifts and breakfast were after.
So there you have it-we had a great Christmas!

Its the most wonderful time of the year!

I truly believe that Christmas is the single best and most wonderful, perfect time of the year. When I was a child, nothing even came close to comparing to the excitement of waking up on Christmas morning and sneaking out of bed to go see the tree, your stocking and best of all, your chair! (I will explain more fully in a moment.) My three sisters and I always shared a bedroom growing up and we always made each other promise that whoever woke up first would wake all the others up. Mom and dad never minded, as long as we didn't wake them up before 6am! It didn't matter if it was 4am-we would dig out our flashlights and go plug in the Christmas tree lights and have whispered fits over our little treasures. It was perfect-every single year! These are the things I want to make sure Max gets to be a part of. I want him to experience that same kind of excitement and joy. I love many things in life, but one thing that ALWAYS makes me happy is the sight of a Christmas tree after dark, all lit up without any other lights on in the house. It reminds me of how much joy I have in my life and how much I have had for as long as I can remember. Hopefully I will be able to give him similar memories-and it may be a little early, but I tried to start with this year. And so, let us commence our picture narrative of the first Lukas family Christmas!

(Once again, I can't turn the stupid picture around!) We are planning to make the tree decorating a family ordeal-Max was obviously too small to help with that so he was our light bulb checker! I always hated that job anyway.

He soon moved on to bigger and better things-like hotwheels and the piano!

See-a family ordeal!

All our pretty ornaments. I don't believe in a "themed" tree. I just wasn't what I grew up with. I think they are absolutely beautiful and perfect for other homes, but the only theme I want on my tree is one of memories. The ornaments may be hideous in years to come, like a dog hand-painted by a 3 year old or a picture frame glued together in art class, but that is all part of the fun to me!

He made the most adorable Santa you have ever seen. But, when we took him to see Santa at our bank........not so cute! He screamed and shook he was soo scared! So, we took the token picture of baby's first meeting with Santa and moved on.

Have you ever seen a cuter mini Santa?! We put his outfit on him for Mom and dad's annual Christmas Tree Decorating party-he was the life of the party as usual.

He accompianied me while I played Christmas Carols-we make quite the duo~

Ready for bedtime-all clean and yummy.

Lizzy couldn't make it to the tree decorating at Mom and dad's so our cousin Devon is playing Liz!

Max and Daddy on Christmas Eve

More Christmas Eve-I LOVE his dimple!

Ta Da! It is Christmas morning! All dressed up and no where to go-we had our first white Christmas in years and this meant that the road was solid ice, so no Christmas Mass for the first time in my memory! Not a good start, but things thawed and we were able to continue on with the rest of the traditional Christmas day stuff.


Perfect!
Me and my beautiful son!

Slightly Behind

Wow! I didn't realize just how badly I was slacking until I noticed it was 2010 and I have no posts about Thanksgiving, Christmas or New Year! Not to mention the fact that today is Max's first birthday! That will have to be a different story. So....

We had Thanksgiving and it was good! Need I say more? Lots of yummy food (that I didn't cook!) and lots of family. (not yummy!) So here are some pictures to illustrate further.
This was after our first round of pigging out on yummy delicious food!

Ding ding! Round Two!

The only thing Max would eat all day were the rolls-not that I blame him-they are soooo goood!
Now let us move on to Christmas....

Run, Run, As Fast As You Can!

The Great Max Escape...Almost!

Step 1: Mommy catches boy trying to unplug lamp and play with outlet. Mommy says, "No, Max!"

Step 2: Boy takes off as fast as he can! Must run (crawl) from mommy!

Step 3: Escape is almost complete-must climb the stairs! (Which he can do quite efficiently now-we have to be ever vigilant)

Finale: Decided not to test mommy's patience and turns around at the last minute. Who could stay mad at that grin!

An Uneventful Halloween

As you can see, we didn't do a whole lot for Max's first Halloween-first came the pancakes for breakfast, then a visit with Aunt Grace and then dinner at Yaya's house. Fun but nothing to get too excited about. Moving right along....