Let's catch up...

It was brought to my attention that I have shared quite a few pictures and little stories of the kids on Facebook and then proceeded to forget to post them on here....so for all two of you that don't have Facebook, this post is for you. A little recap of the past few weeks. If you have Facebook, just bypass this post, you've pretty much seen and heard it all!

A few days ago, Sawyer's school had a traditional Hanukkah Meal of Prime Rib from Omaha Steaks (YUM!)

Me: Sawyer, how was your lunch today?? Was the steak totally yummy?

Sawyer: I decided to have yogurt and the salad bar instead.

Seriously??

I heard Raylan in his room the other morning and went into get him and found him standing up all by himself! 

He is QUITE proud of himself!

We had an ugly Christmas sweater party the other day! 

The shelves of Goodwill were cleared out of all of their gaudy Christmas threads! 

 Sawyer got home and was telling me about his day.

Sawyer: We read a book called "The guinea pig's breast."

Me: WHAT??

(Later clarified the book was called, "Stink and the guinea pig express.")

Out at a Moscato Wine Tasting at Brix!

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas...

 Last weekend we dove into the Christmas season head first! We started out at dinner with Nana & Papa, Uncle Bruce & Lin and cousin Mya. It was D-lish! Downtown Omaha is not normally what I would call stunning...but at Christmas time, that's exactly what it is. Every tree in the Old Market is wrapped in lights and it is just beautiful. 

After dinner, we hightailed it a few freezing blocks to go see The Nutcracker Ballet. This was very special for me, because growing up we went to the Nutcracker every year and I just loved it. So taking my own family to join in the tradition was very special. Sawyer and Mya loved it and of course whispered through the entire thing! It was such a great evening and really got us in the Christmas mood! 

Raylan waiting to go to church. Is he not the cutest thing you've ever seen?

Ever since Bill and I got married, we have been on 'Team Artificial Tree'.....except for this year. We decided to be brave and do the whole live tree thing. I had been building this event up in Sawyer's mind for weeks...all of us together, prancing through Santa's Woods to find the perfect tree, Bill cutting it down and tying it up on our car, and singing Christmas carols all the way home. Nice huh? That did not happen. 

The thing that pretty much pooped on our parade was the fact that the temperature dropped so there were like arctic winds blowing a million miles per hour. We drove all the way out to the tree farm, bundled up, rode on an open air tractor to the woods, got off and it took about thirty seconds to decide that this was no fun at all. So the boys and I jumped on the next tractor back and Bill and Liz set off to find the perfect tree. 

While we were waiting for their return, we were able to see Santa! Being as how Raylan just loves a good beard, he just went to town on Santa's. We sipped hot chocolate and apple cider and as we started to warm up, our Christmacy moods reemerged. 

Bill and Liz found a GREAT tree! They wrapped it up and threw it in the back of Liz's truck and we headed home to do some decorating!

Sawyer has been so so so excited about taking down our Christmas boxes and decorating the tree, so now that the day was finally here, he could barely contain himself! 

Getting it to stand up straight in the stand took a while, but eventually it was in!

No more pre-lit trees for us!

Sawyer's method of decorating is to just put a bunch or ornaments all in one spot. 

I let him do it and then just rearrange them when he's not looking :)

Ta-Daaaaaaaaa

Hope you all have your trees decorated, your mistletoe hung and Christmas cookies on your counter!

Barack

Sawyer came home yesterday and says, 

"Mrs. Johnson said that Black Obama won as president."

Gasp! I'm pretty sure that's NOT what Mrs. Johnson said.

On a less offensive, politically correct note...Look who is sitting up all by himself! He is just so proud of himself when he does it! He holds onto the railing for the stairs and stand by himself too-Time flies and he is getting so big, so fast!

Halloween 2012

Star Wars seems to be a never ending thing at the Rollins house these days, so it was of no surprise when Sawyer wanted to be Darth Vader for Halloween. Sawyer's class had a fun Halloween party that afternoon along with a costume parade!

On the way to Nana & Papa's house, we were talking about Halloween and handing out candy, when Sawyer pipes up with, 

"I think for next Halloween we should hand out fish and wild mushrooms." 

What?? Where did that come from?? lol

You can't have Darth Vader without Yoda!!!!!!! And Raylan was just the cutest little Yoda you've ever seen! My friend Jamie made him his little hat which was adorable! I toted him around in the Baby Bjorn to go trick or treating so we just put his little outfit on on top of it which ended up working out just perfectly! 

Sawyer had a little bit of a rough time trying to carry his light saber and his pillow case full of candy, so Daddy ended up with the light saber about four houses down. Unfortunately we don't have a picture of Raylan carrying his big pumpkin bucket...it had this really thin handle on it so he could hold onto it really easily. But what was so cute was that every time someone would drop a piece of candy into it, he would IMMEDIATELY shake the bucket! It was like he was checking to make sure there was something actually in there! He did it every single time! It was hilarious! 

The weather was absolutely PERFECT for trick or treating and Sawyer made off with twice the loot because Raylan was with him So I'd say it was a pretty successful evening :)

Birthday Boy

Six years ago God blessed us with a six pound screeching bundle of JOY that has made our lives so full and rich! Watching Sawyer grow over the years has been like having front row seats at the best movie ever. 

We went and surprised Sawyer for lunch at school-he was SO surprised! 

It was fun to sit with him while he pointed out all of his little friends and jabbered away about how excited he was to have his Birthday cupcakes that he had brought to share with his class. 

That evening we went to Nana & Papa's house for a birthday dinner! 

As always, Sawyer got to choose the menu and he chose......HOT DAWGS! 

Liz and Raylan*

Great minds must think alike, because Daddy and Uncle Alex both ended up getting him scooters! We decided to keep both of them so that Bill could ride with Sawyer too. (I know that Bill was secretly stoked that we ended up with two!)

Sawyer is ALL about Star Wars right now, so lots of his gifts ran with that theme. He got Star Wars shirts, jammies, books, light sabers ect. He loved it!!!

When we asked Sawyer what he wanted for his birthday, he kept saying, "I want one of those cards with the money in it." (As if you buy those kind at the store??) He wants to save up money to buy a Wii You later on this month, so he was pretty jazzed that he ended up with one of them 'money cards' too! 

Then Bill and Alex chased each other around the kitchen on the scooters!

Raylan thought he won the lottery when he got his chubby little hands on some tissue paper!

One of the games that Sawyer got was Perfection. That really noisy one that ticks down the time and you have to put all the little shapes in the right slots before the time runs out and all the pieces fly up in the air.....now if that doesn't get your blood pressure sky rocketing, I don't know what would!

Nana Kathy made a really yummy Star Wars cake!

Is that my six year old riding his scooter down the middle of the street at ten on a school night? Why yes it is. 

This was the next day when Sawyer was showing off his new game to his buddy, Dane. When it popped up at the end and all the pieces flew out, they both jumped and screamed! It was so cute!

We have two more parties to go: a big family dinner with the Aunts and Uncles and then a bowling party with  his school friends. Sawyer had a great day and is still able to look forward to his other parties :) 

What's been going on...

During breakfast this morning, Sawyer was telling me about the decorations that he wanted to get to decorate the yard for Halloween.

"We can get some spiders to hang from the trees and some spooky pumpkins. Oh! And we need to get those 10 Commandment things that Moses had too!"

I guess we need to have a little chat about the difference between the stone tablets of the commandments and gravestones....

We are having a little bit of a late start to fall but I'm not one to complain! It was 78 degrees out yesterday! It  was just beautiful! I would love for it to stay this nice until Halloween so we aren't freezing our toes off while out trick or treating! 

We went to our very first Parent Teacher Conference the other night and it went GREAT! Sawyer's teacher, Mrs. Johnson is very pleased with where he is at and says he is such a JOY to have in class! Wahoo! I didn't realize how busy our schedules would get once he started school! It's been a never ending stream of class mate's birthday parties, fall festivals, conferences, class Halloween parties, fund raisers ect. It's been busy, but I am LOVING it! 

Sawyer has fallen in LOVE with all things Star Wars! He just started watching the movies a few weeks ago and has a Star Wars Lego game on the Wii. So it was no surprise that he wanted to be Darth Vador for Halloween! He could barely keep it together when his costume arrived in the mail :) And our little Raylan is sure to be the cutest little Yoda you'll ever see!!!

I was walking by Raylan's room the other day to find the two of them just chillin' out in his crib! 

Let's talk about Raylan shall we? Why yes, we shall!

Raylan is getting so big! He is at that adorable, squeezable chubby stage and we are loving it! He also has been showing us all how much he loves us by squeezing everything he can get his hands on. Those chubby little fingers are like the jaws of death! He really likes to go for your eye lashes, bottom lip, back of your neck and your hair. He then proceeds to squeal like a little taradactle at dog maddening decibels. 

Let's talk about baby poop. Yesterday when we pulled up to the front of church, I reached in to pull Raylan out of his car seat and just knew it was bad. I had just jammed my hand into a large pool of yellow mustard poop that had worked it self all the way up to the back of Raylan's neck. Yup, it was lovely. So I just grabbed the whole seat out and made a bee line for the nursery. Our nursery ladies are pretty much the bomb in my book-they scooped Raylan right up, whisked him to the back and into a sink of warm water. They also made it their mission to clean his car seat and have it dried out by the end of the service! And of course during all of this, Raylan looks so very pleased with himself, you would have thought he had solved world hunger. 

We are gearing up to celebrate Sawyer's 6th Birthday on Thursday! I cannot believe how old he is getting! 

Dirty Girl Mud Run 2012

A couple weeks ago a group of my girlfriends and I signed up for the 'Dirty Girl Mud Run 2012'. It was a 5k muddy obstacle fun run for breast cancer. Besides raising money for cancer research, the run was supposed to be a fun team  camaraderie event that was sure to produce lots of laughs and loads of filthy laundry! 

Our team decided to hit the local thrift stores and  grab up the most hideous, tacky and outdated wedding dresses that we could find and run the race in them! And as you can see, we found some real doozies! We hacked off the puff sleeves, trains and eight layers of tulle for practical reasons and man did we look amazing!

It was a beautiful day-just perfect for getting down and dirty! :)

I do have to say.....We had THE BEST dressed group there! We got so many hoots, hollers, whitles, compliments, laughs and "what a great idea!" comments :) 

On your marks....

Don't ask me what I'm doing...I have no idea. Even though we cut out quite a few layers of tulle, as soon as those hideous bags of white fluff hit the mud, they weighed a thousand pounds! 

We had such a FUN time! We laughed and laughed and laughed some more! And don't you think it's interesting how dirty we got but we all managed to keep our bows on and totally white?!?

Down through the ravine....

Up and over....this thing....

We all finished together, everyone in one piece, and super dirty!

And yes, we all ditched our shoes and dresses :) 

Thanks girls so much for such a fun day! Now who's up for Tough Mudder 2013???