My Precious TWO Year Old!!

Sweet Matthew, I CANNOT believe you are 2 years old today!  It just doesn't seem real!  You have accomplished so many things already:

~You love to study your toys and figure out how they work.
~ You are talking much more these days.  I love listening to everything you have to say.  Your favorite words are "Uh oh", "Buyeeeee" (Bye), "Nigh Nigh"  (Night Night), "Da Da" (Daddy), "Momma", "Ibel" (Bible), "Eeeese" (Cheese), "Ball", "Anana" (Banana), "Oh-ur" (Yogurt)....The list goes on and on but those are just a few.
~When I say "One" you follow with "Two".  We can do this all the way to number ten!
~You LOVE music.  You enjoy listening to your children's CD and sometimes I catch you humming along with the songs.
~You do all the hand motions to "Itsy Bitsy Spider"
~"The Farmer and the Dale" used to be your most favorite song.  Now when I sing it you fill in the blanks for me ("The child takes the.....dog", "The dog takes the.....at (cat)").
~You have such a sweet spirit.  You are so gentle with all your friends.  When one of them is upset you go to them to make sure they are okay.
~You share your toys with your friends and your mommy and daddy ;)
~You absolutely love, Love, LOVE sports!!  You love watching them and you love playing them.  Right now your favorite is basketball.  When it's warm outside your daddy and you shoot hoops in our driveway.  Now that it's cold you play with your "Little Tikes" goal in the house, and you're pretty good!  Your daddy and I often contemplate what sport you will choose to play when you get older.
~You like to help me around the house which is something I really enjoy!  Whenever I clean you like to have a dust rag too and yesterday you helped me sweep!  I just hope this continues as you get older :)
~You are such a good sleeper.  You sleep around 12 hours each night with a 2 hour nap during the day.  You will go to sleep anywhere, which allows your daddy and I to visit our friends in the evenings.
~Whenever I get you out of your car seat you will lean over and give me a kiss, absolutely makes my heart melt!!!

I could go on and on about the great things you have accomplished!  I love you so much!!  I had NO idea how much my life would change when I had you.  Your daddy and I have had so much fun watching you grow and learn these past 2 years.

Here you are just barely an hour old

1 Day Old

On Your First Birthday

You're Two!!

Yup.......you're two.....

Being silly...

Happy Birthday Matthew Clark Stone!!  

I love you SOOOOOOOOOOO much!!

Christmas 2010

Matthew really enjoyed his 2nd Christmas!  Last year he was old enough to tear the paper off his presents but he didn't really get the idea unless he was prompted, A LOT.  This year he knew how it went!  Anytime you laid a present infront of him he would tear into it without anyone saying a word.  It was really neat watching him opening all his presents.

Matthew loves this new toy from Uncle Tim!  It has the alphabet, animals, numbers, a clock, and music....all of Matthew's favorites!

The hot item in our stockings this year was lottery tickets.  Matthew decided he'd like to help me with mine...

We spent Christmas afternoon/evening at Bryan's cousins house who lives about 20 minutes outside of Abilene.  They have a few farm animals and Matthew really enjoyed "playing" with their horse.  Anytime we went outside he ran over to the fence.

Not my best picture (or even close) but Bryan and Matthew look good so I'm putting my vanity aside to share a good photo of them ;)

Matthew feeding the horse acorns

Yes it was cold that day, No Matthew doesn't have any gloves or mittens, Yes we tried taking him inside once we saw his hands were bright red, YES he screamed his head off because he didn't want to leave the horse...

Mam-maw with her grandchildren, and great-grandchildren

The Stone Family (minus a few others)

Since Christmas was in Abilene, I visited my Grandmother in Arlington once we got back.  Cassie (my sister) and Melissa (my cousin) met us at her house.  We opened presents and ate lunch at Olive Garden, yummmmm!

Matthew loves his new Elmo guitar!

After lunch we tried taking pictures but Matthew was having a hard time sitting in anyone's lap.  It was past his nap time and I think he was just worn out from being out of town for a whole week.  We got back into town on Monday around 11:00 PM and we went to Grandmomie's house on Tuesday morning so he didn't get a lot of time to readjust to being home.

Here's Melissa trying to get a picture with Grandmomie's camera.  I thought it was funny Grandmomie got on the floor with him :)

That next Saturday my moms family came over to our house to celebrate Christmas with Bryan, Matthew, and I.  They all got together Christmas Eve but they waited for us to do the gift exchange.  Right before we ate lunch we gathered in the living room for a prayer.  Matthew held onto my grandmothers and my moms hands during the entire prayer, he was such a good little boy!  My aunt wanted to get a picture of it so we did a "do over" prayer.  Only difference was when Matthew saw Aunt Piper holding the camera he looked at her and said "cheeeeeeeese"!  Of course my mom thought this was hilarious...

Pawpaw and Mawmaw enjoying lunch with their great-grandson.  They are about to be great-grandparents again to a baby girl, Adeline, in March!! 

Matthew opening his last Christmas present

He got these awesome trucks from Pawpaw, Mawmaw, and The Greats (my Uncle David and Aunt Piper).  The dump truck and cement truck are made out of real metal so they are really sturdy and will last a while!  Matthew likes wearing his construction hat.  Sometimes I'll catch him wearing it around the house while he's playing with other toys.

Christmas 2010 was a great one.  We are so blessed to have such wonderful family!!

Grace Children's Museum

This year we were able to spend an entire week in Abilene for Christmas!  Before our good friends, the Bailey's, left to go out of town, Jessi and I took the kids to the Grace Children's Museum. I've never taken Matthew to anything like that so I was curious to see how he would take it all in.

As soon as we walked in there was this wall with wooden carvings.  If you pressed down on them they would make different musical sounds.  Here's the boys trying figuring it all out....

After we had all the fun we could have with the wall we went to the actual museum part.  Matthew, Brayden, and Boston had so much fun playing together!  We had the whole place to ourselves (it was REALLY cold and rainy outside and it was a weekday) so they were able to run around and Jessi and I didn't have to worry about them getting in anyones way, score!!

The kids loved playing on this huge "Operation" table, it even made the buzzing noise if you hit the sides of the holes!

Brayden, Matthew, and Jessi watching the tornado form

They had an ambulance in the middle of the room with a plastic dummy inside.  Brayden put on the doctor's jacket and pretended to "work" on his patient.

Dr. Matthew, Dr. Brayden, and Boston

They didn't have 3 jackets :(

Boston and Jessi driving their patient to the hospital.  

Whew, they got there just in time! ;)

After playing doctor for about 30 minutes, Brayden wanted to put on a play/musical for us

Boston and Matthew couldn't get into the show so instead they decided to climb on all the foam pieces behind us

Stan got off work early and met us at the museum.  We decided to take the kids to Chick-Fil-A for lunch and apparently so did ALL of Abilene.  That place was packed!  There was not one table available as we were ordering.  Luckily as I was scanning the room I saw a family start to get up in the far back corner.  Jessi was with the her kids looking at the playground and Stan was getting something at the counter.  Since I had my food and Matthew I didn't think I could get to the table fast enough so I called out Stan's name (or possibly yelled it....I was just too excited!) and told him to run to that table!  We were able to snag the table just before someone else!!  Who knew it would be so crazy?!?!

After we ate lunch we had to say our goodbyes.  We miss them soooooooo much and wish they lived much closer!!

Christmas Traditions

Bryan and I love Christmas and all the preparation and excitement it brings.  After we purchased our house in the summer of 2005 we bought our first Christmas tree.  We didn't want to have one in the apartment since we didn't know how tall our ceilings would be in our future house and we weren't too big on the idea of moving it around with us as well.  Now that we have a house, every year we look forward to putting it up and every year we have a "discussion" about where it will go.  The first few years we had it in our living room but for the past 2 years Bryan has wanted it in the dining room.  I wasn't big on the idea since I like looking at it all lit up and decorated as we hang out at night.  If it's in the dining room we wouldn't be able to see it very well.  So we agreed that we would switch locations every year - one year in the dining room, the next in the living room and so on.  Well, the first year we had it in the dining room we got all sorts of compliments about how it looked next to our fireplace.  Now Bryan doesn't want it any other place and says that "everyone agrees with me" and then he adds, "Court, I'm just a better decorator than you"........ugh, I hate it when he's right (that it looks better by the fireplace, not that he's a better decorator).

The Christmas tree in our living room 

(with my parents before their work party)

The Christmas tree by our fireplace

(not the best quality, but you get the idea)

This year Bryan unpacked and fluffed the tree while I picked out which ornaments were "safe" to put on the Christmas tree (i.e., plastic unbreakables!!).

Matthew decided he'd like to help his daddy!

Each year before Christmas Bryan and I will find any excuse to go to Northpark Mall.  We enjoy walking around looking at all their decorations and seeing/listening to the entertainment throughout the mall.  Last year they had an electric string quartet and we really enjoyed watching them play.  This year there was a small band and a woman dressed up in a formal singing.  We decided to get a closer look and when we walked up we realized the band consisted of elderly adults.  It was kind of humorous to see all these old people play their instruments. We specifically enjoyed watching this older lady play her drums, she was rocking out with her gray hair just a movin' and a groovin'.

After we walked around a bit we decided to take Matthew to see the train exhibit.  We have never been before and weren't sure how Matthew would like it but thought it was worth a try.  As it turns out, Matthew LOVED it, he just didn't like wearing his conductor hat.....

Every year Bryan just loooooooves to take me to look at at Christmas lights ;)  He's good with going down 1 or 2 streets but not me!!  I really enjoy looking at how everyone decorates their houses and the rich people leave their blinds open so I can look into their houses and daydream of how it might be to live like they do!  Anywho, we usually start out our evening by going by the house in Farmers Branch that has the "dancing lights".  This guy puts TONS of lights on his house and yard and choreographs them to music you listen to on your radio.  Matthew just stares at the blinking lights and ever so often points to it and says "lighs".  After we see the dancing lights we go over to Greenville Ave. and get a coffee from Starbucks; however, this year since we did the trains we saw the lighted house first, then the trains, and then we went to Starbucks (I know you don't care what order we did things in but this is just for my documentation sake:)  After we got our coffees we drove down to Swiss Ave., which is a landmark street in Dallas.  There are several HUGE mansions that have been there for years and years.  The street is wide enough it has a median so we go down one side and then up the other just to make sure we don't miss anything (again, Bryan loves this!!).  After Swiss Ave. we headed over to Preston Rd. to go through the Highland Village homes.  This was our first year to go through this neighborhood and it was really impressive.  Apparently if you're willing to spend a little under $200 you can rent a horse and carriage to take you through the neighborhood!  But that wasn't in our budget and we enjoyed being in our warm car anyway!!  As we were driving through the neighborhood it really felt like Christmas.  There were families walking down the streets looking at lights, there were several horse and carriages, and we followed a line of cars that were weaving down the streets.  It reminded me of driving through Interlocking as I was growing up.  Interlocking is a neighborhood in Arlington that is required to decorate their house during the Christmas season.  Cars will wait hours to drive through and see all the lights.  Each year my family would pack up in the car with hot chocolate and wait our turn to drive through the streets.  

I'm really excited about our new family Christmas traditions and can't wait to do them again next year!

Here's Matthew waiting in the car to see some "lighs"