Christmas Lights

Most nights we have spent time driving around looking at "pretties." There are quite a few good displays in our area, so I thought I would share one in particular.

The neatest one we have seen thus far is on Iona Road. It is set to music which is played on 88.5 FM. I cannot even imagine how much time and effort went into this. I found this YouTube clip of part of their show.

Klingler Family Christmas Lights

Our Christmas Tree

This year (as we do every year!) John and I talked about getting a fake Christmas tree.... and, just like before we went a purchased a real one. We've had very good luck with the trees at Sunnyside Gardens. They are so nice and fragrant and FRESH.

Last year I threw away the "rotten fruit" ornaments that I made when John and I were first married (BTW, they were sliced dried apples and oranges - tied together with fabric). I always thought they were a crafty, clever and frugal way to decorate our tree when we were really poor! However, John has always thought it looked like rotten fruit hanging on the tree!

So, because I threw those away last year, I needed new ornaments. I have gold and maroon ornaments, white lights and a star. And I used ribbon for the garland.

I think this is definitely one of our prettier Christmas trees. It is so full, and has such nice branches and needles!

Surprisingly, Braxton has been good with the tree. He does like to touch the ornaments and look really close at the "pretties" (aka lights), and give the tree a brush when he walks by.... at least he's gentle about it right?

PS. Sorry that I haven't done much blogging lately. Braxton thinks that he no longer needs naps. I'm having a hard time adjusting to that though!

Learning the Letters of the Alphabet

Braxton is wanting to know about anything and everything these days. All day long I get these two questions: "What's that?" and "What's this?". (It's much cuter in his little voice and it sounds more like "whatsat?" and "whatsis?")

Braxton will often ask about the same thing over and over again, and I can tell he is trying to figure out how to get his mouth to say it. Sometimes he will say the word back, and then he wants you to repeat it to confirm that he is saying it right! I love that he is so curious and eager to learn about his world.

The surprise for me? He has been asking about individual letters in his books. His favorite books to find the letters are in these "Bright Baby" books that were given to us as a gift.

I did NOT push this on him... He wanted to know about this all on his own! I'm not one of those crazy moms that think their kid has to be the smartest kindergartner ever. We have always read to him, and he now loves to read books.

He is so smart now that he'll probably be smarter than me by the time he gets to kindergarten (good thing I have a smart husband!)!

He has now memorized these letters:

c, e, g, i, o, r, t, y

Braxton is pointing to the 'e' in the picture below. Every time he says a letter, we have to say it back to him or he just keeps repeating it over and over and louder and louder...

The letters that he now asks about are:

b, d, f, k, l, p, s, x