We started out the Holiday season with the 2010 Parade of Lights! The first night was about 60 degrees, unfortunately, we had plans and couldn't go until the second night... when a cold front moved in and it was about 20 degrees. Burrrrr! We bundled up and had a great time though, Eli got to wear his Uncle Tyler's old snow suit which kept him nice and warm. Our friend Lance came with us too.
On December 8th, Eli turned 5 months. Time has flown! He is starting to get so big (11.4 pounds) and he never stops moving! It makes me kind of sad to think the newborn/infant sleeping and cuddling days are long gone, pretty soon he'll start crawling and walking and I'll never be able to just sit and hold him again. But I do have to say, watching him grow and develop is so much fun! He's really starting to get a personality, I love it!
This month he learned to sit up on his own. He's not quite able to crawl, but if I set him down in one place and look away for a minute, he'll have moved about 5 feet when I look back. He digs his head into the ground and pushes with his feet, it's quite the form of transportation!
Since we were going to spend Christmas with Jason's family in South Carolina, on December 17th, the day before we left, we celebrated Christmas with my family. My sister was in town too so Eli got to play with his cousin Rhaya.
On December 18th, we came to Myrtle Beach to spend Christmas with Jason's family. My brother and sister-in-law are also visiting from Belgium with their daughter Kherington. Jason had to leave the day after Christmas to be back at work on Monday, but I'm still here for another week so we'll all get to enjoy New Year's together also!
We had a gingerbread house-making competition, Cory didn't have a teammate since Adam is on a mission in Mexico, so in honor of him, he made a Mexican flag on the roof of his house.
Jason and my house. It took forever, but we're pretty proud of it... If you saw how awful our house was last year, you'd understand why.
Christmas Eve
Jason's family tradition on Christmas Eve is to play games, have Chimichangas and strawberry dacqueries (virgin of course) for dinner, reinact the Nativity, read a few Christmas stories and watch a movie. It was great fun!
Our house won 1st place! Well, we are the self-proclaimed winners. We spent about 6 hours on it so I thought we deserved the win, and nobody objected sooooo... yeah, we win!
Eli had been acting cranky all day and we could tell he wasn't feeling well but didn't know why. Well, in the middle of dinner we all heard a loud noise come from his little booty... the picture above is what the noise was. It wasn't exactly the most appetizing thing that could have occurred during dinner, but he did seem to be feeling MUCH better afterwards!
It was a white Christmas in Myrtle Beach! Well, it didn't actually snow until late at night, and it definitely didn't accumulate much, but still, it did snow on Christmas... at the beach! I'm really sad I didn't take a picture though.
Christmas was a great day, we opened presents, ate yummy food, played games and relaxed. Eli also enjoyed being spoiled by his grandparents with lots of presents!
Jason's parents asked us all to do service as our Christmas present to them. Cory's way of presenting his service projects to them was by singing a funny song.
Jason's grandpa taught at Purdue and so, as you can probably tell by many of the pictures, his family (mostly his Dad though) are big fans! Grandpa Glover said he wanted to instill Boiler Maker loyalty in all his grandchildren, so he's begun the brainwashing at a young age by giving Eli Christmas presents that say Purdue on them. That Dinosaur is really neat by the way, it rolls around the room and bobs it's neck while singing a song. When it hits something it even turns around and keeps on going!
Papa Rick gave Eli a lot of cars for Christmas, so we followed suit and got him some more. He'll have quite a few in his collection before he even knows what they are!
Eli and his stalking stuffers. Most of them were more for me than for him... like the clothes and shoes!
New Year's Eve
Jason went home the day after Christmas so he wasn't able to spend New Year's Eve with us, which by the way, is the 2-year anniversary of our first date (we went snowboarding). Last year I was sick and stayed home while Jason went down to Colorado Springs to celebrate with some of his extended family. This year I was in Myrtle Beach and he was in Colorado Springs again, so maybe NEXT year we'll actually spend New Year's Eve together. I have NEVER had a New Year's/first date anniversary kiss from my husband!
Anyway, the Catchatoorians, good family friends of the Glovers, came down from Charlotte to celebrate with us. We, again, played games, ate yummy food and just had lots of fun! Plus, for the first time in many, many years, I stayed up until midnight! I know I don't sound very cool, but I just like to go to bed early. However, I found the secret to staying up until midnight... go to the East Coast to celebrate and it's really like you're only staying up until 10 O'clock!
Eli loved being read to by the Catchatoorians!
We took Eli and Kherington to the Aquarium, they loved it! Eli was just mesmerized by all the neat things to look at.
Oh the beards...
Jason's brother Cory was in a school musical that required him to grown out his beard, he had to grow it for over 3 months! So, Ryan came up with the lovely idea of having a beard growing competition... for what I understood to be a variety of reason: First, in honor of Adam who is on a mission and can't grow a beard. Second, in protest of the 2-hour family photo shoot that Jason's mom had scheduled for us all. Third, to annoy their spouses and fourth, just because? Truth be told, by the end of it they could hardly wait to shave! So, who knows why boys do these silly things?! But of course we had to take pictures before the big shave...
And here are just a bunch of random pictures from the rest of our vacation.
Kherington helping out grandpa in the kitchen... and me still working on our gingerbread house LONG after everybody else had finished!
Kherington was so great with Eli! Whenever she found his toys lying somewhere she would bring them to him and while he was napping she always wanted to go back and check on him. It was so cute, she is going to be such a good big sister!
Kherington watching Funny Gummy
Typically, when I feed Eli I sit him on my lap and hold his hands down under his bib so that I can get it over with as quickly as possible without making a mess, however, Grandma and Grandpa Glover have a nice big high chair that I thought I'd give a try... It was a mess, but very funny. I really need to get over my germaphobe/neat-freak characteristics because babies sure are messy, kids are messier and little boys are the messiest!
Playing one of the new games we got for Christmas, Tiki Topple.
