Christmas with the Trammells

Making gingerbread men with Mimi


2 baby girls --due 1 week apart!!


I have no idea what is going on in this picture!! Needless to say, Grayson had a good time with Uncle Andrew!






We were able to get together with some special friends. We are all due within a week of each other. April will be a very busy month for babies!! 2 girls and 2 boys!!




Ready for the live nativity with Papa

Christmas Party

We were so happy to be able to host a little Christmas party this morning. Some of the stay-at-home moms from church have a "play group" that meets each week. We have really enjoyed being a part of this group--Grayson gets lots of "play" time and mommy gets lots of "girl" time with the other moms. For our last gathering of the year, we had everyone over to our house for a lunch. Here are the "big kids" from the group:


All of the "babies" (there were 4 of them!) were rolling around on the living room floor. This wasn't even everyone--we had a few families missing. We really have a large, growing group. There are 5 babies on the way this next year! The kids far outnumber the moms--it' s pretty crazy when we're all together! We are so thankful for our friends and the time that we get to spend with them each week!!

SANTA

" oh yeah, I remember you..you're the guy in my books."





Umm.... Sorry Santa! Maybe next year....

Cookie Exchange

After a week of sickness at our house, Grayson and I were very happy to be well enough to get out of the house for a cookie exchange. Decorating cookies was a new experience for Grayson and he seemed to enjoy every second--especially the sprinkles! We came home with lots of yummy cookies and new recipes!

Santa Is In Town

Santa officially made it to the Marietta Square last week and we were there!


No, this is not Grayson, but this little girl is not happy about sitting in Santa's lap! I just think this Mr. and Mrs. Claus are so amazing!!


Grayson is not too sure what to think of the guy in the red suit.




The line was too long to sit in Santa's lap, but we did get to sit in Santa's "ride". Yep, our Marietta Santa comes to town in a shiny, red fire truck!
We'll be back at some point to have a seat in his lap--and I'm sure we'll have pics to share!

Checking off my list with Shutterfly!!

This year I really had in my mind to have all of our Christmas decorating and shopping done before the first week in December. Unfortunately, things have gone much slower than I planned. Finally, our home is decorated, but gifts? Well.... I still have a lot of shopping to do. So, in an effort to get one more thing checked off of my list, I am sharing with you one of my favorite photo sites---shutterfly, of course!
Over the past few years, I have used Shutterfly to make gifts for grandparents and great grands. They LOVE getting gifts that have pictures of their grandchildren and Shutterfly has so many practical options!


I love these calendars that I have used several times before--they make the perfect gift that lasts througout the year!!


And these mousepads are the perfect gift for those "papas" and "pops" who spend lots of time at the computer throughout the day.
I am so excited to use Shutterfly for our Christmas cards this year. As I was looking through the many choices, it will be very difficult to decide which one to use. But, I really like the simplicity and colors in this design.

We haven't decided which pictures we will use for the card yet, so it's nice that Shutterfly has so many options--we could use up to 6 photos just on the front of the card!!

I would definitely recommend Shutterfly to anyone who still has yet to decide on the perfect Christmas card to share with friends and family this year. If you'd like to save some money on your cards, head over here. Shutterfly has made it so easy for anyone to take advantage of this awesome opportunity!! Thanks, Shutterfly!!

Black Eye

During our little weekly get together with friends yesterday, Grayson ran into a table and got his first black eye. Poor baby! It makes me want to cry every time I look at him. Thankfully, it barely missed his eyeball and he seems to be perfectly fine. Of course we were scheduled to have our Christmas pictures taken tomorrow with some friends, but we will probably reschedule. Oh well...
The Lord has definitely shown His grace and mercy to us lately--even in these small incidents. This past Sunday at church, they had to come and get me during the service. When I walked into Grayson's class, he was screaming and had blood on his clothes. He had fallen and bitten his bottom lip and his tongue!! Once again, we were so thankful because it could have been much worse than just a swollen lip and tongue!
I'm sure this is only the beginning--having a boy definitely causes you to pray for God's mercy DAILY and to trust in Him to take care of our little ones.

Despite all the accidents, Grayson continues to stay active at home. We gave him his very own "mini" Christmas tree to decorate this year. He loves putting on the balls or "b's" as he calls them. This tree will eventually be a Jesse tree this year if I can get my act together and start making some ornaments! In the meantime...it keeps his mind distracted from taking all the ornaments off of our family tree.

Thanksgiving at our House

This year all of the Hayes' family came to our house for Thanksgiving. Our house was filled with the voices of these 3 precious cousins. This was the best attempt at a picture of all 3--they were everywhere!





We ended the week with a hayride (without the hay) on Uncle Charles' farm in Covington, GA. We had such a great time and Grayson already misses his cousins!!

It's A.....

GIRL!!!
We had our ultrasound this morning and were very surprised to find out that we will be having a baby girl in April!!! Now what in the world am I going to do with a girl?!?
This will be interesting!
We are super excited and so thankful!!! We'll keep you updated....

What I've been up to

This weekend our neighborhood had a craft/art festival. So me and my sweet neighbor set up a booth with some of the onesies and shirts that we've made. We've been getting together the past few weeks while our little ones nap and just sewing away. We've really had a lot of fun just throwing around ideas and coming up with some cute holiday designs.


Well, our little shirts were a hit and we sold over half of what we had made and in addition to that we took about 10 orders. So guess what we're working on this week? We also got invited to another craft fair this Wednesday so we're hoping we can be a part of it.

Here's our little Grayson ready for church . Mimi made him this adorable Noah's Ark outfit. Chad got to be Mr. Mom this weekend while I was at the fair the whole day on Saturday. They seemed to have enjoyed their time together and got to watch lots of football. Grayson loves watching football!! He points, claps, laughs, and talks away in his own little language--it's really kind of funny!!
We still have lots of painting to do around here--all of the window trimwork! So, my parents are headed here for a few days this week to help out. I'm hoping we get a lot accomplished before the holidays.

The Big Announcement(s)!

I know this post is long overdue, but I still wanted to share because we are SUPER excited!!

Back in September, we planned to surprise my parents and show up at their house (on our way to the beach) and share our news of the baby. Andrew was already in town (which was perfect timing!) and I planned for William and Bonnie to show up too. No one knew of our news yet, and the plan was just to surprise mom and dad with all of us being together for dinner...then we were going to share our news!! Well...not long after William and Bonnie arrived, they decided to shock us all with the news of THEIR baby on the way!!!! And her due date was 1 week after mine!!!! We were SOOO excited for them!!! Grayson waited to make his announcement until after dinner and everyone was, once again, shocked!! It was such a fun night and we have so much to look forward to next year!!



We can't wait for William and Bonnie to have their little baby in their arms!! They will be amazing parents!! It has been so neat going through the pregnancy with Bonnie! We CAN'T WAIT to find out who's having a boy or girl --or may they'll be the same sex!!! How exciting!!


Needless to say, the parents and grandparents were THRILLED and it will be like having twins this Spring!! We'll keep you posted...

Our Little Lamb

I was very slack about a Halloween costume this year and had to come up with a "homemade" idea at the last minute! So, Grayson was a lamb--and I thought he was precious! He refused to wear the ears, so some people thought he was a cloud! Oh well..

I had to put this white shirt on him to protect the cotton balls until we got to church. He looked like a puffy marshmallow!



Trick or treat!! We made one stop to a sweet neighbor's house on our way to our church celebration. Grayson tasted candy for the first time--sweet tarts!! It's all he wanted for the rest of the night!


Chad was so excited to carve a pumpkin with Grayson. So Grayson watched sweetly while daddy carved away.

Mountain Weekend

We had so much fun on our mountain weekend, and as always, time passed way too quickly!

Grayson enjoyed being entertained by his great-grandparents.

He even got to pick out his very own pumpkin. However, he wanted ALL the pumpkins, so we had to make a choice for him!


Our attempt at a family picture--the sun was so bright!

Grayson on the hayride with Mimi and Papa

He wanted to hold ALL of the pumpkins--even the ones that weighed more than he did!

And Grayson got plenty of snuggle time.
We always enjoy our family time together--thanks Mimi and Papa for such a fun trip!