Miller's Class Christmas Party

Cute little reindeers!

Miller's 2K class at the ELC had their Christmas party at the beginning of December. I was really excited about this class party because I thought it would be the first class party that Miller would actually realize something was different.
The party started at 9:30 so naturally, we arrived around 9:45...I had Casey drop the cookies off on his way to work that morning. In all my excitement about the party, I forgot that Miller has to have his "warm-up" time. Ms. Kaci and Ms. Erika both tell me that after I drop Miller off in the morning, he needs about 15 minutes of time to himself before he is ready to play. (One day, when he is old enough, this will be his coffee time like mommy's :) So when we arrived Miller was in one of his moods and not interested in playing with his friends. It was still cute, though, to see how each child has their particular seat that they must sit in and their particular routines.
After snack time, Miller decided to let go of his tight grasp around my leg and have some fun.

Ms. Kaci

Ms. Erika

New Year, New Name

With a new year, I have decided to choose a new blogger name. Clearly, I do not post every week and sometimes not every month, but sometimes I post every day! So this name is to those who are able to keep up with the Wigleys....Good Luck!

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas!

We finally got our Christmas decorations up around the second week in December. I usually like to have all of my decorations out the day after Thanksgiving (if we are in town), but this year with the move I was a little off of my schedule. But I am very pleased to say that we are finally settled in our new home! So as if moving wasn't hard enough, I had to also locate all of our Christmas decorations. We did not decorate as much as we would have liked, but I still had fun putting up our tree....which I did not take a picture of this year (gasp!). Needless to say, this whole moving thing has definitely thrown us for a loop.
So, I did get our tree up, my aunt gave us a beautiful live wreath that she found in Homewood for our unfinished front door, we hung our stockings with care, our neighbors gave us a gorgeous poinsettia, I got out all of my M. Bagwell Christmas dishes and did plenty of Christmas baking.
Last year I was prepared to put a gate around my Christmas tree because I just knew a 2 year old boy would love nothing more than to chunk my Christopher Radko ornaments across my living room, but I was wrong. Last year, Miller showed no interest in touching the tree. But this year...I guess since I wanted to include him in some of the decorating, he took it upon himself to "redecorate" all season long. I would notice that around the middle-bottom of our tree looked a little bare, so I took a closer look and saw that he had chosen a new spot for his favorite ornaments. We would have Aubie and the eagle together on one branch. On another we would have two Bella ornaments together, and so on. I was smart enough to put most of the pricier ornaments closer to the top. And I did tell him to please not touch the ornaments once we found the perfect spot, but it was just too cute. He thought he was helping!
I also got most of out 2011 Christmas cards out this week. I just love our Arden wedding photos so much so I knew I wanted to use them on our card. I had so much fun making our first family Christmas card!

Christmas Parade

The past three years I have taken Miller to the Christmas parade in Gadsden. This year was by far the most fun because Miller was actually knew what was going on and was excited to see the bands, lights and floats. Even though it was rainy weather, I thought it was much better than being freezing cold! For this parade ( and every other parade that Miller has attended downtown) we watched it from our good friends, Amy and Jared Gladden's, store, Gadsden Music Company.
Gadsden Music is the best venue for best friends like Miller and Morris to watch the parade. This year we arrived early to get a close park because of the rain. Miller was so excited to see Morris. Clyde and Jared are such great sports when it comes to 3 year olds running around the thousands of dollars worth of guitars and banging on the expensive drum sets. Finally, it was time for the parade to start.

Iron Bowl 2011

War Eagle!

This year we enjoyed watching the Iron Bowl from my brother's house. We have season tickets, but thought it would be smart to sell them in hopes that we could move in our new house over the long weekend. It ended up that we weren't able to completely move in that weekend, but by the end of the game we were excited to have sold our tickets. Melissa and Kagan, Ross' girlfriend, prepared some delicious tailgating food! We enjoyed spending the afternoon with great friends, even if we didn't beat Bama....

Win or loose, these boys had a wonderful time!

Very Thankful

This Thanksgiving was so busy for us. Since Casey and I are both very close to our families, we had to go to both houses on Thursday.
We started our day by Miller joining us in our bed and watching the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. My dad and I always watched the parade together, so I want to continue this tradition on with my family. Miller loved the parade. His favorite floats were Mickey and Buzz. After the parade, we rushed to get ready to make it to Casey's parents house.
Jada always cooks a feast, and every year we say we will eat light since we have to go to see my family and every year we eat until we are stuffed! This year I brought a yummy hash brown casserole that I found on Pinterest. I only took three pictures on my camera this Thanksgiving. My sister-in-law always gets the cute family picture of all 14 of us. I have got to do better!

That afternoon we headed to see my family. Every year, my family joins the Abels to celebrate at their house. We always have a blast! David and Julie are so sweet to include my family in their celebration. I enjoy seeing all the members of the Abel family just as much as I do mine. To the Abels I took another yummy (and cute!) recipe that I found on Pinterest....What would we do without it now? It was also a hit, but it was funny because so many people just wanted to look at it and take pictures and as time passed, the crackers started to get a little soggy! Miller loved the turkey (of course he would not try it), so I am thinking about making it a little tradition for us. I think next year he would really enjoy putting it together.

Gobble Gobble!

We ended up heading home around 8:30. What a long and fun filled day! By the time we got Miller to bed and sat down for a minute, I jumped up and said "Casey, it is 10 p.m.!" He looked at me like I was crazy when I told him I wanted to go to Wal-Mart. I knew it was crazy too. Before Miller was born my family went to Destin when we were young and when we got older we would spend Thanksgiving in Las Vegas. My experience spending my Black Fridays in the Fashion Show Mall and Caesars Palace did not prepare me for the madness at the Gadsden Wal-Mart. It was completely normal for people to have 2 and 3 buggies. I called Casey and could not help but laugh. I ended up buying 4 things. None of which was on sale.
We had a wonderful family and fun-filled Thanksgiving. It is one of my favorite holidays and this year I was so thankful and happy to spend it with my two favorite boys.