We celebrated our Smith Family Christmas today... or "Fake Christmas", as Avery calls it!! What an awesome day the Smith kids had! First off, we'll start by showing you our Santa pics from our visit on Thursday. Both kids did great! The sat on his lap (Avery's first year of doing that!!) and Oliver actually spoke to him!
*Note the crooked, very, very loose bottom tooth....

So while Avery had some razz-ma-tazz hands while waiting in line... this is how Oliver spent his time in line!
He eventually woke up and was in a decent mood! (Avery received some brown lip gloss that day and was liberally applying... so her mouth looks a little- big)
This is Avery explaining to Santa that we're going to be in Arizona.
Here's Oliver explaining to Santa that he wants a Panda Bear Pillow Pet.And then came Fake Christmas Morning!!!! Oliver is completely, totally, and whole-heartedly in love with Woody and Buzz Lightyear (there is a picture montage of his new relationship with them below)!!! He also received this cool Toy Story 3 game from Grandma and Grandpa Smith. Avery has spent most of her day playing with her new Nintendo DS from Grandma and Grandpa!!! Literally... hours and hours spent playing her new games- silly me... I put this on her Christmas list with some hesitation because I wasn't completely convinced she'd like it... HA!! It is definitely her favorite present!!!Some play time- Avery and her Fire Breathing Night Fury (loves it!!! cool toy!) and Oliver and Woody!Avery also got the as-seen-on-tv Fuzzoodles. Another hit! If anyone needs a gift idea for a 5 or 6 year old girl... try some Fuzzoodles!! They're like super furry, monster sized pipe cleaners that come with a bunch of faces, shoes, and accessories. You can make a bunch of silly creatures. Or if you're Avery, you make a visor.... (girl after my own heart) (**AND note the missing tooth!!! Avery pulled it out herself!!!! Major bravery progress- but it was actually flapping around when she would talk, so it was QUITE loose!!)
And spell your name with them!!Then you wear your visor all day while playing your many hours of your DS!And finally, the Oliver, Woody and Buzz montage. These new additions to Oliver's heart have now watched him eat, watched him sleep, been hugged on, dropped, and flown around the room with sister!He has spent a nice chunk of time examining how I wrote his name on the bottom of their shoes (just like in the movie, ya know?).

Woody sits on Oliver's lap and he talks to him and falls down a lot. Woody knows when his hat is off or on his head, and Oliver thinks that is pretty fun!Ooohhh, the love!!!!
Oh Oliver. While he is still very much a two-year-old (read: tantrums, irrational emotions), he sure makes us laugh pretty regularly!! I'm working on our Thanksgiving in Indiana pictures, but in the mean time, here are some videos to tide you over!!

Oliver was pretty pumped about decorating the tree!!! He pretty much bounced the through the entire process.



Up next is something that stems from Dora singing a silly song. She takes well known songs and then throws something silly in. This one is "merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily, life is but a.... bowl of spaghetti!!" Followed by lots of giggling!



Finally, this one was in Indiana. We were spending time at the lovely Dark home and Joanne was reading Oliver a story and cracking. him. up!!! It was something having to do with the word 'icabod'. It was a cute little moment for them... and now for all of you!!



Icabod from Stephanie Smith on Vimeo.

Avery's loose tooth FINALLY fell out!!! It had been loose for soo long! We first noticed it was loose on October 12... and almost a month later- November 11, it finally came out!

For those of you who might not know, Avery has an extremely low pain tolerance... or an extremely high capacity for drama and emotions, depending on how you look at it. So I knew there was no way anyone would get near her mouth to pull it out or that she would pull it out.

She was just wiggling away. Yesterday, as she was talking to me, it was flapping back and forth!!! ridiculous! So she was munching away on a fruit leather, "heard a crunch", and it plopped out!!! It bled for a while (she had previously been afraid that the bleeding would hurt) and she wasn't scared at all!!! The one next to it is loose too, so we'll see if that one takes a month to fall out!!!Showing how she could stick her tongue through it!Showing Oliver her new skill!!Oliver trying on dad's childhood hat... too bad you can't see that it says Jeff on it! In other news, we got our first snow!! Its actually still on our grass 3 days later... unusual for here!! Usually it melts right away fast, but its been pretty chilly.

And Avery was sick. Missed 2 days of school this week (which I think she sort of liked!) with some sort of weird virus. She just had a fever and a headache. weird.
Finally, we've got the obligitory leaf pictures for the fall!!! This raking didn't really result in the actual picking up of any leaves, just jumping- and Avery has perfected "swimming" in the leaves! Hopefully we'll get them up before it snows! They were just so darn excited, I took a lot of pictures... so get ready!!

At this point, they were pretty much done jumping and had moved on to burying each other. Little cuties... but seriously, Oliver... what is with that smile??
The first jump!!!
Now Ollie's starting to get into it!!






I love Oliver's face in this one... having such fun! And yes, Avery IS, in fact, wearing pink cowboy boots!

Along the lines of thoroughly celebrating Halloween, we went to a friend's house to carve pumpkins!
Ooohhh, the concentration...So proud! He wanted to hold his pumpkin while we lit all of the other ones. And finally, the main event!!!! We went trick-or-treating in our friend's neighborhood. It was the type of neighborhood where they hand out the full-sized candy bars! It was jam-packed with kids and it was so fun to hang out with our friends! Here are the kiddos before we headed out...Avery's favorite development over the last month is that she is now a member of a saddle club!!! We heard about it at Halloween with the Horses and signed her right up! It last for 3 hours on Saturdays and they learn all about horses. How to take care of them, groom them, feed them... and some riding!!! She loves it! This was right when we got there and she got to walk through that barn- as she did, all of the horses poked their little heads out... again... she was in heaven!!!We were slightly early, so she got to meet Marshmallow before everyone else got there! They have high school and college kids that are the "trainers" and she LOVED her trainer!!!

This isn't the best picture, but it was taken with her trainer's phone... but here she is getting ready to ride Major!
We're baaaacckkk!!! We took an unplanned blogging break and now we've got a lot of catching up to do. First, we went to the Fall Festival at the Littleton Historical Museum with Jeff's co-workers. The kids had a great time!!!




Up next was Halloween with the Horses! As you can imagine, this is Avery's favorite event. She got to ride horses about 8 times, saw some cool horse shows, and got to go trick-or-treating through a barn!
So Avery started off on a pony (above) and then moved to a full sized horse still lead by a person on foot (below).
And then, she felt brave enough to be lead by another person on a horse!!! I couldn't believe it! She looked so small and was so far away... who was going to catch her if she slipped off??! :) But she was in heaven! Up next was Avery's Halloween parade at school. Here's Oliver and I waiting for the parade to go by.
In the parade!!
At the party, Oliver found some stuff to do. (urgh- what to do about that smile!!!)

OK, I'm off to work on Halloween Part II.