Mashed Potatoes & Gravy

I have alot to be thankful for this year...great family, great friends, and great FUN! This has been an amazing year. I almost don't want it to end, but I know 2012 will bring even more amazing things for us.

Planning for this years Holiday dinner was a bit of a challenge. It started off great. I spent last weekend and the beginning of this week decorating. I browsed ideas on pinterest and had my table set. Grocery shopping done. Tree up. Charlotte and I  even made our Christmas ornaments. Everything was going great and I was sooo happy I didnt have to fight any crowds for last minute shopping. That was until day before Thanksgiving.... I will start off by saying, we normally do not have a formal dining table set up, so Charlie must have thought this was a special indoor playground just for her! Our painted glass ornaments were sitting on top of my beautifully decorated table drying. And of course, our little turd of a daughter crawled up the table (she is very sneaky. Quiet as a mouse when she is getting into trouble), smashed the ornaments on the floor, and dumped the paint from the trays all over my table cloth/runner/place mats/EVERYTHING!! And she had a great time doing it too. A finger painting set-up just for her apparently. I only wish Chuck would have snapped an after picture for the full effect. But I will share a before picture:

 

 

 

Thank goodness my office closed early Wednesday and I was able to run to the store and pick up a few replacement items. Oh! and of course, also thankful Charlie did not get hurt in her destruction mode.

One other lesson learned. When you have a toddler ornaments do not tend to stay ON the tree. I was taking a little cat nap on the couch this week and when I woke up...I had about 10-15 ornaments on top of me. Little stinker. That is why our tree is currently on top of a box. So Charlie cannot reach the ornaments!

So this year we had a  scheduling conflict and had to move our Mattison Thanksgiving meal to Friday. Chuck and I had the slightest idea what to do with ourselves on Thanksgiving Day. We did not want to sit at home doing nothing. And we especially did not want to go without eating turkey on Turkey Day! So we bundled up and headed downtown for the parade. Afterwords we made a trip to the one and only- Golden Corral. hah. I was really amazed by how extremely PACKED it was. No parking and a line out the door. sheesh.  

I had a lot of fun hanging out with my crazy (and apparently-competitive) family today. We stuffed ourselves and then played games all afternoon. Dominoes-Mexican Train is probably my all time favorite family game. And I won! Neener Neener Neener :) And by a lot:

Cory - 237

Justin Donze- 394

Granny Jo- 401

Papa T- 435

Chuck- 437

Jes- 500

We were also able to sneak in a few family photographs, pups included:

I will leave you with one last funny, but also disgusting, and a little bit impressive toddler story. So after the family left today, Charlie went right into the bathtub. Normally after a bath I let her run around naked for a bit. It is probably her favorite part of the day!! While she was having her nakey time, I  finished up on some dishes. When I looked down, she was squating on the floor reading a book. However, she happened to be squating right over a dog bowl. And when she got up, I noticed she peed right in the dog bowl! not a drop on the floor. So I quickly grabbed the bowl and cleaned it out. And when I looked back down... she pooped on the floor!! Thats a first. for both. hah. That's my Charlie!

Denny's Disaster!

Sunday Morning.

I was so happy that Charlotte slept in til 9:30am, so I decided to take her to Denny's for a lil girl time and pancakes while Chuck caught up on some sleep. Little did I know we were going to be sitting in a booth next to my worst nightmare- An old lady with 27 cats!! TWENTY SEVEN. Her oldest cat is 22 years old. I did not even think that was possible. So while we are trying to enjoy our breakfast, this old lady is talking about her cats, her terminally ill sister, and her brother who is in a psychiatric hospital. I honestly think she should room with her brother. Should have went to Uncle Bills Pancake House instead!!

So besides this awful breakfast. Charlotte and I  have had a great weekend together. Yesterday we attempted some holiday shopping (with no luck), visited with Aunt Tiffany and her cousin Isabella,  had lunch with Grandma and Grandpa,  and followed up with more holiday shopping. When we got home Charlie let me clean the house in preparation for our holiday decorations and then we snuggled on the couch and watched Sherk 3 (for the 100th time this week!!). Today we are moving in our formal dining table out of the garage- It only makes an appearance for one month out of the year- and setting up our decorations. Hopefully we will get our tree up. BUT, this is our first time doing a real tree and I am not sure if it is still too early. I haven't seen any of the usual tree lots set up in our neighborhood yet, so that might have to wait until next weekend.

Oh! And we also got a new car this week. We traded in our Equinox for a more family friendly Pacifica. I think we are all pretty happy with the new trade, especially Charlotte. She LOVES her new dvd player. Although, now I am losing that much needed car nap since she is GLUED to the tv :(  Most of our cartoon/pixar movies are taped on our DVR so we made a special trip to Target to purchase some movies for the car. So far we have watched Little Rascals and the Cat in the Hat. I am sure Santa will have to add movies to her Christmas list. ;)

Chunky Baby Butt

So it looks like I am in the market for a new coffee table! I will give you one guess on who broke my table....that’s right, Charlie's Chunky Baby Butt!! I couldn't really give you the details on how it went down. All I know is I came home to a missing table and a child with a fat lip. Thank goodness she still had all of her teeth! Just wish I could have captured her reaction to the legs collapsing out from under her. Does that make me an evil mother?? lol.

　　

Charlotte knows she is not allowed to crawl up on the table (or the toilet, the stairs, picnic table, on top of the dogs...you name it, she climbs it!). Normally I give her one warning. After that I flip the table over. Smart right? Nope. She thinks it is absolutely great because she then gets her own personal sized dance floor! It seriously keeps her entertained for at least an hour (and me too because she turns into a miniature river dancer. Its pretty funny.).

　　

I have been noticing these past few weeks that everything in my house gets put up higher, and higher, and higher. Pretty soon I am going to have to start storing my stuff on the ceiling! This child is like a raccoon. She seriously gets into everything. We started with child locks on the bottom cabinets to keep her from pulling our pots and pans out every two seconds. Now we have moved to the top drawers, cabinet above the toilet, and pantry door. Some of the cabinets we cannot figure out how to put locks on, so they are just completely empty. The laptop can no longer stay open. Clothes rarely stay folded in her dresser drawer. Its a bit of a nightmare.

　　

Last week, Charlie went to Gramma Sue's (Chuck and I had a Totally Awesome 80's party to attend). So I spent Saturday cleaning the entire main floor top to bottom. It was spotless....until my lil’ tornado of a toddler came home and wrecked my house in less than 5 minutes. ugh. Its like the cleaning never stops. Sometimes I wonder how parents with multiple children handle this stuff. Its exhausting. But I guess it is all worth it when you look at your little turd and they smile back and say "cheeezzze". Oh ya! Charlie has added "cheese" to her vocab this week. I love her!

Here is her cheese face. Such a corn ball:

I will miss October.

October has to be my favorite month out of the year!!

For Grandpa's Birthday we went to Erkerts Farm for some apple and pumpkin picking:

We have spent several evenings exploring Tower Grove Park and playing with the other kiddos at the playgroud. Charlotte can now go down the slide all by herself. Such a big girl!

 

 

The other half of the month we have been rooting for the Cardinals. Thank goodness they won the World Series. Now our house is somewhat stress free and we can get back in the routine of putting Charlotte to bed on time without worring about waking her with our late night cheering. GO BIRDS!

This past weekend we celebrated Halloween. Saturday we went to Boo at the Zoo. I was even able to get Chuck to dress up, as long as he could sport his Cardinal jersey of course! Sunday morning we took a trip to the Magic House with our buddies Laura and William. Later that evening we made the trip downtown for the Cardinal World Series Parade. Monday was Halloween. We had plans to go out towards Wentzville for Trick or Treating but they were cancelled. Instead we turned out all the lights and pretended no one was home. I'd say this has been a pretty fantastic month. Bring on the Hollidays!

FLINTSTONE FAMILY

Fishing at the Magic House

GO CARIDALS!



Hola Blog World!

So I have finally decided to join the blog world! Yaaaay. Let's just hope I can stay motivated past this first introduction.

Of course the main subject of my blog:

Meet Charlie. She is the coolest kid I know and she happens to be my daughter. I am one lucky momma!! Or as Charlie says, "mamamamamama". Charlotte is 17 months old and on a mission. A mission to make me laugh and smile all day everyday. I just love her so much.

The purpose of my blog will be to document all the funny things she does, so I can look back years from now and still get a chuckle or two.

For example. Yesterday, Charlotte learned that if she pushed her highchair close enough to the kitchen counter, she could climb up and get to the Halloween treats. Smart baby. I am sure she will have more hilarious stories, new tricks, words, and all other sorts of things to keep me busy in my blog.

Oh! and in case you were wondering about the blog title "Ouch! Charlie bit my finger". Although my Charlie is a biter, I actually stole this from one of my favorite youtube videos. If you haven't seen it you should definitely check it out. Brittish kids are just so darn cute! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HE4FJL2IDEs