Tis the Season at Meemaw & Grandpa’s House

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Coraline, Jameson and I spent the 4 days before Christmas at Meemaw and Grandpa’s house. Brian wasn’t able to go with us, mostly because we have chosen that for most of Sasha’s late doggy years now we prefer her to be at home and cared for by us as much as possible. Since he had visited with us over Thanksgiving, we decided that he would stay home for this trip. Sasha was taking antibiotics (all better now) so that worked out best anyway.

I feel like most of our trip was about puzzles! After Shiloh chewed on part of the traditional Christmas puzzle Aunt Holly was putting together, we decided to go out and get another puzzle. Which led to Jameson watching us do a LOT of puzzling, so he needed to do some too.

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We did manage to put together this 1000 piece puzzle before I left, but it was quite a bit of work up to the very end!

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We also celebrated Meemaw’s birthday while we were there, and Jameson brought paintings for Meemaw, and also for Grandpa, since his birthday is January 3rd. While he got pretty fussy about his hands getting dirty while baking cookies, he sure didn’t mind getting them covered making his art!

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We made sugar cookies one day, and Jameson picked the teddy bear to make. They turned out a little extra large, but tasted great.

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Decorating was mostly just dumping sprinkles, which was pretty funny.

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We made more cookies the following day, and had a bit more fun with these because they involve the mixer! Jameson just loved helping with the mixer, and even requested I take his photo helping, multiple times!

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We decided at the end to add some m&m’s, but when Meemaw asked him to sprinkle them on, he dumped them all out right on top (reminiscent of our sprinkles on the sugar cookies the day prior). Ha! We spread them out and you would’ve never known, but it was pretty funny. We called them Meemaw’s Monster Cookies.

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Despite this happy face, he was not pleased that his hands were covered in cookie dough. They were way too messy for him! But he was hamming it up for the camera big time with this activity which was fun!

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On Meemaw’s actual birthday, we went to the woodland lights. We were a bit under dressed, because it was supposed to be warmer, but that night the temperature did drop so we were all chilly.

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Jameson enjoyed riding down the slide with Aunt Holly, though they had a minor crash with another rider at the bottom. Oops! Jameson also enjoyed this little ride, despite his usual solemn face look.

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It was fun as usual, and terribly muddy. I’m not sure if that was better or worse than the snow we had the year prior! Jameson did get to feed the reindeer a grape this year which was pretty cool.

Grandpa as usual played with his little hover planes and Jameson helped a couple times. It drives Shiloh nuts, so this was a fun capture of the dog leaping to get it.

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Coraline and Jameson again shared a room at Meemaw and Grandpa’s, and they did really well. There was only one night where Coraline was woken while I was putting Jameson in bed and had trouble falling back asleep. We gave her another bottle after about a half hour, and started bedtime over for her, and she finally fell asleep. The kids both had a snotty nose cold, so we brought the humidifier. I was really surprised at how well they did!

Brian drove us down half way, and Meemaw picked us up for the second half after we stopped for lunch together, which made traveling with two kids so much easier. It is particularly difficult alone, because Coraline is still not great in the car, and of course because she can’t walk either during potty breaks! She has gotten tremendously better between this Christmas trip and the Thanksgiving trip, but it is still hard to soothe her when she does get fussy while driving since she doesn’t take a pacifier. I was thankful that I didn’t need to deal with that by myself!

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She showed us how close she is to crawling several times, but no dice! She’s more proficient at butt scooting instead.

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Her favorite parts of the gifts were ribbons and wrapping paper, of course.

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She got this great stuffed pig from Meemaw and Grandpa, as well as some necessities and a cute frog book. And the outfit she is wearing too!

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Jameson got some new food accessories and knife for “cutting” watermelon. He also got a pickle ornament and cash register! Coraline actually ate one of the little dimes and we all didn’t catch it until it was in her mouth and she was rolling it around in there! Thankfully she didn’t try and swallow it before I fished it out with my finger, but it was a reminder at how mobile she’s getting even if she hasn’t perfected the maneuvers yet!

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It was such a fun time! I was sad to leave, but we did on Christmas Eve so we could be home for Santa to arrive.

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