Christmas Eve

Being the first grandchild = one spoiled rotten child! (I was once that little girl, myself!) ha! Grady is one lucky little boy to get so much attention and SO many presents! He became a PRO at opening gifts this year and loved every minute of it! We spent Christmas Eve-Eve in Yazoo and most of the day on Friday.

Uncle Jon and Aunt Sue gave Grady-man his first set of golf clubs! Hee Hee! It was an instant hit! Now he just needs some lessons from Uncle Jon! He carries his "clubs" around everywhere and half-way understands that they are for hitting the golfballs. He whacks at them in his own little funny way and it cracks me up!

Playing his drum from Aunt Jenny... Don't we all just LOVE noise-makers! Ha!

He even got his own cell phone to talk on! And knew JUST what to do with it!

my sweet Papaw with his granddaughters (minus Elizabeth, who I missed seeing on Christmas Day) and great grandson

four generations

The Fulton Family

When I was little (well actually, not just when I was little, but my entire life!) we spent Christmas Eve night at my house. My parents didn't want us to have to travel somewhere and pack up all our stuff, but instead, to sleep in our own beds and wake up at OUR house on Christmas morning. I love that tradition! Josh did the same thing when he was growing up, so we wanted Grady to start that tradition of spending Christmas at his own house and Santa visiting him there. Last year he was too young to know what Christmas was all about, and we spent the night in Yazoo. But this year, we came home for Santa. We said goodbye to Buddy, our elf. We wrote Santa a letter...(okay, so I wrote the letter this year...but one day, Grady will write his own! It's a Fulton tradition to write letters to Santa on Christmas Eve of course!) And we got ready to leave Santa's snack. That's when things got ugly. Ha ha!

Here's Grady putting his letter to Santa on the chair by the fireplace...

And here's Grady when he found out that the cookies weren't for HIM!
Who the heck is Santa????

Okay, so Mom had to give in and let the screamer have a bite...

And then we had to adjust the letter to apologize to Santa for the bites that were missing.

Christmas Day

Grady's big present from Santa was a Kettler Trike! He wasn't too thrilled about it when he first woke up and saw it. (Hence the reason for no photos on the trike from Christmas morning...ha!) He actually cried when we tried to put him on it. ANYWAY, he did warm up to it and now LOVES to go for a "ride!" So I will have to post some pictures of him on it soon!

"Hey! Where did those cookies go? I put three on this plate last night before I went to bed!"

"Ohhhhhh! Santa ate them! And he wrote me back!"

Here's Grady's letter to Santa and his response. I LOVE this tradition!

"Hmmmm, Dad! I believe Santa left this car-car for ME, not YOU!"

"Santa must know that my mom and Pete expect me to play baseball for the Bulldogs one day! Man he really DOES know everything!"

checking out the stocking loot

Surprise, Surprise! Grady's favorite thing of ALL was a bubble wand in the shape of a candy cane that Santa left in his stocking. He immediately went to the door and starting chanting "bub-buh, bub-buh!" The kid is obsessed with blowing bubbles...even if it is snowing and 25 degrees outside! Who cares about a tricycle when you've got candy-cane bubbles!?

Grana and Pops came over to join us for Christmas lunch. They brought Grady a HUGE box! He enjoyed tearing all of that paper off!

After an hour or so, Dad got it all put together... Grady has a new slide/play fort! Since it's so cold outside, it's just occupying our living room for the time being! Grady LOVES this thing! Between this and the tricycle, looks like we will be spending a lot of time outdoors now!

Growing Little Elf

I found this Christmas pajama outfit for Grady that came with a matching hat. Grady isn't much on hats, period. It's a miracle if I can even get him to keep a hood on his head on cold days. So getting him to WEAR this hat was not something I thought would really happen. At my parents' house when he didn't pull it off right away, I brought out the camera and snapped LOTS of pics!

These pictures reminded me of last Christmas and his little Santa hat (which will not even begin to fit on his large head this year!) When I looked back at last year's pics, I realized just how much the little guy has grown in only a year!

More Christmas pics to follow soon! :)

"Buddy"

In early December, we had a house guest arrive and stay with us for about a month! His name was Buddy. Buddy is one of Santa's special elves. He lives at the North Pole, but came to stay with us for a while to keep an eye on us and make sure we were deserving of a visit from Santa Claus. We had so much fun looking for Buddy every day in all of his hiding places! At first, Grady was a bit shy and didn't really want to open up to Buddy. He warmed up quickly though, and soon, it was a daily routine to search the house for Buddy. He would walk around the house, calling out "Buuuuuh-deeeeeee!" until we found him. It was too cute!

Buddy first arrived on our mantle, sitting with all of our nutcrackers!

an unsure Grady-man

Buddy even brought us a book so that we'd know all the rules about kids and elves being friends!

Grady had to keep an eye on Buddy the WHOLE time we were reading the book! ha ha!

still staring Buddy down during the story

On Christmas Eve, all of Santa's elves have to go back to the North Pole to stay until they come for visits in kids' houses next December. So we were kind of sad to see Buddy go. When we came home from Grana's house the day after Christmas, Grady immediately came in the house and started calling out "Buuuuuh-deeeeeeee!" SO sweet! Not sure he understood that he's gone. Hopefully he'll remember him next December!

Christmas in Canton

We began the tradition of taking Grady to Canton to the square to see the lights last year. We went again this year and he had a ball! Thanks to Grana, DeeDee, and Pete for going with us and making Grady smile long enough to get a Christmas card photo! Man, was that work or WHAT!?

Tis the Season for Greetings!

It's Christmas card time again! I have been using Shutterfly for the past several years for my Christmas photo cards, but also for so many other things as well! Shutterfly is doing a GREAT promotion that I heard about from reading friends' blogs. By doing a little "advertisement" for them like this on a blog post, you can get 50 free Holiday photo cards! Please see the link below to take part in this great offer!

Shutterfly Promotion

Every time we've ordered from Shutterfly, we've been so pleased with the product! If you haven't ordered from them in the past, check out their website and see what all they have to offer. SO much more than just cards!

Papaw is in the nursing home and it's always hard to think of a gift idea for a person in a nursing home with little hobbies and not much mobility. He is absolutely in love with his little great grandson, so we started the tradition of making him a "Grady Calendar" last year. He LOVED it! We are making the second addition this Christmas so he'll have another year in pictures to enjoy throughout the coming year! Get started on your 2011 Calendar with the link below:

Shutterfly calendars

I've also used Shutterfly for birth announcements and invitations. Check out this link if you are hosting a holiday party and need invitations:

Christmas Invitations

Hope you'll take advantage of this great website AND their wonderful holiday card promotion! Stay tuned for this year's Hammer Family Christmas Card...

Christmas 2009

O Christmas Tree

Grady was a little more into decorating the tree than he was last year! Our tree looks a bit funny this year. We had to kind of leave a bunch of blank space around the bottom because he likes to grab the ornaments and yank them off, yanking on the tree with each tug!

So when your mom has on obsession with Nutcrackers, I guess it can rub off... Grady now LOVES Nutcrackers as much as I do...probably because I have so many of them for him to look at. They are all on my mantle. He'll look up at them and say "Quack-er"
We get a new Nutcracker each year to add to our collection. Grady helped pick out this year's nutcracker! :) Here he is, pulling some of the old ones out of their boxes.