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.

While We Were Away...

OH MY GOODNESS, did I miss this handsome little man last week!!! Longest I've been away from him! He had a ball staying with Grana & Pops part of the week, and DeeDee & Pete the other half of the week.

What Grady learned to do while we were gone....

NYC!

Last week Josh and I took a trip that I have wanted to take for a very long time! We spent the week of Thanksgiving in New York! This was my 5th trip to the Big Apple, but it was Josh's first. I had been trying to talk him into going for the past 5 years. Finally he consented and off we went. We had a blast! Josh loved it as much as I did. Though I've been before, it was a whole new experience for me to see New York at Christmas time. The tree at Rockefeller, the lights and the store windows, and of course, the PARADE!

Probably the highlight of the trip for me was getting to see the Rockettes' Christmas Spectacular show at Radio City. OH MY GOSH! It was so incredible! We also went to see The Lion King...and it was magnificent! Best show I've ever seen period! I cried as soon as the first song started... (OK, so if you can't tell, we had a ball!)

Here are some pictures...

Times Square

view of the skyline from Fulton Landing
(hmmm...one of my favorite views...appropriate name maybe????)

and of course we had to have ice cream at the best ice cream place in the world... it's just something about eating that icecream under the Brooklyn Bridge!

My first time to visit the Top of the Rock... I'd always gone to the Empire State Building. In my opinion, Top of the Rock was 10 times better! It was also my first time to go at night. Completely amazing to see all of this around you. It makes me feel so small.

Something Josh and I hoped to do was walk across the Brooklyn Bridge. The weather at the beginning of the week was AWESOME! Completely unusual for late November in NY. So we were able to do it. SO NEAT!

Central Park...
this view always reminds me of Home Alone 2... It has come on tv twice since I've been home and I've watched it twice. ha!

And the tree at Rockefeller Center. I just had chills! Yes, it wasn't lit yet, but just seeing it in person was so great to me! I am such a kid at Christmas time!

The Parade!!!

I decided that this event deserved a post all of its own. The Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade has been something that I have wanted to see in person for my entire LIFE. We grew up watching the whole thing every Thanksgiving morning at my house when I was a kid... well, not just a kid... every year since birth! I guess this was kind of the big "finale" of our trip. Josh and I were both like little kids, just in awe of it all. It was truly amazing and larger than life! We took over 100 pictures...but don't worry...I didn't include them all in this post. Just a few to show you a glimpse of what we enjoyed on Thanksgiving morning.

Though the weather had been really nice at the beginning of the week, it was rather CHILLY on Thanksgiving morning! We left our hotel at around 6:00. We had gotten advice to try to see the parade near the point that it begins...closer to Central Park than Macy's. We ended up having an AWESOME spot to see it all...right at the corner of 7th Ave. and Central Park South. We were right on a corner, so we could see all the balloons as they turned the corner. We arrived at our "great spot" along with the other 3 million people 2 hours prior to the parade. So by the time it began, we were pretty cold! But when it started finally, the excitement made us forget the chill!

Okay, enough rambling...here are some pictures!
soooo excited to see that the Smurfs are back! They were all over Macy's when we shopped on Wednesday! I used to LOVE the Smurfs when I was a kid!
a few pics of celebs on the floats...

Jimmy Fallon

Jessica Simpson
(**Note: Josh had the camera at this point and took like 52 pictures of her. I deleted about 49 of them...ha!)

Joan Rivers

and of course...Mr. CLAUS!!!!

the two giddy kids at the end of the parade!

Happy Thanksgiving!