Max slept in his big boy underwear for the first time last night. This is very exciting news!

We've adjusted to having only one kid in diapers rather poorly. Instead of bringing the diaper bag everywhere like we would have with Max, we usually forget it at home and end up using my diaper reserves in my car for Rory. This means we don't have any bibs for Rory, sippy cups or snacks. You know, the general well packed bag for any situation? Well it's usually sitting at home while we're stuck in those situations. So Rory is having to tough things out a lot sooner then Max ever did. I'm assuming this is normal. There are a lot of experiences from Max that we brought in with raising Rory that helped tenfold, but sometimes I feel like she gets the short end of the stick.

Take this morning for instance. Max didn't like that I had the music on in the car and told me "Mama talk to me." So I started to ask Max questions and also tried to include Rory. But while Max can answer me, Rory can't yet, and she gets very frustrated about that. While I'm talking to Max, Rory is usually yelling her babble talk at me as if to say "I'm here too, understand me!"

My little girl is growing up so fast yet wants to grow up faster, and my little boy is certainly turning into a little man now that he's out of diapers! And I'm here, trying to hold them in this moment, where the kisses and hugs are endless. I'm not going to say kids grow up too fast, but I will say some days seem to go faster then others. I love those two!

OK, I'm ready to show off some pictures from our Christmas with Dusty's family. It was hard to choose which ones to show!

An intense card game was played by the men before dinner.

The "babies" played nicely on the floor together. I know, they aren't babies anymore but they are the babies of the family this year.

Believe it or not, the kids all got together on their own to say "cheese" for the camera. My instructions were to "take picture", I was so proud of them!

The unveiling of the Christmas pajamas. Oh, so funny!

Rosemary is very excited about her Christmas gifts this year.

Uncle Andrew posing with Rory in the car he and Katie got her for Christmas!

Max driving around beauty queen Lyla in the truck he got from Andrew and Katie.

Uncle Cecil helping the kids play with the Nerf guns Max got for Christmas.

It was a great evening with beef tenderloin and crab leg for dinner, birthday cake for dessert, and some of the best company around. Thank you Dido and Grammy for a wonderful evening!

Her nickname is boogers for a reason...

This is one of those times that clicking on the image to make it larger is a good idea, it ups the yuck factor!

Rory had her 15 month checkup last night and she continues to remain near the top of the charts! She came in at 26 lbs putting her at 89% for her age group; she was 2' 8" tall putting her at 87% for her age group; and as always her head is gigantic at 19" which has her at the top of the charts, 98%. My kids have brains I tell you!

After our appointment we went to Acapulco's for dinner. It was snowing really bad outside when we left and the roads were terrible. I must have been more distracted then I realized because as we headed back outside after dinner I couldn't find my car keys. I just had a funny feeling the keys were in the car and asked Dusty to check as I searched our table. Sure enough, the keys were in my van, in the ignition. So we loaded the kids up and then I started scraping the ice and snow off my windows. I returned to my car to see that it was running. So I yell at Dusty who is scraping his windows on his car to see if he turned on my car. (We met for the doctor's appointment so we both had our vehicles.) He did not. So that means I literally left my keys sitting in my ignition and my car running the whole time we were enjoying our dinner at Acapulco's. Seriously? Who does that?!

We celebrated Oliver's first birthday while we were all together. He was a trooper given he was recovering from an illness! He opened his presents before dinner. (The kids were all on hand to help!)

I don't think you're supposed to eat the fireman!

After dinner we celebrated with cake!

We all sang to Oliver in our quietest voices possible to keep from upsetting him. It was quite comical!

Allison helped her brother blow out the candle for his cake.

Mmm, this tastes really yummy!

I know the bigger kids liked it!

Priceless! Didn't Dusty get a good picture?! (I was off on diaper duty so I didn't get to enjoy the messy parts.)

 Happy 1st birthday big man!

By far the most exciting news from the weekend is the engagement of Randy and Ashley! There's going to be another Ashley Cochran and I couldn't be more excited! Congrats you two!

We celebrated Christmas with Dusty's family on Saturday. I have TONS of pictures to go through so today we're just going to share these two gems. Dusty and I got all the kids matching Christmas PJs this year. Don't they look so cute as Santa's little elves?!

Thank you Tara for helping iron on all the initials, that was one fun mess of trial and error!

Dusty and I also surprised everyone and decided to one-up our ugly Christmas sweater and tie from last year. As shown here. We got ourselves matching one piece footie pajamas. Don't we just make an adorable and awkward family?!

I'm so excited to show off more pictures, I may do another post later today if I get time!

Max had his first public meltdown yesterday, and thankfully Daddy and the hairdresser were quick on their feet, as it only lasted a minute at most.

The background: Dusty has been cutting Max's hair and it's cute, Max tends to cooperate, and it's free. (Big bonus!) Lately though he's been losing his patience faster and Dusty isn't able to buzz his head enough to get rid of most of those scraggly long hairs. The result leaves all sorts of random long hairs sticking out from Max's head and it was driving me CRAZY. (Yes, I totally realize this is my problem but we all know that Mom wins on the crazy arguments.) So last night we all loaded up and took Max to get his hair cut by a "lady", as he so calls her.

The meltdown: After numerous conversations in the car where Max told us "Daddy cut my hair, Lady cut my hair, Mama no cut my hair", we arrived. Lady, we're just going to refer to her as that as I never got her name and that is what Max insisted on calling her, went to get Max a sucker so he could suck on it while she cut his hair. As she came around the corner she grabbed at the sucker and Max said "No take off wrapper". But since Lady wasn't fluent in Max's speak she continued to remove the wrapper as he said this. Max stopped with big sad eyes, said "Don't take off wrapper" and then flung himself down onto the wet, hair spotted floor where he proceeded to cover his face and cry. While he was down Lady quick stuck the wrapper back on the sucker and Dusty was able to convince Max to look at the "new" sucker that Lady got for him with the wrapper on.

The best part: Max gets up, takes his arm and wipes his face, grabs the sucker, says "Thank you" and proceeds to follow Dusty over to the chair as if nothing had happened. Seriously people? For our first public meltdown I couldn't have asked for it to go better!

The adorable pictures of Max's first haircut in a salon:

I don't think we'll be doing this again anytime soon. Max did amazing and sat still for the whole ordeal but Daddy's haircuts are free and conveniently at our home so we'll try using scissors after the buzz and hopefully cut down on the number of long random hairs. And we at least got a new tool, the sucker, to help bribe our child to sit patiently!

Oh, and because I'm sure you're curious, Rory played with the toys, walked all over the salon, and grabbed every bottle of hair product within her reach. I was exhausted chasing her around!

Kitchen pots and pans? Say hello to Maxwell and Lorelei!

House? Clean yourself up!