Our Closet Monster

This is going to be short and sweet but I just had to make a blog post about Shelby's infatuation with closets. She LOVES playing in them and will climb on anything that is available to climb on inside. If you read the last post you'd know that Shelby likes to store things in Ryan's closet. She likes to go into my closet and pull all of my shoes out and throw them all over the room. Her closet, the fun one, has a few boxes on the floor that she can climb on and reach other fun things.

Caught ya!

If I can't find her all I have to do is go into one of the bedrooms and look in the closets. She's usually in her closet sitting or standing on top of the boxes and throwing diapers on the floor. She's a hoot and I was able to catch some of her closet silliness on video this evening and just had to share. There is never a dull moment around here and she's always making me laugh. Love her!!

Closet Monster from Whitney DeCoria on Vimeo.

Organization

If you know me at least a little bit then you'll know that I am a very organized person. Everything has to have a place and I'm not a fan of messes...although I'm getting more and more use to them with a toddler running around now. 

So the other day Ryan came home from work and after changing out of his work clothes he came out of our room and told me that "We needed to work on our organization". I'll be honest I was a bit offended! I thought "What the heck is he talking about? Despite having a one year old I'd like to think that our place is pretty organized!" He then bends down and says "I don't really like having spoons, hot pads and fruit pouches stored in my closet now."

I laughed pretty hard after noticing that Shelby has been stashing the things she plays with a lot in Ryan's closet. We've been finding a lot of her toys in random places lately. The funniest part of it all is that when we find it she'll walk right up to it and go "Oh!" and pick it up as if it were never lost. Such a hoot this girl is!

 

Shelby's stash!

"Oh...I've been looking for that!"

I need to teach her that sippy cups belong in the fridge...not the spoon drawer. 

She is sooooo busy! This girl never stops...except for when she's sleeping; haha! Her latest quirk is this new smile she does. It's the silliest thing ever and cracks us up every time she does it. 

So much cheese!!

Love this girl! (even if she does disorganize our home a little bit) :-) 

We have a climber!

Just when we thought Shelby was content climbing onto nothing but chairs and couches, she has to go and climb up her highchair when no one is looking and park herself there. We had just finished dinner and we were in the kitchen doing dishes. I turned around and saw her sitting there just sipping on her sippy cup, no cares in the world. I asked Ryan if he put her back in the highchair and he said he hadn't.

That's when it dawned on me..."she climbed up there herself!" I took her out of her highchair to see what she would do and sure enough, back up she climbed. Looks like we'll need to leave her tray on and position it in a way that she won't try to climb on it again. Crazy girl!

Here's proof of what she accomplished tonight. I can't help but laugh while shaking my head at the same time. My life just got THAT much busier!

We have a climber! from Whitney DeCoria on Vimeo.

Christmas in Chehalis

This year it was my parents turn to have all the kids home for Christmas and with 3 new grand babies born within the last 18 months it sure was a full house!  We had a ton of fun and we were constantly busy with games, babies, family, friends, trips to the mountain for skiing and snowboarding and a trip to the beach for clamming!

Here are some pics of everything that went on over Christmas break in Chehalis.

The loot! With 12 people in the house we had to use 2 rooms for everything!

The little ones are sleeping and Nic & Becki hadn't made it down yet.

Shelby blends right in; haha!

Shelby decided to use Hunter as her step ladder to get into the presents.

"Hmmm...where to next?"

Go Shelby Go! This is the only present she decided to rip open by herself. Silly girl!

Each year after Thanksgiving my parents decorate the old fire engine at the Fire Department and call it "The Santa Mobile." It's used for parades and to drive around the streets some evenings handing out candy canes to kids and fire safety info to parents. We were able to snap a few pics on it this year before all the decorations came down. So fun!

We got to make a trip to the beach for clam digging a few days after Christmas. Unfortunately we only went home with 6 clams in all. It just wasn't a good dig. It was Shelby's first time to get to go out and play on the beach and boy did she have fun. We'll have to go again this summer so she can actually have fun in the sun and not have to be so bundled up, haha! While us older kids were out on the beach trying to find some clams Mima and the babies (Hunter and Shelby) were hanging out in the van listening to "Mama Mia" and dancing on the front seats...well, Shelby was doing most of the dancing. Thanks Mima for entertaining the wee ones!

Someone had a bit of fun on the beach! She did NOT want to go back into the van.

All bundled up trying to find some clams!

Another fun thing that happened in Chehalis after Christmas...IT SNOWED!! This was Shelby's first snow and she took right to it. I wasn't expecting it to snow so I didn't bring any snow clothes with us but we made do and just bundled her up with layers and layers. She had SO much fun and would have kept playing if we had more waterproof clothes for her. Everyone had a ton of fun and as you will see by the pictures below, the older kids had fun making ginormous snowmen and snow animals.

She was having SO much fun!

Making tracks!

Jane & Shelby having fun on the trampoline!

TJ & Krista started the ball rolling.

Many hands make lots of fun work!

Tj made all the little snowmen on the swing set.

The massive snowman started to lean.

I tried keeping it up...but it just got too cold!

Unfortunately it lost it's battle with gravity and the warmer weather.

Kaeli turned 10 on January 3rd so we decided to have a birthday party for her while everyone was home. It was a lotta fun. Kaeli wanted me to make her a cake and this is the design she chose from about 5 designs I emailed her. I think it turned out pretty dang cute! It was fun to make but man did it take a lotta time! 

Happy Birthday Kaeli-bug!

Of course we had to get a cousin picture while we were all there. As you can see it didn't go quite as planned, but this picture will bring back memories for years. 

We played many games of Farkle, made bead pets with Kaeli, the little girls sat in the laundry baskets and "helped" Mima fold it and they also spent some time in the big bay window watching the boys throw snowballs at it.

Haha...ya missed me!

Christmas was so much fun this year and I can hardly wait for another two years to go by so that we can all be in Chehalis again. I love having all my family together at once. It may be a little crazy at times but I wouldn't change it for the world.