Flanagan Clan

Lately, I have found it quite hard to get good pictures of little Patrick. He’s either running around and hard to keep still, or he refuses to smile and starts throwing a tantrum when I try to get him to be cute for the camera. We now have lots of pictures where Patrick is either pointing at something he wants, or full of tears. Here’s an example:

From this, you can see why we didn’t have a picture of Patrick in front of the Christmas tree in the previous post.

Sammy, however, is in a very cute baby stage, and he smiles all the time. We are having a lot of fun taking pictures of him.

I hope Patrick becomes more photogenic soon, because I’m getting tired of fighting with him, desperately trying to get one good picture and being sorely disappointed. Two year olds are very hard to deal with, and I’m looking forward to having Patrick get through this stage, while dreading the day when Sammy turns two…

This morning, we all set out to find a Christmas tree. We had originally intended to get a precut tree, but we ended up finding ourselves at a Christmas tree farm in the Puyallup Valley, where you could cut your own. Armed with a saw and kneeling mat, we trudged through muddy fields to find just the right tree. Finally, we found one we liked. Andrew cut it down and dragged it to the car while Patrick enjoyed running through the trees and getting muddy. We got it home, and I decorated it. This is the first real tree that we’ve gotten since getting married. We had a fiber optic tree while we were renting apartments, since it was small and didn’t make a big mess. Since this was the first year in the new house and we’re going to have special guests for Christmas, we decided that we needed a real tree to celebrate this year.
Here’s what it looks like!

Sammy sits under the Christmas tree

Sammy is fascinated with the lights and the ornaments

Sammy likes his first Christmas tree!

Last night Andrew came home with an early birthday present. Here’s what it was!

GERBILS! I was so excited! There are three. Patrick calls them “burbles”, so we named one Burble for Patrick, Andrew named one Spunky, and I named the last one Fuzz.

Sammy is wearing an “I Love Mommy” shirt to show his love on Mommy’s birthday.

He’s getting so strong!