Craigslist – Casa de Murphy

Merry Christmas, everyone! Hope yours was a good one! We had a nice, quiet holiday, this year.

Mr. Elf made his last appearance on Christmas Eve by bringing Liam a bucket of reindeer food. While we tried to move him about once a day throughout this last month, we definitely didn’t go crazy with this little guy, as Liam was just starting to “get it” with him. Most mornings as we got closer to Christmas, he would ask where Mr Elf was, so I would say he enjoyed him. We also kept the whole experience with the elf fun & light-hearted, so I think that helped. For us, it was more about finding the elf everyday and not that he was “watching” Liam. I’ve actually felt a little bad these last few days, as he’s asked where he was a few times & I don’t think he understands that he doesn’t come back ’till next year. However, we did have a good time sprinkling the reindeer food out in the front yard before bedtime on Christmas Eve. My flash on my camera was being testy so unfortunately I didn’t get a good pic to share. I got the idea here from a pin off of Pinterest. I ended up finding the cute reindeer buckets at the dollar spot at Target the week before Christmas so it worked out perfect!

Christmas Eve, we just hung out at home & did a few fun things like putting up Christmas window clings & baking cookies for Santa.

That evening, we headed over to Stephen’s family for dinner. Liam got to visit with his aunt Heather & new baby cousin, Sierra — it’s her 1st Christmas 🙂

When we got home, it was PJ time, feeding the reindeer, and putting out milk & cookies for Santa. As soon as the plate of snacks were set out, we didn’t even blink before little man was helping himself to the treats! LOL …it was so cute that we just let him go…he enjoyed a cookie AND some milk!! I guess you could say that he wanted to make sure that tasted okay for Santa 😉

Once he was fast asleep…..SANTA.FINALLY.CAME!!

Liam’s big gift this year was a tricycle. I spent a long time scouring over Craigslist trying to find one that we thought he would like. We knew we didn’t want to buy it brand new because (a) if you look hard enough, you can find great deals on Craigslist and (b) we weren’t entirely sure he would like the tricycle so we didn’t want to splurge on it, just in case. One day, literally a few months ago, I found this Schwinn blue trike & knew it was THE one. Best of all, the family we bought it from said their son never really liked it, so he didn’t use it. It honestly looks brand new still AND it still had one of the tags on it! Definitely a steal! It was so hard to keep this hidden for months!

When we heard Liam wake up and stumble into the living room, I peaked out of our room to see his expression. He walked up to his trike & looked all around it. Then, he walked to the side of the tree and checked out the presents.

So cute!!

When he walked into our room next, the 1st thing he said was, “I got my bike! …and my presents!” ….melt your heart!

Going for a test ride right away!

Little People Wheelies track — another fave from Santa

Papa Murphy & family sent him a Rudolph jack-in-the box. This has been a huge hit. He calls it his reindeer music box. It plays the Rudolph theme song when you wind the crank to make Rudolph pop out.

Great Mimi was so thoughtful to send him this teddy bear. As you can see, he gave it lots of love right away!

One of his presents was the Fisher Price Medical Kit. Here he is giving Christmas Mickey (a present from Mimi & Papa D) a check up!

There was so much excitement from the morning, we were all tuckered out. Especially Timber….as you can see 🙂

I’ve been trying to get some good shots of Liam riding his tricycle, as we’ve taken it out for a few spins over the last few days. Here is one pick above from Christmas day. Below is a quick snippet of him riding yesterday. If you push him around, or, as in this video below, let him go down a driveway, he gets the concept of pedaling. However, we are still working on learning how to do it solo on a flat surface. That will take some time still & that’s ok!

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We hope you all had a very Merry Christmas, as well!!

Much love….the Murphy’s

October was such a fun month for this little Murphy family. By far, we had the most fun yet with a holiday with little man, Liam. Definitely can’t wait for Turkey Day & Christmas!

Liam loved all the Halloween decorations, especially the ‘punkins’, as he called them, and the jack-o-lanterns.

This pic below was all posed & arranged by him. It was too funny! I use the purple witch hat as a decoration but he wanted to wear it and then grabbed scarecrow Minnie & said he was gonna stand next to “mr punkin’ 🙂

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So, I said in a previous post that I was super excited about Liam’s costume this year & it’s true, I was. I knew he wasn’t gonna 100% get it this year so we could still pick his costume this go round, but I wanted it to be meaningful to him. He has a Dalmatian puppy that he sleeps with every night, and when I found this costume from Pottery Barn, I knew it was THE one. However, it was priced way higher than what I was willingly to pay so I kept looking. But, you know how it goes….after you find, THE one, nothing else is as good. Then, one Sunday morning, I couldn’t believe my peepers when I came across the SAME costume listed on Craigslist. Long story short…a few days later that Craigslist costume was in our hands for a mere $20!! SCORE!! ….if you don’t take advantage of Craigslist, you’re missing out….I love it!!

We had a super fun Halloween Party to attend at the Bengel’s a few weeks ago. It gave us a good practice run of the costume and a chance to take this awesome costume pic. I was loving that Liam loved being his puppy!!

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That night, after the party, I submitted this pic via #disneybabyhalloween to the BabyCenter’s Instagram Halloween Photo Contest & I was siked that they picked it up & posted it! The contest ends today, 11/03, and we have a chance to win a $100 gift card. As of this update, his pic has 134 likes on Instagram and 783 likes on Facebook….All in good fun, but I’d say his our little celebrity!! You can check his entry out by navigating to the photocontest link on the BabyCenter’s FB page.

Quick family pick before Liam ripped his costume off at the Bengel Halloween Party 😉

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Treat-or-Treat week brought some challenges to Casa de Murphy. Liam ended up spiking a fever on Wednesday afternoon & had to be picked up from school. Obviously, that put a damper on the Halloween plans for the next day, but the most important thing was making sure he was rested & feeling better. We spent the next few days resting & make a trip to the dr ….but doing better this weekend.

We were feeling ok on Thursday evening and no fever so we did take him out for a bit. He had a great time but he was a little scared to walk up to the doors by himself. Either Stephen or me had to usually carry him. And, he had his wagon charriot to get him from house to house. He was quiet at each door until the door closed and then he would unleash with everything you could tell he had been thinking….”I got more candy….I saw a pirate puppy….I go trick or treat” Love him!!

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Out & about in the neighborhood….

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Celebrating his haul with his bff, Timber!

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I’m sure next year, he’s going to tell us what he wants to dress up as, and then he’ll be running from house to house. That will be fun.

Up next….a recap of our fun trip to Green Meadows Farm! Here’s a few pics from Liam in the pumpkin patch that was there….he carefully picked in his own pumpkins!!

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