A belated Christmas update

We had a wonderful Christmas this year. It was a very busy one, too. We opened gifts with Eric's family, my family, my grandma, and then at our house Christmas morning. Ayden was thrilled with all the gift getting. He is at the age where it's not only about the unwrapping anymore. At my mom's on Christmas Eve, he only wanted to play with the very first gift he unwrapped - a power drill - we had to force him to open all his other presents. Anna was very uninterested in the whole thing, however, and I ended up opening up most of her gifts on my own.

Ayden is trying to open one of his gifts using his power drill

Anna got her very own babydoll

Ayden playing with his new car rug

A new fun thing to pull up on, and it plays tons of music!

The kids playing with Anna's new baby doll stroller

Anna is 10 months old!

Only two more months to go until the big ONE, can you believe it?

Our mall Santa adventure

I don't know why, but I felt the need to take the kids to the Boise mall to get their picture taken with Santa. I should have done this weeks ago, but it didn't occur to me that the longer I waited, the worse it would be. I enlisted the help of my sister, Saro, who is visiting from New York City.

We waited in line for ever and when we finally reached Santa, Ayden refused to even get near him (no surprise there). Anna was tired and not greatly impressed by the Man in Red and started fussing as soon as she was sat on his lap. Because I was not purchasing a picture taken there and was using my own camera, I was only allowed to take two pictures. I tried to get Anna to smile, but she wasn't having any of it!

To top it all off, when we left the mall around 5ish everyone else was leaving, too. It probably took us close to an hour just to get out of the parking lot!

Next year, I'm going to take the kids to see Santa good and early!

Anna watching the snow storm

in her hand is her favorite toy, baby Jesus

taking time out from watching the snow to be a little naughty

Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow!

The view out our front door today

Ayden and Anna met Santa!

Santa and Mrs. Claus crashed my Aunt Lena's Christmas party last night and even brought gifts for all the kids!

You can't tell in this picture, but Anna liked sitting on Santa's lap

Santa got her a fun toy that plays music, she loves it

Ayden refused to sit on Santa's lap, but liked him ok as long as he didn't get too close

Santa gave Ayden a motorcycle!

Vroom!!!

All the kids also got ornaments, here is Anna sitting on Grandma's lap playing with hers

Christmas #1

We had our Christmas with Eric's family last Thursday because his parents are going to be out of town for Christmas. Ayden was dying to open the presents all night and finally grabbed one and started opening it, luckily it was actually for him. Anna enjoyed unwrapping the gifts and then playing with the paper (of course).

not sure what he's doing in this pic, but it's cute

A crafty playdate

Tuesday morning we went to a playdate at my friend Tracy's house. She had a couple of crafts planned for the kiddos to do. There were cutouts of Christmas trees and stocking and some stickers to decorate them with. Tracy also had baked sugar cookies and had frosting, gel frosting in tubes, chocolate chips, and sprinkles to decorate them.

Ayden decorated both a Christmas tree and a stocking. He was very happy to be allowed to stick stickers wherever he wanted them. He also decorated a gingerbread shaped cookie with a healthy helping of chocolate frosting and some sprinkles. He had a couple bites of it and then spent the next 20 minutes eating the frosting off the top of the cookie.

Here is (almost) everyone starting their various crafts

Rana and her son Lucas

Keagan and her daughter Keara

Kim and her son Timmy

Tracy and her son Caden

Hard at work creating a masterpiece

I couldn't resist making a cookie for myself

Chocolate face

Anna played on the kitchen floor while we crafted

After everyone had left but us, Ayden and Caden raced cars

We finally got our Christmas tree up!

Tuesday we bought a Christmas tree. We didn't get to the lot until about 7:30 at night and it was around 20 degrees outside with a chilly breeze blowing to boot. It was COLD! We hurriedly looked through all the trees and chose the first one that looked decent. We ended up picking a really great one, it is almost perfect.

Ayden was really excited to bring it inside and set it up. By the time we got the tree up it was bedtime, so we didn't decorate it until Wednesday evening. At first, Ayden was all gung-ho about putting the ornaments on, but the excitement wore off after only a couple of ornaments, so he opted to run around and play with Otis while Eric and I decorated the tree. He did help put the angel on the top of the tree, though.

A dog and his boy

He's gonna be such a good daddy someday!

My front pack was still out from when we all went and played in the snow, and Ayden decided that he wanted to wear his baby around. He was so cute! At one point he got a bottle and sat down on the stairs to feed his baby. He kept saying, "she's drinking a lots of milk."

A wolf in sheep's clothing

Tonight, Ayden put on Anna's coat and I couldn't resist taking some pictures. I'm sure he'll really appreciate them someday :o) I admit, I put the bow on him, but in my defense it just goes so much better with the coat than the baseball cap does! Am I right or am I right?

trying to be scary while wearing baby sister's coat

♫ I feel pretty, oh, so pretty! ♪

hammin' it up

Our first really good snowfall

helping daddy shovel the driveway

she's a snow bunny

happy to be playin' in the snow

all bundled up

throwing snow at Anna and mama

showing off his "cool" gloves

he's a snow monster . . .arrgh