7 Quick Takes: Catan Obsession, St. Nick, Tree Trimming, and more!

1. A Tad Obsessed with a Board Game

I just LOVE that our boys are loving their newest game - Catan Junior! Andrew asks to play it every day, I think. He loves that there are pirate ships and a ghost captain. Alex thinks it's awesome to get stuff when his numbers are rolled. Andrew is all about those Coco Cards (Development cards to us grown ups).

If that wasn't enough...check out what Saint Nicholas dropped off in Jason's stocking! The Catan Dice Game! HA! Now Jason and I can play Catan without a 3rd person... Finally!

2. Speaking of St. Nick... 

He stopped by the other night. This is how we take care of "Santa Business" around here. See, "Santa" IS a real guy. No, he doesn't have 8 tiny reindeer or elves or the magic of stopping time to deliver millions of presents. But, he does have the gift of giving. He gives "birthday" presents to remind us of what Christmas is all about - a very special birthday. Jesus' birthday. Of course, for sake of keeping the magic... We do believe in Santa Claus. We just want our boys to remember the point of all this one day with their own children. (To learn more about Saint Nicholas, click here!)

 

The boys each got "gold coins" to remember St. Nicholas by, along with a super cool chocolate bar that had Waldo on it!! Sweet. Austin had the "gold coins" - which he LOVES - and another Little People Wheelies car.

3. Time to put up the tree!

We finally got around to putting up the tree!! And, once again the boys picked out new ornaments this year!

Yes, every year they get to pick out a new ornament. When it is time to pack up the tree, their ornaments go in their own special boxes. One day, when they have a tree of their own, these ornaments will be given to them to share with their families. At least, that is my hope! I have a few of my old ones, as does Jason, on our tree that we get to tell them about.

4. Christmas stories!

I love bringing out all the Christmas books! We have some great ones that we decided to add to our collection and some others we picked up from the library.

So far, the favorites are The Polar Express and How the Grinch Stole Christmas. I have a favorite one, but I hope to share it with you the coming weeks!

5. Rocket launches are awesome. 

The boys still talk about the Delta rocket that went up for the Orion mission last week! I already put on the calendar the launch happening next week for Space X (next friday!). Can't wait to watch that one with them!

6. Winter is approaching

The boys had a few great days outside, but it's been COLD mostly. You can see it in the clouds...Let's just hope there is no snow at all at any point in time found in those clouds (or any other ones). I've said it before... I LIVE IN THE SOUTH FOR A REASON!!

 
7. Treasure in the sky

Andrew and I found an "X" in the sky that some airplanes made. He said, "That looks like a treasure map, mama." I agreed and asked what kind of treasure he thought we would find..


Heaven.
I love that kid.

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Thanksgiving for Five

What a WONDERFUL Thanksgiving we had this year! I must say we really enjoyed our holiday just the five of us. It was perfect!

Tiny turkey's first Thanksgiving!

Our 3 turkeys!

Delicious food!

Football!

Christmas decorations!

It was so great to celebrate this holiday together. We had a few "firsts" this Thanksgiving, too!

This was my first time EVER to cook a turkey. I always talked with mom while she was preparing everything or we were playing games at Jason's family's home. Well, with her awesome turkey tips, I did it! Thanks, mom!!

Hello delicious!

But, before we get to the feasting, here's what the men took care of while I was in the kitchen and catching bits of the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade (which was so weird, by the way...what was with the...ahem...red boots? Not exactly family friendly these days...) and snapping pics of the living room progress. 

Top half: Unpacking and setting up the tree and Christmas toys

Bottom half: The sun rising on the Holy Family - love it! Austin's first Christmas ornament!! The two in the back are Andrew and Alex's. I put their baby hats from the hospital and their bracelet in an ornament. So sweet :)

 Now, you saw earlier in this post that they were wearing their Thanksgiving shirts... Well, the Packers were getting ready to play, so they needed to be fan ready. Those are their game faces... LOL Austin was informed that he needed to be wearing his Packer gear, too. There are some funny men in my house. 

Game over and it is now time to feast!! Mmm. Mmm. Delicious!

And, yes!! I carved my first turkey for the first time! LOL AND!! I even got the wishbone out for later! 

Though...later meant the NEXT night. It wasn't ready just yet. The boys had a ton of fun with this. Mom even sent a picture of my 2 younger brothers breaking their wishbone. Andrew and Alex thought that they were cool stuff to be just like Sean and William. Oh, and Alex won! He got he bigger half. Cuties! 

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We hope y'all had a great Thanksgiving, too! 

Next up: Austin will be ONE MONTH OLD this week!!! And, the boys went to a special school event that featured The Singing Santa. Very cool! More posts to come soon :)

Feast of St. Nicholas - December 6th

We "celebrated" the Feast of St. Nicholas. I saw this post on Catholic Mothers Online and loved it! I loved that (when the boys are a bit bigger to understand more) we can learn about St. Nicholas and the story of Santa Claus and - get ready for this moms - we can lessen the chaos of Christmas morning! HA! See, on the Feast of St. Nicholas, we see what has been left in our stockings. Ah, ha!

A little info from Catholic Mothers Online:

Christmas Stockings

The beginnings of Christmas stockings came from one of the stories about St. Nicholas.  As the story goes, he heard of 3 maidens whose father could not afford a dowry.  In order to keep them from being sold into slavery, he threw money for their dowry into the window which landed in their stockings.

You can read more about the stories behind the other fun Christmas traditions here, such as candy canes, chocolate gold coins, and oranges. 

What we did:

We hung up our stockings when we set out all of our other decorations. After dinner on the 6th, while I still had every sitting at the table finishing up (those 2 little guys are ALWAYS on the move!), I read a little story about St. Nicholas. Of course, I chopped up the story. I do have a 2 year old and an 8 month old - what else can you do? I told them about a family who didn't have enough money to have a party for their children. So, when it was night time and everyone was asleep, a nice man from church Nicholas threw some gold coins in their windows. (almost the same - next year I'll change it up again to make it more like the story above in red ) Andrew thought that was pretty cool. He said, "Money!" LOL

Once the story, was over I grabbed the stockings (which were filled during nap time - by the way, since they were already up...it wasn't something NEW and EXCITING to mess with. So, Andrew never even noticed) and brought them to the table. Andrew and Alex were both smiling! It was so cute! Jason was smiling, too - I guess he didn't realize we were opening our stockings! Surprises for everyone! 

Every one got chocolate gold coins and a few small presents. 

Jason's stocking - Gold coins and A&W Root Beer Jelly Beans

Andrew's stocking - Gold coins, Christmas book "5 Little Christmas Trees", a mini Santa snow globe, and his ornament for this year (picture below)

Alex's stocking - Gold coins (no, he didn't eat them. but he liked shaking them in the little bag they came in - picture at beginning), Christmas book "Hello Santa", and his ornament for this year (picture below)

My stocking - That's right, Mama needs a prize, too! Oh, what's that? Dark Hot Chocolate K-Cups?! St. Nicholas is awesome. ;) Kidding...I didn't put those in my stocking. Alex has my gold coins actually. But I did get the k-cups! 

For more stocking-stuffer ideas for the little ones, you can read my post from last year. Do you have any special stocking traditions?