Tuesday, January 15, 2013

Christmas Day!

Welcome to Christmas morning!

Looks like Santa made it ;) 

Sweet boys checking out their new kitchen

They were pretty amazed that Santa put their pizza and pots/pans, etc in their kitchen. 
 

Opening other presents as fast as anything LOL

 Yummy! Grocery items :) 

Andy LOVED it!!

 Alex went straight to getting that pizza and cookies out of the oven!

Andy made me a mega sandwich. Look at them in the background. They are so stinkin' cute!

 Happy Daddy :)

Daddy got a few awesome gifts from all of us - golf balls, gifts cards, Risk, and a super awesome wool coat! I wish I got a picture of my gift...Jason got me diamond earrings!!! :)

Andy got straight to work on building the perfect train track with his train crossing - look at the smile on that face! Sigh...love him!!

 Having a super fun time baking and cooking a mess of something

 YUM! Top left - breakfast! Homemade Cinnamon Pull-Apart Bread
Bottom left - lunch Grilled Cheese and PB&J in Christmas shapes picked out by the boys LOL
Dinner: Brown Sugar Glazed Ham with yummy sides (not pictured). 

 Of course, you have to end a fabulous day with the tradition of playing boards games (a tradition from both sides!) Andy and Alex got their first board game - Candyland!!! YAY!!! Andy was the winner (top right). After bed, Jason and I played....er....I watched as "my world" was crushed by my Gamer Hubby dominated the world within 10 minutes of opening Risk. LOL

It was a wonderful day!

Monday, January 14, 2013

Menu Plan

Oooh, a fancy new menu courtesy of Kelley from The Grant Life! You can get her free printable, too! Just click over :)

So, what do you have cookin' this week?


Have a great week!!

Wednesday, January 9, 2013

Christmas Eve!!

Yay! Pictures from Christmas Eve!! Who is ready for the extravaganza to begin? Let's start here with the finishing up of a few Advent calendars/countdowns.

Last Christmas, after everything was on crazy clearance, I snatched this up. This is the Fisher-Price Imaginext Advent Calendar and it is so cute! Each day was some guy, a tool, something that person used, etc. Very cute! We ended up getting a fireman, construction guy, policeman and all of their equipment and such. Well, silly me, I only bought ONE. Hello...? I have TWO boys... Luckily, I had a few of these Imaginext guys that I had saved for "prizes" and some other guys from a Bat Cave that Rachel gave us. They boys - all the boys - loved playing Batman!

I know, I know. It doesn't really "scream" Christmas, but we did get to that. It wasn't left out. Remember we were working though this book. After breakfast/dinner we would ready the stories and have a little talk about the things that were going on and the previous stories. The boys really loved learning about Baby Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. Which, ok, again I say...teaching the boys about Joseph is difficult. Yes, he's a kind of dad, but not his real dad...but his real dad is father to everyone and Joseph is a helper dad... It was confusing to Andy. Alex knew who everyone in the manger was, but Andy was the one with questions. Maybe he can help explain it to Alex next season. Anyway, by Christmas Eve they BOTH had the story down and knew exactly what went one that night in Bethlehem :)

 Later that morning, they boys were telling me their favorite ornaments from the tree. I LOVE that Andy calls the glitter balls "sprinkle ornaments" - it is so adorable!! Alex loved the football one...and tried to throw it. I'm glad I caught it. That guy has quite the arm!

Of course, for the 800th time... The Polar Express was showing. I couldn't you if it was on TV or if was the DVD he was watching. He LOVES that movie. I downloaded some of the music and had it playing in the car. As soon as they heard the first 3 seconds of the title song, they would squeal and giggle and both would shout, "Polar Ta Pess!!!!!"

While everyone was occupied with the movie, I got to work on getting the roast all fancied up. And, yes, I called it our "roast beast" LOL Gotta love Dr. Seuss, right?

The mail came, too! And my present to myself showed up at the door : ) YAY!! You may see me link to Catholic Mom here, on Facebook, or on Twitter, right? Well the creator of Catholic Mom wrote this book. I can't wait to get her other one, too! I think that one will be my birthday gift to myself. Anyway, she is fabulous and I can't wait to really start reading it... I'm a bit behind on things, can you tell?

We headed to Mass after a quick nap. I wish I had taken pictures of our Altar decorated for Christmas, but I feel that's a bit on the rude side snapping pictures while people are trying to pray. So, when someone updates the website and add those pictures, I'll link to it. It is so beautiful!

One our way home, the boys were getting hungry and jumpy and all kinds of excited for the ringing of Santa's bells. 

 So before bed after reading the story of Baby Jesus from Luke's Gospel and The Polar Express, we made sure we set out cookies for Santa. Andy is making that face because he thought for sure that Santa would share one right now with him... He forgot he already had 4...and brushed his teeth... LOL Silly boy...  Don't you just love his pajamas?!


Time for sleep, boys! They were so excited and tired, but they went right to bed :) They definitely wanted to make sure that they were quiet enough to hear the reindeer and the bells. I wonder what he is going to bring......


Family Pictures!!

For those of you who received our Christmas card this past season, you got a taste of our family photos. Jennifer did such an amazing job, as always! We just love her!! If you are a local and in need of someone fabulous, giver her a try - you won't regret it!! :) You can see the ones she did of us last year here.








LOVE THEM ALL!!

Wordless Wednesday

 

Tuesday, January 8, 2013

Zoolight Safari!

Note: I'm apologizing in advanced for the bad quality on some of these pics. Clearly, I don't have a clue what setting to use on my phone for taking night pictures...


The weekend before Christmas we headed out to the zoo for to see the millions of Christmas lights displayed all over the zoo. It was so pretty!! I love the zoo at Christmas!! Here is a taste of what we saw (click on the pic to see it bigger):

From the top:
Can't leave out the Chick-Fil-A Cows! And, of course, Andy loved those blue elephants 
The tree in the middle of the swan pond (from one side of the zoo)
They boys in their wagon - tried 500x to get a smile... They loved it, but were just so amazed by it all. 
Cool parrot Alex said to take a pic of :)
The tree from the other side of the zoo
Gingerbread houses - Andy said, "That's where the cookie mans live!!"

From the top left, clockwise:
Andy driving the tractor
Mountain Goat. LOL
The boys in front of the giant snowman
Alex's turn on the tractor

 Guess who we saw?! 
These two cracked everyone up. Andy went up to Santa giggling like crazy and Alex pretty much jumped into his lap. No joke. I thought Alex would be shy or something. Oh, no. Not one bit. They were THRILLED. 

YES!!! A PERFECT picture of me and my hubby! He's a hottie, I know. ;)
(btw - Jason took that picture of us! woot!)

From the top:
On our way home we hit up a few neighborhoods to check out the lights. This house was DECKED out! The whole front window had a village inside. Trees all over, every character that has anything to do with Christmas, everything!
Andy was saying "WOW!" the whole time
While Alex was saying "look!" and finishing off his lollipop from Santa
Yes, the hose from the 1st two pics also made sure to include the reason for the season :) Everyone from the Nativity was present here! Animals, shepherds (yes - with an S!! I don't remember how many, but there were a few). It was great. The boys both saw and yellowed out, "Baby Jesus!"
Finally, I just had to share...this is from another house. Go ahead. Click it to make it bigger... This has got to be the tackiest Christmas blow up ever. And we have seen a lot... But this tops it. Santa. In a tub. Bathing (his arm with a brush in his hand moves). And a reindeer is just hanging out rather close by. Interesting. And this wasn't the only one.... Oh, goodness...

Anyone go check out their town's zoo at Christmas? 
What's the wackiest Christmas decoration you saw? 
Do share - I want to see if anyone can top the "Santa in the tub" thing.... LOL

Monday, January 7, 2013

Bit of a December Recap {Around Christmas]

Man, am I behind....it's already next year! Don't fret. I am going to go through and edit the pics from Christmas and our P'cola trip very soon. For now, let's take a look at what was going on around the Christmas season, shall we?


Doing a little bit of painting. How cool are these paint papers? The paint is already on the paper...just add water! Thanks, Nana!


 Working on a puzzle during "quiet time" before Alex wake up from his long winter's snooze.
  
 One of our many mornings of Christmas cartoons - complete with cheerios and milk for them and coffees for Mommy and Daddy :)

 Another one of our "quiet times" before Alex is up. Andy LOVES mazes!! 

 One day at Target, the boys found their favorite people... "Sticker Man" He is one of the managers at our Target and he LOVED that the boys called him "Sticker Man." So he gave them about 500 stickers that say something like "thanks for buckling up" or "safe shopping" -- something like that. Anyway, they LOVED that and had a BLAST with them all the way home and for a good while the rest of the day. Gotta love Target!

 FINALLY got a picture of these cuties with the Christmas tree in their sorta matching pajamas! :D One happy mama!!

 Being silly with the camera phone

 A Christmas story before bed - so sweet!

 Playtime at Chick-Fil-A after breakfast! Gotta beat those big school kids so we went early! :)

One of our many evening of Christmas cartoons before dinner - this is "Santa Claus is Coming to Town" and the Winter Wizard guy is on the screen. 

Christmas cookies for Santa - YUM!!

Hope your December was fabulous!!




LinkWithin

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...