Christmas Day

Well, all I have to say about Christmas morning is that our kids got waaaay too many presents, but they truly loved every single minute of their giftwrap destroying frenzy! Thank you to everyone for all the wonderful gifts - we sincerely appreciate it so much! Sawyer and Sutton are thrilled with their new toys, and it's honestly so nice to change things up and have some new things to play with after the holidays. Sawyer is especially happy with the Crayola Glow Station that he got from Aunt Kari, and he has been taking the glow wand to bed with him at night like a flashlight.

Look at all those new toys!

Stella calmly watching all the present excitement

Sawyer attempting to show off the Display and Pose skills he learned from Holly (alas, the box was slipping!)

Christmas Morning Magic

Christmas jammies? Check. New gloves? Check. New book? Check. New bongos? Check...we're happy and good to go!

There's no better breakfast than raspberry danish and power tools

After spending the morning (and eating a HUGE breakfast!) at Gigi & Granddad's, we headed home to get ready to cook Christmas dinner for my dad's side of the family. My family was here along with Judi & Bruce, Big Heidi, Lesley & Stephen, and Kelley & Mike. My cousin Hilary is due with her baby girl any minute now, so the Peerys (my dad's sister Candy and her 5 kids, 5 grandkids and various significant others) all decided to stick close to their home for the day, and even though we missed them it was kind of nice to have a smaller group of people to mingle and hang out with. We had a lot of fun hosting our first Christmas for the extended family, and hopefully everyone else had fun too! Cousin Kelley came with the news that Mike had proposed to her on Christmas Eve, so it looks like we'll have another wedding to attend in 2009 - yay!

Sutton tidying up before company came

This may be the best I'm going to get for my family Christmas tree picture this year - these boys just won't sit still!

Christmas Morning at Home

Christmas morning was SO much fun this year now that Sawyer is really able to understand the whole idea of Santa. We left out milk and cookies on Christmas Eve, and Sawyer kept dragging me over to the window to see if we could see Santa's sleigh in the sky before he fell asleep. In the morning Sawyer saw that the cookies were missing, and he was beyond ecstatic! We ran to the window to see if he could catch Santa flying away, and instead of being bummed because we couldn't see him, he became convinced that Santa must still be downstairs. After he opened his presents he was sad that Santa hadn't been downstairs after all, but only because he was really disappointed that he didn't get to tell Santa "thank you" in person. I told him we could write Santa a thank you card, and he agreed that maybe that would be okay this time around.

For some reason the sound on this video gets kind of lost and fades in and out (likely because our camera is on its deathbed), but you can still watch the boys opening their presents from Santa on Christmas morning. Sawyer got a Thomas mine shaft tunnel for his train table and a Kidizoom digital camera (which I'm very proud to say he has already learned to use really well - so much for worrying if it was going to be too advanced for him!). Sutton got a push button guitar and an electronic musical bongo drum set, and he was rocking out from the minute he pulled that guitar out of the bag!

Trying to wait patiently for Daddy so we can go downstairs to those presents!

Rock Star in Training



Checking out Daddy's stocking loot (he got movies, a chocolate orange, beef sticks and lottery tickets. Mommy got gift cards to Barnes & Noble, Carl's Jr. & Panera - yum!)

Hanukkah

We had a nice Hanukkah this year - The boys thoroughly enjoyed having EIGHT nights of presents, that's for sure! By the third night Sawyer had gotten the hang of it and was announcing "It's dark! We get to open presents!?!" They learned pretty quickly that as long as there were still candles to be lit that they got to open a present each time. We tried to keep it pretty simple in the present department since that adds up to a lot of gifts, so they got a couple of new race cars, some new books and coloring books, Moon Sand, puzzles, and I honestly can't even remember what else anymore...with this many presents all in one week, it all kind of starts to run together lol. I'll be glad next year when Hanukkah doesn't overlap Christmas and we can enjoy it on its own a little more. I did attempt to make latkes this year though! I totally nailed the perfect taste, but they came out too thick and more like potato haystacks than pancakes. Oh well...next year!



Helping Daddy light the candles on the 3rd night



A new Batmobile!



The Batmobile & Sherrif (from Cars) Shake N' Go Racers



Sutton got a giraffe play tunnel, and the boys have been going crazy over it ever since

The night that Sutton got the tunnel, Sawyer got a toy called the Honeybee Hop. It all started out nice and orderly, and then they realized it was WAY more fun to run away from the honeybee than it was to try to jump over it...

This video is entitled "Ways to Exhaust Your Toddler Before Bedtime" or "Are You Stumbling Like a Drunken Sailor Yet?"

Photos from Grandma Ardy's

Granddad & Sawyer




Sutton & Aunt Kari




Watching the miniature ice skaters





Present Time!





A new crane for Sawyer!



More presents - yay!



Sutton checking out Mommy's Sawyer's awesome new globe



Aunt Debby & Stella Bella



My very own marching band!

Holidays and Big Boy Beds

Last night we celebrated Christmas at Grandma Ardy & Grandpa Gene's house with Gigi's side of the family. We decided to skip the usual turkey/ham fanfare and opted instead to do an Italian lasagna dinner for the family. It was a nice change of pace, especially since we'll be serving ham once again on Christmas day. We didn't have our camera, so if anyone (hint, hint, Auntie Deb ;)) got any cute pictures, send 'em my way! The boys had fun being the center of attention, and they came home with some really cool new toys.

Sutton got the Little People airport (which will connect to the Little People parking garage that he's getting from Gigi and Granddad for Christmas) from Grandma and Grandpa, and he got the Parents Bee Bop Band drum (with all the other instruments inside it) from Aunt Debby & Uncle Steve. He's been having an absolute blast drumming all day long - I had no idea his rhythm was that good! The airport is really cute too, and once we showed the boys that all of their Little People people from their other sets fit into this one too, we had a bunch of laughs making the pirates fly the helicopter and the farmer fly the plane. Sawyer got a construction vehicle and crane set from Grandma and Grandpa and a VTech Fly & Learn Globe from Debby & Steve. Sutton seriously spent all morning today going back and forth from his new drum to fly the plane on the globe, so all the presents were a HUGE hit (thanks again everyone! XOXO) Honestly, I'm loving the globe myself, and I can now say a few key phrases in Mandarin and Portugese, thanks :)

They were both exhausted by the time we left Grandma Ardy's, but since Sutton seemingly refuses to fall asleep in the car anymore, they were both still awake when we got home to light the menorah and celebrate the first night of Hanukkah. The boys have both been dying to turn the lightbulbs on our plastic electric menorah decoration on, so that was probably a bigger thrill to them than lighting the actual candles. They opened their first present from Mommy & Daddy - Sutton got a Melissa & Doug magnetic fishing game and Sawyer got a dinosaur play set in a plastic tub. By the time 9:30 rolled around they were exhausted and ready to crawl into bed after such a late night.

After a week of Sutton throwing himself out of his crib a dozen times a night and enduring completely out-of-character painfully long and tearful bedtimes and nighttime wakings, we decided to convert his crib to a toddler bed this past Friday night. We figured that even if he didn't stay in his new bed, at least he wouldn't be adding to his greusome collection of bruises from tossing himself overboard anymore. We've let him stay up late these past few nights to really tire him out so that he would fall asleep easier, and it hasn't been a complete success, but we're making progress. Most of the tears have diminshed, at least. The first night he fell asleep on his floor, and I had to carry him into bed, and he did that at yesterday's nap as well. The other times I've had to stay with him until he fell asleep, but once asleep he stayed in bed. I'm not sure what caused the change in his bedtime behavior, whether it had to do with him being sick or not. I did a bunch of research that showed that it's something that lots of kids do around this age, but that no one seems to have a real reason for. Something to do with possible growth spurts or two year molars or a new sense of self leading to the realization that they're alone at bedtime and other junk like that...who knows. Hopefully he'll get used to the new bed soon, and then I'll have to work on breaking the habit of needing to stay with him while he falls asleep.

Tonight we're going to light the candles on the menorah and read our new Hanukkah counting book. The boys will open their Shake N' Go race cars presents from us, and after they go to bed Mitch and I are going to try to finish painting our kitchen. We may also have to run out to the grocery store because I still have SOOOO much to do before Christmas, and I'm starting to get a little stressed and overwhelmed. When we offered our house for the Christmas day dinner this year it didn't actually occur to me how much extra work that would need to be done. I've got one solid day tomorrow with the boys off at daycare, and I have about a dozen things to do aside from cleaning up around this place (where you can find all those awesome newly acquired toys completely strewn about!). Ack!

Kiddie Christmas Party

Today we had Holly and Hattie over to celebrate Christmas with myself and the boys. We exchanged presents – a blue and red (for boys – yay!) baby doll stroller for Sutton, an animals-and-their-homes puzzle game and railroad sticker book for Sawyer, a super sweet Heidi-made pinkie tutu for Hattie along with a basket of craft goodies, and a couple of fun books for Holly. I got a little red felt bucket tote that I fell in love with at Target filled with lip gloss, lotion and awesome Holly-made arm warmers that I can’t wait to wear (thanks so much girls!). We baked cookies – the Pilsbury pre-sliced snowman kind since simplicity is key when dealing with the attention span of a toddler - and we made ornaments from shaped cardstock, pipe cleaners and puff balls. I'm still hanging on to this nasty cold, so instead of wasting my precious cold-medicated sleeping time on a wordy blog tonight, I think I'll let the pictures do most of the talking!



They thought the Tonka Bounce Back Race Car was the most hysterically funny toy EVER today



Baby blues and his new haircut. He still has a bit of a cold too.



Sutton opening his blue and red boy doll stroller



Hattie modeling her poofy new tutu

Sawyer opening his presents

H & S playing with his new matching puzzle (aka "the puzzle game"). He is SO proud that he can put it together all by his self!

Story time with Holly!

We love our new presents - thank you!



Tired, stuffed and ready for a bath and bedtime

We had a great day, and I'm quite certain that the boys would like to have a Christmas party every day now if they could. There's nothing more fun than presents, projects, good food and good friends :)

Christmas Lights, Wheelbarrows & Sutton's 1st Haircut

We've been slowly but surely making our way around to getting up all the holiday decorations this year, and I'm happy to say that I'm finally finished making our new Christmas stockings. I ordered plain felt stockings with our names emboroidered on them from Ebay, and then spent way too much time coming up with the ideas for how I wanted to decorate them. I'm still not thrilled with the fact that the boys' stockings aren't as detailed as Mitch's and mine, so I may add more to them later. Mitch thinks Sawyer's penguin should be on skiis. We'll see how motivated I get...I still have a few other projects I need to finish up before next weekend.


(Mitch's snowman still needs to have his smile painted on)

The boys, Sawyer in particular, are VERY into looking at Christmas lights this year, so on Thursday night we bundled them up for a top-down-in-the-Jeep Christmas light drive around both the Pebble Creek and Dovewood areas (we put the top up for the long drive in between!). The boys were really excited about all the lights and decorations this year, and it was fun for Mitch and I to point out all the Disney characters and have them name them off for us. I think Mitch was particularly pleased when some of the people walking around the street looked up at us in the Jeep and said "Now that's the way to do it!" By the time we were done driving around Dovewood, S&S were both exhausted and half-asleep, and I was starting to think that maybe it hadn't been the best idea for my oncoming cold to have been driving around in the freezing cold with the top down. Oh well, it was definitely worth it to have the boys able to see the lights in all their glory.



The fascination begins...


Getting ready to head out on our adventure


Glazed over at the end of the long drive


One of our most newly acquired hand-me-down toys is an old Fisher Price wheelbarrow from one of the homeowners that we are doing a job for. Their children are all around 25 years old now, so you can imagine how old this wheelbarrow must be. It's amazing how much sturdier toys are that were made 25 years ago. The boys have grown instantly attached to their new play thing, and for some reason it keeps working its way back indoors even though it seems that I am constantly putting it back outside. Their favorite thing to do these days is to give each other rides around the house in the wheelbarrow before it inevitably tips over and spills them to the floor laughing their heads off. Thank you, Mrs. Janicki, for the endless hours of fun you've already given to my kids.

"Mommy push BOTH of us!"

I love those moments where I look up and see them actually playing with something together instead of doing their own thing.

Who would have thought that 5-gallon bottles of water could be so much fun?


Today Mitch took Sutton to get his first haircut, and I was admittedly more emotional about his first haircut than I was Sawyer's. With Sawyer we were forced to shave all of his hair off before his surgery, so I didn't really have an option of when or how much, but I've been putting off cutting Sutton's hair for waaay too long now. It was shaggy, messy and in his eyes, but I just couldn't bear to cut off his little unruly baby curls...so that's why Daddy got elected to take him into the hair salon for kids. It's going to take me awhile to get used to it (he looks like a big boy now!), but in the end I know I'm going to be grateful not to have to spend an extra 10 minutes in the morning trying to calm down his curly mop top :)

The tangled mess of hair this morning...


...and the unveiling of the new look!

Weekend with Grandma & Grandpa

This weekend we drove all the way to Cotati (in the Bay Area) for the triplets' 6th birthday party at Pump It Up. There was so much heavy fog all the way through Vacaville paired with the usual weekend traffic that it took us THREE hours to get there! We were so late to the party that we literally only got to play for a few minutes on the big inflatable slide before it was over, but the boys still enjoyed their time there (even though they were begging for more!). Grandma and Grandpa were here visiting for the weekend - they had stayed Friday night at Aunt Jolie's house - and after the birthday party they came back to stay at our house for a few days.



Sutton wasn't really all that interested in bouncing that day


Me & the boys on the super slide


Wow, Grandma even took a turn with Sawyer!


On Sunday Grandma and Grandpa took the boys out for some shopping and ice cream, and they hit up both of the mall playgrounds for awhile since it was too cold out (42 degrees!) to go play at the outdoor park. The boys always have a good time when they play at the mall, and this time was no exception. They were also happy to go out to lunch at McDonalds, or as Sawyer likes to call it "Old McDonalds Had a Farm," for burgers, fries and their most favorite Apple Dippers. We had a pretty low-key day since it was so freezing cold out and because Mitch had a nasty cold. It was nice to have Grandma & Grandpa's extra sets of hands in the morning so that Mitch & I (knocked out from the cold medicine) didn't have to wake up at the crack of dawn for once (thanks again!). We let the boys open their holiday gifts from Aunt Jolie & her family, and they got two new toys that they're already having a ton of fun with - a set of Plan Toys creative wood blocks that can make some super awesome castles and a teapot and play dishes set (made from recycled milk jug plastic - so green and cool!) to use in their play kitchen. The boys had a really nice weekend, and they are already asking when Grandma and Grandpa are going to come back to visit.

After a 3-hour nap we decided it was time to wake up the crazy haired monster...he was obviously NOT happy about that decision lol

In their matching bulldog sweatshirts from Grandma