Happy Holidays!

Yesterday we had a fabulous Thanksgiving dinner at my mom's house with the hugest spread of food I've ever seen at a Thanksgiving dinner. We had turkey and ham, two different kinds of potatoes (omg, Jessi makes the yummiest cheesy potatoes!) with gravy, corn, stuffing, green beans with bacon, green salad, spiced apples, rolls, "spider bread" (my favorite!), and pumpkin bread, pumpkin pie, brownies, banana creme pie, and berry cobbler for dessert. I'm probably forgetting a few things too, but anyway, it was awesome. Kari, Jess, Debby and I all took home more than enough leftovers, and there was still a ton of food left for my parents and Krista. Yum...I love big family meals for the holidays.

The boys fell asleep on the way home, and Mitch and I came home and got the Christmas tree all set up. I managed to buy the very few Black Friday items that I had my eye on online last night, so I didn't have to brave any of the huge crowds this morning - yay! Today Mitch had to work in the morning, so Sawyer and Sutton helped me open all the storage tubs of holiday stuff and start decorating our house. We put up most of the indoor decorations, but we still haven't put the ornaments on the tree yet. I think I'll save that task for myself tonight after the boys are asleep. It may sound crazy, but it really doesn't seem like we have all that many decorations now that our house is so much bigger than it used to be! Luckily, I'm both crafty and inventive, so I've still got some time to make our house feel super festive before Christmas. I ordered new felt stockings for our entire family this year - plain ones with our names embroidered on them - and I'm going to add all the embellishments myself. I'm sure I'll post pictures when I'm done! Hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving holiday!




Mitch & Sawyer riding Papa's scooter



My turn! (Do I look terrified?)




Daddy & Sutton going for a ride

Sutton & Gigi

Jess, Stella, Erik, Joe, Kari, Mitch, Sawyer, Sutton, Me & Krista

My parents and all their kids & grandkids

Stella loves her big cousin Sawyer

Library Night & Gymnasium Day

Friday night was Free Family Movie Night at the 12 Bridges Library, and since they were showing the brand newly released Wall·e instead of their usual classic family films, we decided to take the boys to the show. Sutton has been to a movie theatre before (to see Wall·e, actually), but Sawyer had never been, and he was soooo excited to go. Despite the fact that we were sitting in haphazardly arranged stacking chairs in a library conference room and not the plush theatre set up, he had his own little bag of popcorn, the lights were dimmed, and he had the best movie experience of his little life…for about 2/3 of the movie. Unfortunately, in my hurried pack-and-rush-out-the-door routine that I always do, it never even occurred to me that Sutton was going to want his pacifier once he got sleepy. Oops. So, with his lack of Soothie, Sutton was pretty much done sitting in a dark room with a bunch of strangers after about an hour, so we packed everything up and headed immediately to Target to buy the movie so we could finish up family movie night at home. In less than 24 hours, I have now seen Wall·e about two and a half times because the boys really loved it that much.





We'll just watch the rest of the movie from our cozy chair, thanks!



Today we went to Extreme Gymnastics in Loomis for the birthday party of one of the boys’ friends from daycare, Ty, who is turning 3. At first I wasn’t all that excited about going to another gymnastics party, especially with a crabby 19-month old that just got woken up from his too-short nap and a preschooler that was tired enough to fall asleep in the car on the way there, but my excitement level quickly rose when I saw kids flying across the gym on a zip line! This definitely wasn’t another one of those parties where you just move around the gym as a group from one little area to another. We had free reign of the entire gym which included everything gymnastics related that you can think of (and then some!): balance beams, bars, rings, pommel horses, vaults, several trampolines, a cargo net climbing wall, the zip line, and a giant foam pit that the kids could dive into off of the trampoline. Not to mention that they also had a full-sized bounce house for the kids to play in too!

After playing for an hour in the gym, we had some cake and rested for a little while in the party area, and then we had another 30 minutes of playtime…and that’s when the really fun stuff happened! Just when we thought it was about time to wrap it up and go home, the party guy started hooking the kiddos up to a harness so they could FLY! Sawyer even got to do some front and back flips after his turn . It was awesome, and the kids (and the parents!) had the best time. I’m pretty sure the boys are going to sleep extremely well tonight – they were exhausted!




Mr. Sleepy wasn't too sure about this whole party thing at first...



...but then he fell in love with a yellow trampoline



Sutton & Mommy running across the super squishy foam pad area


Sawyer patiently waiting his turn as they were introduced to how all the play areas operate

So, yeah, I definitely know where we are going to have Sawyer’s 3rd birthday party in February now! Surprisingly, it’s actually pretty cheap compared to some of the other party places we checked out (bounce places, bowling, busy bus, etc), and I will hardly have to do anything other than make a cake and goodie bags – sounds even more awesome!

Bowling & The New Mall

This weekend was a lot of fun! Saturday morning we took the boys to Strikes Bowling in Rocklin. Sawyer has been bowling a few times before, but he has never gone with Mitch. At least three times a week (as we drive past the bowling alley on our way home from daycare!) he asks if he can go on a Jeep ride and go bowling with Daddy, so we decided that it was a great weekend to take the whole family out. Sutton was so much better behaved at the bowling alley than I imagined he would be (he didn't even attempt to stray away from our little bowling area at all!), and he even took a few turns rolling the 6-pound ball down the lane with Mitch. Sawyer was excited to finally get to go bowling with Daddy, but he was a little sleepy and mellow that morning, so he ended up being content with eating a bag cheese puffs and watching everyone else bowl after about the 3rd frame. Sutton managed to drop my camera hard enough for the lens ring to pop off, and now it isn't working very well, so these few bowling pics will have to suffice until I can figure out a way to either get this camera repaired or get a new one!

Saying "Cheeeeese" with a mouth full of cheese puffs...

After naptime we went to check out the opening weekend of the new section of the Galleria mall. I had actually gone to the mall with Holly on Thursday for the grand opening festivities, and I had so much fun exploring all the new toy stores and play areas with Hattie that I really wanted to bring my boys back for some more fun. The new mall is pretty much just that, a whole new U-shaped section attached to the old mall. There are a ton of new stores including H&M, Delias, Louis Vuitton and some other higher end shops. The old food court closed down to make room for more shops in the future expansion phase, and it was replaced by a sleeker looking and rather high-tech food court in the new area. It's complete with one of the coolest family-type restroom lounges I've ever been in. The place even has a dvd player and sofas for kids who need to chill out from the mall for a few minutes! They moved a bunch of the existing stores so that almost all of the kids clothing stores and the new toy store are located right near a new "greener" play area (which is only cleaned with environmentally friendly and yummy smelling Method brand products - yay!). The whole set-up right there is great for parents, and they even have several food vendors (pretzels, popcorn, frozen yogurt and Cinnabon) right there so that you can get a snack while you watch your kids play.

Sawyer and Sutton LOVED the new kids play area, but it was ridiculously crowded since it was the first weekend it was open. Sawyer was getting a little overwhelmed at the number of older kids who kept pushing him out of the way and cutting in line in front of him at the new slide, but Sutton didn't seem to mind a bit and happily pushed his way through the crowd over and over again to take his turn. We let them skip riding in the stroller for most of the time that we were at the mall, and they had a blast walking around and exploring all the holiday decorations and toy displays that were seemingly everywhere! They especially liked the new Learning Express toy store and playing with the toys at Pottery Barn Kids. Sawyer was really having fun playing with the mini skateboard ramp table (kind of like his train table, but with wooden skateboard stuff instead) and Sutton was quite happily opening and closing every single door on the play kitchen set.

Christmas Countdown...47 days!

A few of you have been asking us what Sawyer & Sutton want for Christmas, so Mitch & I decided to take some time to put together a holiday wish list through Amazon.com (I've added a wish list link on the top right hand side of this blog). The wishlist is hosted by Amazon, but it allows you to add things from any other store/website that you come across so that all your wishes can be put on to one single list - it's really cool! After browsing through the Walmart and Toys R Us holiday catalogs, these are some of the boys' favorite things that they picked to add to the list. There are some items on there that are specific to each boy, and there are also a few items that they would both like or that they can play with together (in the "notes" section of the wishlist, it will say who it's for). They also love ANYTHING to do with cars, monster trucks, fire engines, construcion vehicles, and the Cars movie. But really, there's just waaay too much of that stuff out there to add it all to the wishlist! I'm sure we'll add more items to the list as we come up with new ideas (and as we get closer to their birthdays next year too!). Thanks for asking for the wishlist and for giving me a reason to get better organized about it all!

Busy, Busy, Busy Bees

Today I got together with Jess to make Erik a surprise birthday cake for his party on Saturday (and I'm hoping that he doesn't for some strange reason come take a peek at this blog before the weekend!). We wanted to pretend we were the master pastry chefs from "Ace of Cakes," so we decided to make a four-layer triple chocolate and red velvet cake in the design of a poker table top. We were ambitious to say the least and even though we ran into some troublesome obstacles along the way, I think the final result looks pretty good (for 6 hours in the kitchen!!!). Hopefully it holds up until Saturday!

The first layer of our home made marshmallow fondant is finally on the cake (after it took about an hour to knead it to the right consistency!)!

For some reason it didn't occur to us that there wouldn't be any way for the green fondant "table top" piece to hold it's shape once we cut it out. It kept ripping and stretching out - what a nightmare!

In the end we used just a little bit of the green fondant to make the edges of the table top and filled the rest in with green icing - soooo much easier!

Happy Birthday Erik!

I got to spend lots of time with Stella Bella today - yay!

She's getting SOOO big and SOOO exceptionally cute!

Stella is 5 months old today!

The boys have been having a bit of a trouble adjusting to the time change, mostly because they're used to playing outside in the evening before dinner, and now it's just too dark to play outside after 5:00. It seems to make them a little more stir crazy in the evening, so I've been trying to make sure that we head outside as soon as they wake up from their afternoon naps. They've both really been having a lot of fun playing (their own version of) soccer with each other, and Sawyer is getting really good at controlling where he wants the ball to go. I can't wait until they're both old enough to actually play on a team together!

"We doing good teamwork, Mom!"

Halloween Weekend

This was the first year that we took both of the boys out Trick-or-Treating! The boys did a “practice trick-or-treat” at Traci’s house on Thursday (in fireman and lion costumes), and then on Friday we met up with Hattie and her parents and grandparents for a Halloween adventure around their neighborhood (wearing their Yo Gabba Gabba costumes again). It was a good thing that we decided to trick-or-treat at their end of Caledon Circle because our neighborhood had hardly any kids out, and I definitely think that the presence of lots of other kids in their Halloween attire really added to the excitement for Sawyer. I was surprised that he wasn't really scared of very many of the decorations or costumes, including a life-sized animatronic Hannibal Lecter quoting the most memorable lines from the movie Silence of the Lambs. At one point his mask flips down and he looks like he's about to jump out at you, but that didn't deter our little munchkins from their candy collecting mission! As soon as it started to sprinkle a little bit though, Sawyer was quickly ready to call it a night...which was actually good, because Mitch and I needed to come home and get into our own costumes for a night of adult Halloween fun at Kari & Joe's house.

Kari & Joe really out did themselves with their haunted house this year! They had their garage set up so that you had to weave your way through make-shift hallways full of graveyards, moving spiders and creepy clowns and zombies until you made it to the end where the strobe-light-blindness lent itself perfectly to Joe (dressed as another SUPER creepy clown) would scare the kids as they were reaching into the candy bowl. We had a lot of fun, and I’m already looking forward to what they’re going to do next year!

Grandma and Grandpa were here visiting this weekend, so on Sunday we took the boys up to Apple Hill for some apple treats. It was raining a bit, so we didn’t stay too long, but the boys both managed to consume enough apple cider and donuts to end up with tummy aches anyway. We came back home and spent the rest of Sunday in the usual way – with football, naps and lounging around! :)




All the kids at Traci's all dressed up



Sutton as a lion




Fireman Sawyer

Headed out to trick-or-treat

Sawyer and Hattie..."Anyone home?"



Snow Fright and a "Sabotage" Beasie Boy

Sisters all decked out in their Halloween best

Enjoying some Apple Hill yummies

"I see you!" peeking through my donut!