The WOW Factory & belated Christmas

Today we went to Mike's new favorite hang-out, The WOW Factory. But before we even had breakfast, Owen was hard at work on this masterpiece:

Then it was off to P-L-A-Y!!!

The kids loved it (once Vivi was finally able to tune out the loud sounds of the ball blasters) and we totally wore them out for the Grandparent's big babysitting adventure.

After dropping off all 3 kiddos at Grandma & Poppy's house, we headed out to lunch and to the movies - the girls saw Les Mis and the guys saw Django. It was a nice treat since we hadn't been to the movies in years (literally).

On the way home we stopped at Pizza Heaven to bring home dinner to the hungry Grandparents and children waiting patiently at home. We all ate together outside at the big wooden table and then went back in to unwrap the presents that Santa had left behind. The kids were so cute tearing through all the gifts. Santa was so good to everyone. Probably the kids favorites were the real kiddie digital cameras, purple for Vivi and green for Owen. They couldn't wait to take pictures like Mommy. It was so cute to watch. Once we download their pictures I'll post some to the blog. Owen is quite the little photographer!

Thank you Mom, Dad, Lindsey and Mike for such a wonderful Christmas. The greatest gift of them all was having the week to spend time together. Grandma being there too was the icing on the cake. :)

Off to Florida!

This evening we hopped on a 5:35pm flight to Florida to celebrate belated Christmas and Mike's birthday. Grandma came along with us for an extended stay.

We were able to keep the kids entertained (and quiet) on the flight with coloring books, the ipad/iphone, and of course, lolipops. :)

The kids did surprisingly well on the flight, and we landed on time at 8:15. Grandma and Poppy were there to meet us and let us borrow a car for the week. We headed over to Mike & Lindsey's to settle in for the night.

So happy to have the week with everyone!

Christmas aftermath

Toys everywhere.

Still fun. :)

Christmas Day 2012

It was so cute to see the kids coming down the stairs this year, whispering to each other the whole way, wondering whether Santa came the night before and left toys and ate the cookies they had set out.

Turns out he DID make a visit to our house, big time! These two must have been very, very good all year because there were a TON of presents under the tree. 

The kids took their time opening gifts, and oohhed and ahhhed over every single one. They were so excited! It was so much fun to watch them. Brought back lots of memories.

 After all the gifts were opened, we sat down to eat the yummy casserole that Ben had put into the oven when the gift-opening started. He and I enjoyed our first Starbucks Verisimo coffees (thanks Curt & Tish!) as we had breakfast and talked about all the fun toys the kids would be playing with this year. 

(post-gift-opening chaos)

After breakfast, we got ready and headed over to Grandma & Grandpa's to enjoy Christmas lunch with them and Aunt Hillary and exchange presents. Santa left a bunch of stuff at their house too!

We spent the afternoon enjoying a delicious lunch, watching the kiddos tear through more presents from Santa, and exchanging gifts. It was such a fun day. We got home in the late afternoon and relaxed as the kids ran around from new toy to new toy, playing the day away.

In the evening, as we had Cinderella on and the kids were mesmerized, we called Grandma & Grandpa on the new ipad mini to do Facetime. So much fun. We also had some Facetime with Grandma & Poppy in Florida. We're looking forward to celebrating Christmas with them in mid-January.

So blessed. Merry Christmas everyone!

Holiday dinner party

We invited Matt & Kelly and the kids over for a little holiday dinner party. I found this meal inspiration on Pinterest, sent Ben to the store and then put him to work in the kitchen while I cleaned up around the house and set the table. 

Matt picked out two amazing bottles of wine and we fed the kids while we (and Vivi, of course) enjoyed some shrimp bruschetta appetizers that he brought over. The kids had dinner and then we set them up (home theater style) in the family room with some Christmas specials found on Netflix.

Us adults were able to enjoy a nice meal while the kids relaxed watching He-Man & She-Ra's Christmas crusade (Ben's choice). Afterwards, it was time for cocktails and cookies for the grown-ups, and cookies and milk for the little ones. Such a fun evening for everyone.

Viv's short rendition of Jingle Bells

These are a few of my favorite things

So grateful to be surrounded by love and yumminess.

Preschool Christmas celebration

Today Owen had his preschool Christmas Sing & Celebrate performance and Christmas class party! The Sing & Celebrate was so cute. The music teacher told the story of Christmas and as she did, described the characters and asked for volunteers to play each part. Owen chose to be a shepherd, probably because of the cool prop he got to hold: a candy cane staff. :)

After the story of baby Jesus' birth, the kids all got to pick out bells for "Jingle Bells" and they sang (really they just shook their bells and forgot to sing, but it was still super cute.) A few more songs were sung, and then it was party time!

As room mom I organized the party and delegated tasks to the other moms who offered to help. It all came together nicely in the end, even when I had to scramble to find a solution to the snack problem (we wanted to do snowmen sugar cookies which the kids could decorate and eat, but due to the school allergy policy I couldn't find any that worked so instead we did Rice Krispie Treats cut out with cookie cutters and they frosted and decorated those - HELLO SUGAR RUSH!).

Then the kids played "Pin the Nose on the Snowman" and they had a ball with that. The final activity was creating a snowman printed ornament using their thumbprints. After it was all said and done I realized we should have done the ornament first so that it would have dried before everyone took them home, but it all worked out regardless.

We presented Owen's two wonderful teachers with a gift basket that another one of the moms graciously offered to put together with donations from the class. They loved them and everyone wished each other Merry Christmas as we said goodbye until January. It was a fun way to wrap up preschool for the winter break.

Baking cookies with Grandma & Aunt Hillary

Today I dropped the kids off to spend the afternoon with Grandma and Aunt Hillary baking cookies and playing games while I went to a nearby Panera to work. I got a ton of stuff done and they had a blast making gingerbread cookies and decorating sugar cookies. We were sent home with two baskets and a couple of platefuls of yummy treats!

The kids both fell asleep on the drive home since they skipped their naps due to all the excitement of baking cookies. But look: Owen never let go of his cookie basket! That's my boy! :)

Surprise treat

Our door bell rang at 5:30 tonight and the kids ran to see who it was. Turned out it was a drop-off surprise Christmas treat from our realtor, Kevin LaRue, who had sold us this house we now call home. :)

 Thank you so much, Kevin!

Happy Birthday Grandpa & Congratulations Aunt Hillary!

Grandpa's birthday is exactly a week after Vivian's and to celebrate, we all went out to dinner a day early at Wildfire in Tyson's II. We were also celebrating Aunt Hillary's graduation from nursing school! Everyone had such a great time and the kids were very well behaved in the fancy restaurant. Vivi helped blow out Grandpa's birthday candle after we sang Happy Birthday! Afterwards, they even caught a glimpse of Santa! :)

Happy Birthday, Grandpa!
&
Congratulations, Aunt Hillary! We're so proud of you!

Christmas family brunch

Another tradition we've created with our best friends is Christmas family brunch. It's a time for us all to get together, enjoy delicious food and drinks, watch the kids exchange gifts and decorate cookies together. Since last year, we've added two more babies to the brood: Ryan and Drew. We just keep multiplying! Molly hosted again this year and everyone had a wonderful time. It's always one of my favorite days in December. Nothing beats good friends and the holidays!

Brunch with Santa

For Vivian's 2nd birthday, we decided to take the kids to brunch with Santa at Clyde's. They loved checking out the gingerbread house, Santa's sleigh, the gigantic Nutcrackers out front, and all the magic of Clyde's at Christmastime. They were unbelievably well-behaved the entire time. We had to wait for our table, so while we waited the kids got their faces painted - Vivi got a candy cane to match the candy canes on her dress and Owen chose a Santa face. We then waited our turn to sit on Santa's lap, and although she was excited to see him and we thought she might sit on his lap, she was a little scared an opted to just say hello from Mommy's arms instead. Owen told Santa what he wanted for Christmas and then we sat down for lunch. It was such a fun afternoon and the kids really enjoyed getting to see Santa up close. Such a fun tradition we've started.

Christmas candy cane cookies

Buddy hard at work in the kitchen...

Sunny FL here we come!

This morning we got up at the crack of dawn to hop on the first flight down to FL. The kids did extremely well the entire trip. We used our Britax Roundabout for Owen (both to wheel him through the airports strapped to the back of a piece of luggage, and to keep him buckled in during the flight) and Vivi was on our laps during the flight. Vivian slept during the middle portion of the flight, which was perfect, and we made it to FL a few minutes early, around 10:40am.


My dad picked us up and we headed over to Grandma & Poppy's house. After lunch we got to open gifts that Santa had left for us and the kids from Christmas, and we gave them our presents.


That evening Mike, Lindsey and Max came over for dinner. It was so great to have the family all together and to see the cousins playing side by side. It was a delayed Christmas celebration, but no one seemed to notice since we were more focused on enjoying each other's company.


I think it is safe to say that the best gift was the guitar tee shirt that we gave Mike. It actually played, but, as Mike pointed out once he started to play around with it, there aren't many songs out there with only 7 chords. Oh well, the novelty of it was worth it. :)

Christmas pictures

Christmas morning

Ben and I woke up around 6:30am this morning. He wanted to inflate the race car to put it out under the tree, and I wanted to have a cup of coffee (from our new Cuisinart coffee maker ~ thank you Grandma & Grandpa!) before the craziness began.

Here is what our Christmas morning looked like before the kids woke up.

Christmas morning video

Milk & cookies for Santa

Tonight we wrote Santa a little note to go along with the milk and cookies we left him.


And of course we couldn't forget a few carrots for Rudolf and the other reindeer! (Owen drew the map to our house himself.)