2013 ornaments

I think this may be the final photo post for 2013, yay! I still have videos to edit though so I'm not quite caught up. This year, after hearing about it from other families, we decided to start a new traditions of letting the boys pick out an ornament. They will each pick out their own every year, and I will take a picture of them with their ornament to keep a record of what they chose. When they move out and have a tree of their own, they can take all of their ornaments, along with the memories, with them. They were both so excited to pick out their ornament, and seemed to know exactly what they were looking for. Oliver picked out a felted snowman, and Elliott, a Lionel coal car train.

  

And here they are together, with their matching Thomas shirts:

 And a few more photos from Evan:

Here is Elliott's 2013 maple tree comparison photo. He sure has changed a lot.

more holiday pics!

I think I'm nearing the end of the holiday pics. I'm still waiting on several that are on Evan's camera, but this is the end of my own.

handsome boys by the tree

bed time stories in Christmas pjs

 Grain free Christmas cookie decorating! This was a fun (and messy) activity for the boys. They used chocolate chips, raisins and shredded coconut to decorate their cookies.

sampling

Santa had to sample too :)

Hanging with the Uncle:

 Cynthia came over to make ornaments with the boys and at one point she ended up with Oliver's red beard

On Christmas Eve Santa gives Nick directions on how to build the fence

Elliott checks on their progress

Christmas Eve night:

sprinkling reindeer food outside

drinking hot chocolate with peppermint sticks while watching the Polar Express

ice skating

The boys had fun ice skating just before Christmas with Uncle this year! In fact, they had so much fun that they have plans to go back one more time this week before it closes. This was Elliott's first time, and the walker was so helpful. We made it around five or so times before he got tired. I was surprised that they even had skates small enough to fit him, but sure enough, they had a size 6. Oliver was also really excited to go and it was extra special for him that Uncle got to come as well.

meeting Santa

Meeting Santa this year was a big deal for Oliver. It is the first time that he wanted to sit on his lap, and, as you can see from the pictures, he thoroughly enjoyed himself and didn't want to leave. Evan snapped these behind the scenes photos for us. Oliver loves the photo we were sent home with and would comment on it for days afterwards about how much he loved it. For Christmas he even asked Santa to put it in a nice frame for him.

Happy New Year!

getting ready for the holidays

One of my goals this week has been to go through pictures and videos from the last month or so, that I haven't had time to post. Here are some pictures from the end of November as we started to decorate and get ready for the holiday season. Today there is no trace of the holidays left in our house, the boys waved goodbye to our Christmas tree as the garbage men took it away this morning.

An early Christmas present from Bapa, a Thomas the Train set for around the tree!

Bobble hanging time:

.

Planting flowers that the boys originally planted in hollowed out pumpkins back in October. The pumpkins were starting to rot, so time to put them in the ground.

And somehow I missed taking pictures of us decorating the tree. Oliver put most of the ornaments on the front 1/3 of the tree, it was pretty cute. Here he is putting the star on top.

snow day!

Oliver was happy to finally get a snow day this year! We didn't get any snow last year and he was so disappointed that he never got to make a snowman. This year Uncle happened to be visiting, so the boys got a little extra help with their snowman. Elliott was an infant that last time it snowed here, so this was his first experience with it. It was a short and sweet snow day, the snow on the ground was gone by noon, and Frosty melted the next day.