Christmas at home

Christmas Eve at home. Will refusing to take a nice picture. I think Santa put him on the naughty list.

Cookies and milk for Santa. Carrots for the reindeer. 

Santa brought Will a 4-wheeler for Christmas!!! Unfortunately it broke about an hour later so we had to figure out how to send it back and get a new one from the North Poll. 

Santa brought the girls hover boards! They were so excited. 

Charlie was a little unstable at first but got the hang of it right away.

Poor guy had to wait almost two weeks but eventually we got a new shipment from the North Poll. 

The First Snow

It was looking like we weren't going to have a white Christmas and we were all a little bummed about that. But then, on Christmas Eve is started snowing!!! The kids wanted to get outside and play the second we got home from their Grandparents. I braved the cold just long enough to snap these pictures. 

Christmas Weekend Extravaganza

We took the kids out of school a couple of hours early so we could head to Grandma and Grandpa's and meet up with the cousins who had been patiently waiting for a whole day for us to arrive!

Grandma and Papa received a trip to Hawaii from Caleb and Morgan!! 

Then off to Grammy and Papa's where Evy won the pickle game!!

Will had so much fun with his new race track.

40th Birthday

Yep. I turned 40. I could tell Scott was cooking something up to celebrate. I anticipated meeting about 10 friends out for dinner. Instead, I walked into a celebration with 45 people! Holy smokes! What a fun surprise. Scott said it was quite the event to pull off. My birth date is not exactly a good date for anyone. It was the same weekend as UI graduation and the same weekend that many people are celebrating office holiday parties or family celebrations. Scott had to call 9 restaurants before he was able to find a place with availability. 

Our waiters were great and were having some sort of competition about the number of people they could get in the beer cooler. So we went along with it and I'm sure we won. 

Christmas Cookies

Leading up to Christmas the girls were watching the Christmas Cookie challenge on Food Network which influenced some of this year's baking. We added a peppermint cookie to the mix and the girls wanted to use piping bags to put the frosting on the sugar cookies. We kicked off our baking extravaganza on Friday night with the peppermint cookies. They were easy to make and tasted great. I think we'll add them to the annual rotation. On Friday night we also mixed up the dough for our sugar cookies. On Saturday we rolled out, cut, and baked the sugar cookies. This left frosting the cookies for Sunday and dipping all of our pretzels. I always start this project enthusiastically and then am enthusiastic for it to be over!

Mr. Picky Pants

I have been surprised by the fact that Will is my pickiest child when it comes to clothing. It was very hard for him to transition to Fall clothing. It's December and he's still insisting that he wants to wear shorts and cool shirts. Cool shirts = short sleeves or a tank top.

Just this week the weather turned so it's been less of a fight to get him to wear pants and long sleeves. At the beginning of Fall he would refuse to wear any of the long sleeve shirts I had for him. Literally, the mornings would always involve a huge argument where I would have to just dress him and then place him in the car. I bought him shirts with dinosaurs, construction vehicles, cars, etc. But he wasn't having it. I finally figured out his outfit of choice....black pants and a hoodie. He insists on black pants and rotates through 5 hoodies. Thankfully, his older cousins have supplied us with a great hand me down supply of hoodies.

Ugh. What a diva. 

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas

The kids LOVE Christmas and are eager to get all the decorations out and do all the Christmas stuff.

One of my favorite traditions is the downtown Iowa City horse drawn trolley ride and elf hunt. The weather was gorgeous this year so we took part in this tradition at the end of November. Which was awesome, because Scott was able to join us for a change. We normally do this activity on the first weekend in December while Scott is deer hunting.

The horses are named Romeo and Juliet.

Typically the girls go to the local performance of the Nutcracker, but we switched things up this year and went to see Annie. It was a fun change. 

The holiday crafts have been rolling in from school. Will made Santa beards today at Ms. Lori's.

Gingerbread house construction. Each kid has their own vision for how the house should look so this is certainly a practice in cooperation and patience for all involved. 

Our advent calendar is pretty basic but helps everyone understand how many more days until the big man arrives. 

The stockings are hung by the chimney with care.

All three kids helped decorate the tree this year. I think we only broke one ornament. 

Elfy showed up on December 3. The kids were so anxious for his arrival.

Each child has a tree and small stocking in their room. Their trees are decorated with their handmade ornaments and they pick one store bought ornament out each year. Mommy elf occasionally leaves small surprises in the stockings. 

Love that Charlie added a doughnut ornament to her tree this year. 

This is the first year that Will has had a tree in his room. He is slightly obsessed with decorating it. He chose construction vehicles, footballs, a motorcycle and a teenage mutant ninja turtle to start his collection. Each day he asks me if he can go buy another decoration.