Yesterday morning, against my better judgement, I let the older boys go downstairs by themselves for 10 minutes while I finished getting ready. I know what kind of non-sense they can get up to when left to their own devices. After about 5 minutes down there, they ran back into my bathroom with bananas and oranges to inform me that the bananas were space ships and the oranges were walky-talkies! When I got downstairs, they had practically had breakfast (consisting of at least 4 of the banana space ships) and all the oranges needed to be collected from the living room and put back into the kitchen. Inspired by their creativity, I drew rocket ships for them to color. When they were done, I cut them out and glued them on paper towel rolls. Here are some pictures of the "proper" rockets:

Aiden coloring:
Logan coloring:
Yeah for rocket ships (and don't you just love Logan's pajamas? I inherited those from a friend!)

Logan brought home a bunch of fun crafts from preschool on Monday. They have been working on a "top secret project" (which he confessed to me was an ornament and had something to do with crayons). His special craft was wrapped up in a cute green bag and had a little message on it. This picture is side-ways, but the tag says "Tis the season for silver and gold. Here is a gift for you to hold. You make my days cherry and bright. Together we'll hang this up tonight. Love, Your December Delight".
And look how cute it is!!!!

As I was taking pictures of his crafts, Logan grabbed my camera and took some shots of his own. Look....I think I had been home for 10 minutes and still had my coat on!
He was also wearing a cute little bracelet that he told me had a bell on it that he could use to "call" Santa.
Here is Logan "calling" Santa (or rather....doing a little Santa dance)
Here is another picture Logan took. I had set up a table in the playroom and the boys were playing "lollipop shop". There WAS a cash register on the table, but Bray pulled it down. I think Aiden is hard at work on the floor making lollipops out of tinker toys.
Another of Logan's crafts: a reindeer hat!
They also made Reindeer Food. We'll have them put it on the lawn Christmas Even night (we did the same thing last year as well)
This is the back of the tag that was tied to Logan's ornament. I'm not sure if he wrote his name or just traced what the teacher wrote....I'm proud either way!
Here, Logan reindeer hangs up his ornament.


Later, while I made lunch, the boys played Wii Boxing. We just got our Wii back from the repair shop. It had been broken since May when Aiden shoved game-cube disks (not made for the Wii) into it.
Over the weekend, daddy helped Logan add a pair of sunglasses to his little character. too funny.

Mommy elf has been so busy this week that I never got around to doing a blog post (or organizing another Lodey visit...slacker!) But...I was hand making 50 Christmas cards (47 to be exact since I had to use a few for "testing") and Brian's company Christmas party was Thursday night. On Friday, he "worked from home" aka: we all went shopping. Saturday we had a get-together with some old friends (Brian's college buddies and their families) and then today, after naps....we went on the Polar Express! Last year, when he was only 2 years (and 9 months) old, Logan called the Polar Express, the "Polar Conpress"...I miss that! Here are some pictures and the story of today's adventures: Oh and P.S., I made the boys sippy cups full of hot chocolate for the ride to the North Pole (like in the movie)...not knowing that they get hot chocolate at the end of the visit to Santa. I also brought along a bunch of candy canes to give out to all the kids for the ride back....not knowing that they ALSO hand THOSE out as you get off of the trolley (luckily I never got around to handing them out...Aiden was sugared-up enough as it was without getting TWO candy canes!)


We told Logan that he needed to take a nap before we went to see Santa, but he just couldn't settle down. Instead, here he is asleep in the car on our way to the local train station. Our park district runs a "Polar Express" every year. Last year, Brady was brand new so Logan and Aiden went with Nana & Papa. This was the first year for me and Brian. We went with 6 other families from our neighborhood. (oh....and everyone wears PJs just like in the book which explains Logan's attire)

Here we are waiting in a tent near where the trolleys come and pick up groups of 40 people to take to "The North Pole".
I think Aiden was dancing (again) in this picture. I HAVE to do a video of him dancing soon....it's hysterical.
They even had a TV and some little chairs in the waiting tent for the kids...genius!

Here is our trolley!! It was SO windy, but surprisingly warm. All the recent snow has melted away which was a bummer for the whole experience, but the girl on the "Polar Express" had an excellent explanation for the kids. She said that today was the day that all the elves were testing the bikes, scooters, skateboards and other outdoor toys for Christmas and they needed to have clear roads. Again...genius!

Logan really wanted to sit next to his friend Connor on the bus, but the two seats next to Connor were already taken. I kept saying "Logan...come back here and sit", but he would ignore me. Finally, Maddie sat down and I said "Logan...come sit next to Maddie". He literally started to say "no", realized that he wouldn't mind sitting by Maddie, and his reply came out like this "nnnnnn....OK!!"

Here are my blue-eyed boys on the trolley heading "north" (really....we were heading south)

Here is our AWESOME story reader. She read the book The Polar Express and got the kids all excited about our journey. She and the bus driver told them that we were leaving Oswego and arriving at the North Pole as we went over this little bump in the road. The driver even flashed the lights off and on a few times. When we arrived at our destination, they opened the door near some of the houses off the main road and you could hear a tapping sound (not sure where it was coming from, but they said it was the elves working away in one of the shops! too funny).

As we pulled in, the story teller said "do you guys see the North Pole?!" and all the kids jumped up and said "there it is!!!" In reality, we were pulling into this very cool, very woodsy park in our area. They had done an excellent job setting everything up and I don't even think my kids (who have been there about a dozen times) even recognized where we were.

The crew at the North Pole (see the pole in the background?!)

Santa's tent is on the right, straight ahead is Mrs. Clause's tent with "complementary" coffee, cookies, hot chocolate and a warm place to sit. The coffee was AWESOME....they had lots of different flavors, but I especially enjoyed the cinnamon swirl! Mrs. Clause came out to greet the kids on the way to Santa's tent. Logan talked her EAR off, but all the pictures I took came out blurry (it was a bad time of day...too overexposed with the camera flash on, but without the flash, any movement comes out as a blur so....bad pictures all around...lots of red eye!) Oh, and I was SO happy to see that the candles lighting the path were those battery-powered ones...especially since I realized that they weren't a fire hazard as Aiden went to stick his hand in and test one. Genius! The bonfire, however, IS real!

To the right of the picture above, there was a reindeer area with two actual reindeer. Logan LOVED them, petted one, and wanted to know where Rudolph was. He asked Mrs. Clause the second time she mistakenly wandered across his path. She said to look in the woods and that Rudolph was out there running around somewhere!

After walking around in the MUDDY mud reindeer area (literally...Aiden was covered in mud up to his knees), we went to see Santa! Logan had a VERY hard time waiting and was sort of stressing about what he was going to say he wanted for Christmas. I think he was afraid that he would forget everything. We told him to tell Santa that he wanted transformers and then he indicated that he wanted ME to tell Santa everything else. So...it was finally our turn. One of the helpers (not an elf...because they were all working today making toys...according to the story reader on the trolley), but a young man in the tent, asked us their names. I'm pretty sure he fed these to Santa via some sort of microphone because he mumbled into his scarf and Santa (who had a couple other kids currently sitting on his lap) seemed to nod slightly. He looked at our boys and said "hi Logan and Aiden! Would you like to come and tell me what you want for Christmas?" Logan basically ran and jumped on his lap...Aiden....not so much. He never even went over and, instead, clung to me. Here, Logan discusses his toy needs (very seriously) with Santa.

This guy was AWESOME! He called me over and said "Mom...Logan said you're going to tell me the rest of his list" and I replied "how about we send you a letter?" Santa turned to Logan and exclaimed "yes! That is a wonderful idea, your mom can help you write me a letter with everything else on it!" Then Logan proceeded to ask him a multitude of questions including "why do you have candy canes on your tree?" Finally, Santa asked him if he would like a bell from his sleigh and so Logan took one. Santa got one for Aiden too and came over to give it to him. He asked Aiden what he wanted for Christmas. Aiden buried his head in my shoulder so I said "don't you want to tell Santa that you want a basketball for Christmas?" Aiden said "yes....but...but...you change my diaper" Santa laughed and said "um....I'll work on the basketball, but maybe mommy can change your diaper!" Hysterical!Here is Aiden admiring his bell from Santa's sleigh....as far away from Santa as possible!

Ah, but later, when we were leaving the coffee tent, Santa came in from his tent! He actually called a lot of kids by their names and was saying "bye so-and-so, thank you for coming to see me!" He singled Aiden out and said "are you going to walk to the fire with your brother?" <-- Mr. Chatty Logan had just informed Santa that we were going to go see the fire. Aiden said "yes" and so Santa said "why don't I walk with you so that daddy can get a nice picture of us together?" I RAN in front of Santa with Aiden and snapped a picture. What a nice man!!!

After we finished in the tent, we went and climbed back on the trolley (easier said than done since we were the last ones in line and they almost made us and Maddie's family..her mommy, daddy and baby brother...wait for the next one.) Our friends must have seen that we got left behind because they all started piling kids on their laps and the "conductor" reopened the door and said "who got separated from their party?" He then apologized since we were the ONLY ones still left in line (like....there was literally no one left behind us) and let us on. We sang Christmas songs all the way back, but we began with Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer. As we pulled out of the the, then dark, park area, the (new and also awesome) girl on the bus said "hey look over there! I think that's Rudolph" and, sure enough, there was a red glow coming from back in the woods. Later, Logan said that his favorite part of the whole thing was "singing Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer REALLY loud and seeing Rudolph in the forest!!" We got back to the train station, ran to the car and bolted over to Memaw and Grandpa's where we collected a slightly sick little baby Brady (who got dropped off earlier because he hasn't been feeling well and we didn't want to take him on the Polar Express). Then, we met up with our neighbors over at a local pizza restaurant where we had: a room reserved and pizzas on order. That was a bit chaotic and sounded better than it actually turned out to be...especially with a sugar-filled Aiden who was crumpling and throwing napkins, climbing on tables and LICKING the table cloths (gross!) However, he actually wasn't the only little boy who was being rambunctious (and yes....some of the other offenders weren't even MY kids!!)

Now...I sit peacefully beside my husband who is tooling around with his Xbox. Rock Band anyone?? Oh...I guess it's too late (10:30) signing off for now!

When Logan turned 1, I had to basically help him dig into his cake...he wasn't quite sure what to do with it. If memory serves, I think he just licked bits of it off his fingers. Aiden did a pretty good job, but he was way into feeding himself with an actual fork so that wasn't a very productive "smash cake" (he couldn't really do much with that fork!). Brady on the other hand....couldn't be held BACK! I went to order him a little cake for his birthday party, and the smallest they had was a 1/8th sheet cake so he got a NICE piece of baked good to man-handle! Sadly, we had so much going on at his birthday party that we didn't do cake until it was a little past his normal bedtime, but that's OK since he had to be put into the bathtub immediately anyway!!! Here are some pictures of the party!

We did a combo party for Brady and his cousin Max who turns 12 later this month. Max and his brother Zach usually want to leave any family party these days after a couple of hours. I really wanted Max to have fun at his party, so we set up a Rock Band competition. It was a bit hard to get going because we also did "make your own pizzas" (Brian ended up making a lot of them...especially for the kids) and there is always a lot of ruckus when you get all these kids together. Here, Brian's older brother practices with Max and Zach before the competition gets started.
I've never taken a picture of the rock band screen for the blog before and you can't really see this, but Brian and Max did a battle of the guitars. They played the same song at the same time to see who would get the best score. Brian won by a land slide (Good work Bri! You don't even have a 1/4th of the time that Max has to goof around on this game....it's all natural talent!!)

Here they are doing battle.

Aiden loved to dance to the songs. He was running all over the dining room / kitchen doing some very cute little moves (seriously....he can grove!)

A bear on one of Bear's gifts. Mom and Dad gave him a hammer that makes noise when you hit it on the ground. His brothers gave him a little people ferris wheel. He got some great cloths from his cousins/aunt/uncle & Memaw / Grandpa. Even Grandma Maria gave him something....a really cute GAP coat to match the ones his brothers have.

Brady gets more than a little help opening his gifts. What are brothers for?!

It didn't take long for Aiden to find all the balloons and claim them for his own. He managed to gt all 16 of them into a bunch, tied them on Logan's shopping cart and ran around with them. Later, he wanted them to sit with him for dinner!

We bought all these matching shirts for the 4 youngest grandsons and tried to get a picture for Memaw's Christmas card. It was crazy...just like our attempts with only 3 small kids! Logan and Aiden gave me a nice smile before we started trying to get everyone.

This one was pretty good, but we had three cameras going so no one was looking at mine! :)

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Brady's cake pre-smashing. That's his little hand getting in there already!

Logan, Aiden and even Zach step up to test the cake for Bear before we sing happy birthday.

This is the cake post-smashing. NICE JOB Bear!

I eventually took the WHOLE cake away and gave him a little plate instead. He actually put the plate up to his face and licked the frosting off!

He was so tired! He is actually yawing while eating his cake. Poor baby!
Here I am....taking Bray up for his bath and for bedtime. Good work dude!