Gorgeous darling…really!

 

Phew – it’s been crazy around here this week! Brady has a double ear infection and hasn’t been sleeping well at all (translation: neither have mommy or daddy!) I’m finally getting around to posting our pictures from last weekend’s many Christmas events!

On Saturday, we went to our "usual” tree stop run by a local boy-scout troop. Of the 5 Christmas trees that have graced the living room of the 554, only 1 was not from this lot. Strangely, it took a lot to get the boys out of the house…here they wander around looking for the perfect pine. We ended up giving Logan the rights to choose. To this day, he keeps saying “wow – I picked a great tree!”

That same afternoon, we joined our neighborhood friends on the “Holiday Express” run by the local Park District. It’s so stinkin’ cute! Here, Aiden, Maddie and Logan share a seat on the trolley “to the North Pole”

We had the same wonderful guide as last year. She reads The Polar Express and gets everyone involved making noises along with various parts of the book.

Brady goofin around

Daddy and mini-daddy

Here we are at the North Pole! There is a tent where you can visit Santa and another “building” where you can get hot cocoa, coffee and cookies.

There were even a couple reindeer at the North Pole.

Decked out for the first time in FULL snow gear, the kids all took this opportunity to make their first snow angels of the season.

While waiting in line to see Santa, Logan explains to Mrs. Claus about our upcoming trip to Oklahoma. “Ya…my mom wrote a letter to Santa to let him know we’re not at home this year”. Mrs. Claus winked at me and claimed that it was a very good thing mom wrote a note!

Sweet winter hat daddy! (I must admit that I bought that for him last Christmas…winter is not about beauty!)

I couldn’t believe that all three boys hopped right on to Santa’s lap for a picture!

Our tickets. I like to take pictures of things like this so I can toss them and not have a bunch of papers in the house. At least this way, they’ll make it into our annual album (reminder to self: make blog into annual album!)

On Sunday night, we finally decorated the tree! Since we have a live one, Brian wanted to wait so that it was only up for a few weeks and doesn’t become a fire hazard (reminder to self: water the tree)

Hey look – toys!

Aiden and Logan hold up their favorite ornaments. Aiden’s is a blue striped candy which is hard to see because of the flash. Logan’s is a Santa in a car…which is hard to see because of his hand.

Before I had kids, my Christmas trees had a very definite theme…certain colors for the ornaments…ribbons…white lights…maybe baby’s breath in between the boughs like mom used to do. Now we use the colored lights, because the boys love them, and all the ornaments we’ve collected over the years. Just as beautiful as my very planned-out trees of the past…even if most of the ornaments seem to get placed on one side of the tree…at child height

…speaking of ornament placement…

Here are a couple of the kids’ very special ornaments. GG and GGpa send them one each year. The 1 is Brady’s from last year, the 3 is Aiden’s from this year. I’ve made a little bin for each boy which houses their very own collection…seems like a very “mom” thing to do as Brian and I both have boxes, handed down from our mothers, that contain our childhood ornaments (reminder to self: keep up the mom charade…bake some homemade chocolate chip cookies before you simply eat the chips straight out of the bag!)

The most treasured thing about our tree is the very cool train that we got a couple years ago. All the kids love running it, putting various things in the cars and making steam (when we remember to put in the liquid). Please note that we do have a tree skirt…it just wasn’t on when I took all these pics :)

Before I begin, I have to say that I have a slew of pictures on my camera right now from the Holiday Express and from tree decorating, but those are going to have to wait. I’m in crunch mode for work this week. We are exchanging laptops and I have to send mine off on Thursday which means I have tonight (as in now…as in why am I doing a blog post instead?!), tomorrow afternoon (not tomorrow night because I have my annual friends cookie and gift exchange…hosted here), and Wednesday night to cram in 10 hours of work – ah! So…holiday express and tree decorating pics will have to wait!

Back to the matter at hand: knock knock jokes. The older boys are quite fond of telling, mostly non-sensical, knock-knock jokes. Once in a while they will actually hit on one that is funny…like: “knock knock; who’s there?; who; who who?; is there an owl in the room?!” hahahaha. Most of the time, however, they go a little like this:

Aiden: knock knock

Logan: who’s there?

Aiden: lizard boy

Logan: lizard boy who?

Aiden: lizard boy fell and bonked his head (head bonking being, just about, the funniest thing there is around here)

both: hysterical laughter

me: questioning eye roll

Brady has been mimicking everything his brothers say lately. Practically everything they utter gets immediately repeated. Brian came home from running an errand with the boys this weekend and demanded to know why I had not told him that the baby tells knock-knock jokes!? I honestly thought it was a one-time mimic, but apparently he’s initiating his own!

Point two for this story: Brian sings the song “Sweet Baby James” (by James Taylor) to Brady at bedtime. This, they both refer to simply as “Cowboy” since the first lyrics are, “there is a young Cowboy who lives on the range”.

Today Bear and I were in the hallway at the YMCA waiting for the older boys to finish soccer class. Brady turned to me and we had the following exchange:

Brady: knock knock

me: who’s there?

Brady: un, too, fee cowboy

me: One, two, three cowboy who?

Brady: (a bunch of babble I didn’t understand)

both: hysterical laughter

It’s been an extremely cold week around here with wind chills reaching the negative teens, snow every day and loads of winter wear every time we leave the house (which adds at least 15 minutes to our usual 10 minutes of prep time necessary before we can even head to the car). It’s been a learning curve for the boys. Days 1 and 2, Aiden refused to pull his hat down over his ears. I think he learned the value of ear-coverage AND consistent glove wearing around day 3. It was also extremely difficult to get fingers correctly placed in gloves for the first few go-rounds. Now both Aiden and Logan are getting to be quite the expert “hand shover-iners” <—as I hold the gloves open for them.

On Wednesday, Aiden was still feeling a bit uncomfortable in his hat. We were in the car heading to his gym class when he whined, “maaameeee…my hat is…it’s doing funny things to my hair!” He took it off to reveal an awesome head of hat hair…ends sticking in all directions. He tried to smooth it back down as I contemplated using product to keep it that way! I happened to have my camera in my purse so I took pictures of Aiden and Brady who were back in the car after gym and waiting in the pick-up line at Logan’s preschool. As Logan climbed into the car, I noticed that his face was covered with chocolate. It was “hot chocolate and cookie” day…obviously not to be confused with “personal hygiene day”. We were in a rush or I would have snapped a picture of Logan’s face too.

Weather it be crazy hat hair or a nice chocolaty face, somehow it all looks adorable on a little boy!

 

This past Saturday, our baby turned 2! We weren’t planning to have a party for him, but I changed my mind last minute thinking it’s only fair – we throw major parties for the other guys! We had a family-only party for his first birthday so it was time for a neighborhood affair. Since we have absolutely EVERY toy under the sun for a boy Brady’s age (especially since he likes the Pixar Cars and Thomas Trains), we asked everyone to skip the gifts. We did say that we would accept donations to “Brady’s Angel Tree” and use any money collected to buy toys for children less fortunate. Looks like we’ll be doing some shopping this week!! We “raised” enough money to sponsor at least 7 children. We’re going to get the tags from the Angel Tree in the building where Logan goes to preschool (update: those tags were gone so we got them from the local YMCA). I’m hoping this will be a good learning experience for the boys! I was joking to my friends that I’m going to make them pick all girls so I can buy some pink stuff…and some dolls! (update: we’re going to be searching for a doll’s house and making a run to Claire’s….fun!)

Here is the invite for the party

Of course Bear got some gifts from the family. We bought him, along with contributions from Memaw, Grandpa, Aunt Diana, Uncle David and his cousins, “Spike The Ultra Dinosaur”. It’s as big as Brady and comes with a remote that makes Spike do all sorts of things like fetch balls and walk around. All of the boys are having fun with their new “pet”! Nana and Papa sent Brady some Thomas stuff including these bath toys which he carried around all morning. This is also a good shot of the “candy land path” that we made all over the house. We have these foam tiles in the basement under our jumper and another big climbing toy. We tore them up, took them upstairs and made a giant path. It was awesome! 

GG and GGpa sent Brady his own firefighter raincoat and boots. The older boys have the same outfits and Bray always wants to play with theirs so he was SUPER excited to have his very own!!

The party craft project! These are giant gingerbread men, modeled after the candy land game pieces. The kids were split into 4 teams (red, yellow, blue and green). They had to decorate their man and then take him along the candy land path throughout the house, stopping in each boys room upstairs where we had various games set up. I made these out of packing boxes and craft wrapping paper. AJ (our buddy down the street) was my model. I had him lay down on a board, traced his body and then super enlarged his head when I cut out the final product.

Gift boxes! Again produced with stuff I had around my house! These boxes were in my crawl space…and I have about a dozen more!

Check out this awesome cake!! The wonderful people at Meijer helped me modify a Backyardigans cake in their catalog by changing the colors of the trees, making a bunch of flowers into gum drops and adding the path. I took them the little men from one of our 2 Candy Land games.

“help! we’re stuck in icing!”

The eats and drinks table

My fun centerpiece. I made this by wrapping foam shapes in tissue paper. I stuck little wooden kabob sticks through the foam and then arranged them in a flower pot full of dry black beans. I finished by scrunching yellow tissue paper around them to hide the beans underneath.

I scanned the Candy Land Game, enlarged various sections and made a sign for each room. This was Aiden’s room. Logan had Lollipop Land and Brady’s was The Candy Cane Forest. After the kids finished playing the games in each room, they got a corresponding candy as a prize. In our case gum drops equaled paper dots (remember those?) The sign on our outside front door said “Candy Land Board Game Olympics…Today at 4pm”

I think someone (Aiden) took a couple unauthorized swipes at the cake that was sitting up on the counter top!   

Here are the kids (and moms!) decorating the gingerbread men

My thought was to take a picture of each team with their man and then send prints along with the party thank you cards. Here is Team Green. They were assisted by Susan, but did the sticking and arranging all by themselves! Logan made the pom-pom hair! 

Team Red (Brady, Kate and Ashley…aka “the baby team”) was um…not as into the whole craft as the other teams (we figured). Ashley totally helped color buttons and do some sticking/gluing, but Kate and Brady were MIA during the whole process…Ashley is holding the finished project 

Ok…ah-hem…here is “the real” Team Red: Kristin, Anna and me. Kristin made the belt!

Now Team Yellow could not have loved this more! They probably would have stayed there coloring all night long! By the way, everyone wore their PJs to the party. This made me think of slumber parties yet to happen once these girls get older. Maybe they’ll commission another gingerbread man for decorating purposes in the future.

Zach joined team blue…aka: “the unfocused team” of Aiden, AJ and Jack. I couldn’t get any of them to come over for a picture. Zach represented with their creation. I could not have been more proud of him! He was such a good sport, playing along with such younger kids. He purposely let them win all the board games and helped them out along the way. What a good cousin!

Here is a close-up of just some of the art work the girls did. Sarah took tiny dots and made a little girl, plus some flowers. Ellla and Mackenzie did equally impressive stuff on other areas of the gingerbread….girl.

Team Yellow!

So…we had all the kids start at the front door and then we used the actual game cards from Candy Land to have them hop along the path in teams until they reached the various rooms upstairs. After everyone had “candy-landed” in a room, we just rotated every 15 minutes. Here, Anne (who matched her outfit to the party – go Anne!) helps Team Blue play Diggity Dog and The Duck Game (I forget what it’s actually called) in Logan’s room. She and I took these boys around and it was hysterical. They mostly just got mad at us when we made them follow the rules.

Out of order picture, but this is the candle for Brady’s cake. It was in a bag full of other party treats. I think Brady was sampling a bit of everything…including the candle (notice the tiny teeth marks in the top and a bit of the blue edging is gone!)

Team blue plays “Hullabaloo” in Aiden’s room <—awesome game by the way – fun for everyone!

As coordinator, I checked into each room during the game play. Here, Kristin and Anna, who were assigned to the yellow team, enjoy a little chat time while the older girls practically run their own show and the little girls play with ducks. Quote from Kristin, “ya…it’s been pretty sweet!”

After game time was over, everyone got a medal and then we had each child grab one of the squares out of the path and bring it down the back stairs to the basement where we played musical squares.

Pizza Time!

Cake time!  

After we sang “Happy Birthday”, Logan left his seat to give Brady a hug and say “happy birthday little brother”…aww…so sweet!!

Dude, more in the mouth…less on the face…. 

Forks just slow a guy down!

After cake, we had a little movie time. It was the perfect way to calm everyone down AND extend the party right up until bedtime! Everyone got little containers of popcorn (which Brian was genius enough to suggest we pop pre-party!)

Yeah for me!

The next morning our balloons were in that funky stage between inflated and flat. Brian was trying to convince the boys that he had the force (like in Starwars) and could move them up and down.

Clearly his powers have been questioned by someone on the couch! This face means business and obviously imparts the message “I do TO have the force!”

Brady kept losing his balloon by “forcing” it up way too high. He would push a dining room chair over to the ceiling area where it was stuck and then say, “daddy – get!”

Ah…the “balloon force” is strong with this one!