Santa came!

The candy cane seeds grew! All it took was a little magic from Santa.

I like that they grow wrapped; similar to a banana.

It looks quite festive I think.

Brought back memories of a hammer, screwdriver and very frozen ground last year.

My boys are spoiled. No doubt about it.

Just waiting for morning to come!

Christmas Eve Recap

Noah started the day out in high style in his new car/bed/lounge chair. Who needs real furniture toys when you have a big box!

We kept an exciting day of anticipation moving along by decorating our gingerbread house.

I think it turned out quite festive!

And just in case any evil elves sneak in with Santa it is well protected by some heavily armed Lego men.

After the gingerbread house we decorated gingerbread men.

And women, obviously. Well, I thought it was obvious, but Noah said those are lungs.

 On his last night with us Nelson our elf left us magic candy cane seeds.

So after decorating cookies we planted our magic candy cane seeds.

Thank goodness it wasn't as cold as last year.

One of the awesome things about magic seeds is you really don't need to dig a hole, you can just place them on top of the ground.

Just in case you are curious, you "plant" the seeds with the wrapper off, but the candy canes grow wrapped.

Later, cookies and cocoa were left for Santa.

And apple slices for the reindeer.

Then it was time for the annual reading of "Twas the Night Before Christmas" followed by the annual reciting of the Christmas Morning Rules.

1. No screaming, yelling, or hollering to get out of their room until 8am (Yes, we are cruel. Yes, Noah wrote himself a note to remind himself not to wake up until 8am or later. Wish I had taken a picture, because it was cute.)
2. No one goes downstairs until everyone is ready and Mommy has the camera. 
3. Read the tag on the gifts before you rip it open.
4. If anyone ends up in the ER, the person responsible will be giving all of their gifts to the brother that is broken. 
5. And a special rule for Noah - only one Lego box is allowed to be opened and built at a time. Once it is complete and Mommy gets to see it he can do whatever the heck he wants with it. We will not be repeating the 12 hour Lego sorting marathon of last Christmas vacation.

After saying final farewells to Nelson, off to bed they went, and in a true Christmas miracle they both fell asleep almost immediately!

Rich and I did the rest of our work, and then we hunkered down with a glass of wine and a snack (see above). It was a wonderful evening as we fantasized about the morning to come.

This was my Facebook post at 10:45 pm:

For me this is the best part of Christmas. The kids are asleep, Santa has come and gone, the presents are out, breakfast is ready to pop in the oven in the morning.

Now I can set back with a drink and fantasize about tomorrow. Then I will pinch myself and remember that it will be nothing like my fantasy, but it will still be Christmas and I will still be with the three men I love most in the world.

Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night!

The days before Christmas

We have a few holiday traditions we've kept going since Noah was a baby.

The hospital Rich works at always has a party for the employees kids and grandchildren. They have a magician perform, music, cookies, and of course Santa and Mrs. Clause with a few elves.

Kiel isn't too sure about Santa.

"I shy," he says.

He got up his courage though and talked quietly with Santa and Mrs. Clause.

Santa remembered him from last year and was very gentle.

  We tried what might be a new tradition and took both boys to visit with Santa at The Melting Pot.

They decided he is the "real" Santa. Noah said it is because his beard doesn't come off.

Kiel was much more comfortable with this Santa. I'm not sure if it was because he was with big brother, or because he was wearing his new boots that he was refusing to take off.

As far as the Melting Pot experience went, Noah and Kiel weren't exactly fans. I love it, and Rich tolerates it. The boys did great though, even if they weren't thrilled by the food. We were there for at least two hours and both of them handled it quite well. Mommy was proud!

After our lunch with Santa we came home and the boys helped me make Christmas decorations for their teachers. We took clear glass balls and let paint drip inside them. It took some trial and error since some of the paint was thicker than others. We ended up putting small jingle bells inside and rolling them around with the paint to help cover the glass. The first few were a bit ehh, but after I realized that using different paint types (gel, acrylic, some thinner than others) the paints swirled together, without blending. I was really pleased with how they turned out.

I'd like to try it again next year, but need to find some better quality glass balls. These were cheap ones from Target and break very easily. I'd like to do this with a ball that is a bit thicker and less likely to break just by touching. If you have any thoughts on where I could find something like that for next year, leave me a note in the comments.

Nelson and his antics

I've seen a few blog posts about the Elf on the Shelf and the over achieving Mom's that are pissing off the rest of the Internets.  It just makes me laugh. I took a few of the ideas I saw on Pinterest, but the rest of the time Nelson was pretty tame.

Except for the morning we woke up to this!

The boys were practically beside themselves over this one.

They were slightly less amused when a couple days later they found that Nelson had eaten the last bit of the Halloween candy.

Oh well...

Better late than never?

I found this in my drafts folder. Obviously I thought I posted it earlier in the month. These are pictures I took in November on one of our "photo shoot" days. I've been having so much fun playing with our new camera. I find my boys pretty easy subjects to work with as well, especially Noah. He loves to ham it up for the camera.