Sorry, been a bit of a blogger slacker lately. We had a wonderful Christmas this year! I was off for nearly 3 weeks, so it was great to de-stress from work and build up the holiday excitement. It started out with Noah's holiday party at school. He was out-singing everyone, which was wonderful to hear. The kids got to eat hot dogs at school and even had a visit from the big man Santa himself!
Then the week preceding Christmas we had a mini-holiday part with Calvin, Fred, and Evie. As usual, it was mayhem but it was also a lot of fun. The kids all really enjoy playing together so it's fun for the mommies to kind of sit back and enjoy time together too.
Fred and Noah are straight up "Best Buds" they will tell you. This is how they sat to watch a special Christmas Thomas movie. Too cute!
Can I whip out this picture in 15 years at high school graduation? You betcha!
Sam's gift from his godmother ~ homemade indoor snowballs. He LOVES them.
Cutie Dancing Sugarplum Calvin gets in on the craft (yes Philie came prepared with a craft activity.) Crystalized pipe cleaner snowflakes. Awesome!
Fred and Noah also got to make their own gingerbread houses (yep, again Philie's creation!). They turned out really cute!
Christmas Eve was spent with the Rodriguez side of the family. Here all the grandkids huddle around Nick's iPod to watch something.
Noah and Sam both love following around their older cousins. It's like free babysitting!
PaPa (mike's dad) got Sam his own set of wheels. Perfect for his small size he can now climb on his own and take off. Freedom!
Noah got some more art supplies and spiderman pictures. No surprise there!
Christmas morning we were at my parent's house in LaGrange. Noah awoke to find blue spiderman in his stocking from Santa. He was really hoping for this toy, so it was a HUGE excitement.
More supplies for the costume bin. Sam does look more nordic than hispanic so the Thor helmet is a good choice for him.
Josh and TiaTia went a bit CRAZY on gifts for our boys. This is just one of the 3-4 HUGE toys they got for Noah. He had asked for an easy bake oven and had cut out the picture and glued it on his list, so he was quite excited about it.
Then the big one. Bamma and Bampa got our family an iPod touch. Yep, Mike and I don't even have smart phones and our 3 and 1 year old now have their own iPod touch. But it's been great to have another entertainment device during our vacation time. And it will come in very useful for future trips to the lakehouse, Iowa and California this summer.
Noah sat with Bamma and showed his crazy tech skills. Notice her finger. Yeah, she sliced the side of her pinky off on a brand new mandolin slicer. She spent Christmas eve afternoon in the ER getting it cauterized. Please pour on the jeers, it's her first trip for her own injury (she's taken dad or josh several times).
Noah picked out an Elmo cell phone for Sam. As Noah said, "Sam loves Elmo and he loves phones!" So it was the perfect gift and is a new favorite now.
Chef Noah in his new Captain America apron. Another cute find by Bamma!
We ended Christmas day with my cousin Brian's 21st birthday. Yes his birthday is on Christmas Day and yes he was turning 21 this year. So, yes I made him drink throughout lunch. It's my cousinly duty. Don't mind Noah's hair, he had just gotten up from nap. That kid has amazing bed-head.
So back to the grind now. Enjoying all our new fangled toys and recovering from lots of merry-making. Thankfully we've had great weather and now have some fun things lined up for the next few weeks to get us through the bleh part of winter. Wishing everyone the best in 2012!
There were some fun references to superheroes that might have tie dyed capes...
Not to be left out, Sam had a cape trimmed down to just his size :)
There was the usual cousin love. Sam knows how to work it with his older girl cousins.
There was plenty of play time too, it's nice the kids are old enough to amuse themselves. They had a blast running around playing and watching movies together.
The annual Christmas pose on the couch. Much easier now that we only have 1 squirmy baby to handle.
And by the tree. I can't believe how big they all look to me!
There were some "lovely" gifts including this crazy, obnoxiously loud drum toy from Noah from Meg and Deewee. Thanks guys!
There was a food contest, this year was cheese. I'm pretty sure that Kate and Noah would vote for the uber-processed, hyper orange cheese balls in the giant container.
Noah and CJ got matching Buzz Lightyear pj's from Pops and JoJo. Pretty sure Noah wore his for 2 days straight.
The weekend was a bit overshadowed by Ellie being sick and not eating. A trip to the vet on Monday revealed an ingested towel. Long story, but she had surgery and now has 15 staples in her gut.
So, it's been quite the week with our Holiday trip, our surgical encounter for Ellie, our pink eye scare (false alarm) and Philie left alone at my house with 5 children under the age of 4 and this dog while I went to a meeting. God Bless Aunt Philie! What's in store for next week? Well come back and we'll hopefully have some photos of an up and coming trip to a waterpark in Iowa with 2 preggos (NOT ME, NOT ME!) and 5 kids. Should be fun. What could go wrong. Besides, I'm sure Ellie's learned her lesson....
