but if you kiss me now I know you'd fool me again

The title of this post is for Andrew. He has been singing songs like crazy this year (including Last Christmas by Wham) and singing lines I'd never even realized were in there. He has a few that he sings with made up words that make me laugh. My favorite was when I realized he was signing "Cindy, Alli a wonderful Christmastime" ... I swear Christmas keeps getting cooler. I love it!

And now, on to our Christmas... I love Christmas wrapping paper! It was hard for me to do the Toy Story and Cars paper for the boys, but I knew they'd like it. Plus, their favorite colors are green (Andrew) and blue (Mason) so it worked out pretty great.

This was a fun year with Andrew and Santa. We do not set him up to fully believe in Santa, but we also don't squash his imagination or the fun that comes with it. This year he kept asking if he was real and when he saw that he ate the cookies, drank the milk, stuffed the stockings and left gifts, he yelled "he is real!!" : ) And he was very impressed that Santa knew he liked robots.

Matt's parents got him a fishing boat this year!! so I got him and the boys matching fishing vests. Mason isn't in the picture because unfortunately his was on back order. So stinkin' cute, I can't handle it!

After we wake up and have Christmas morning at home, we head to Ellensburg to finish the celebration with Matt's family.

This is my favorite Starbucks cup ever - I love the exclamation point.

We went in with Melissa to get Matt's dad a sign for his shop. We're all slowly helping to make his shop look awesome.

This is me waiting for Andrew to get back to let me know if grandpa was okay with me going through this door even though it is the way to the man room. : ) He takes the man room very, very seriously!

Here's the sign and proof that we had a little bit of a white Christmas!

The day after Christmas was a lazy day, just as it should be. Grandma decided to take Mason upstairs for a little snooze, then a few minutes later Andrew decided he wouldn't mind joining them. Cute.

Merry Christmas everyone. I hope you all remembered to pause and celebrate the real meaning of Christmas. And if you'd ever like to hear the real story of Christmas, I'd love to tell you. Did you know the nativity scene isn't right?! If you read history from that time and/or pay attention to the details in the Bible story, it's clear that not only were the wise men and shepherds not there at the same time, but the wise men didn't even get there until 2 or 3 years after he was born. And! There is a scientific explanation to why there was a bright star above them. Seriously - my mind was blown this year! : )

rudolph & a penguin {thumbprints for the grandparents}

... so cute!

and just like that, it's Christmas Eve

Andrew is so excited for tomorrow morning. He warned us he might get up early, he reminded us to say 'merry Christmas', and he even had a dream about reindeer (but not Rudolph) last night! It was fun to hear him randomly say that he is excited for tomorrow.

The boys opened their gifts to each other (our Christmas Eve tradition). Then we headed out for some donuts.

We did some other stuff, but it looks like my pictures skip down to Mason, excited to show off his new Christmas pj's. : )

Andrew put out some milk and cookies for Santa. He wanted to leave him 100 cookies but we got him to agree to two.

A recap of the last days of our countdown chain:

1. Thumbprint Ornaments, 2. Christmas Candy Necklaces, 3. Christmas Lights (and we met our first camel at a live nativity scene we passed on our drive), 4. Grow a Tree/Santa 5. Decorate the Clubhouse, 6. New PJ's

I was struggling to come up with ideas toward the end for our elf, but looking at the pictures, I now think this was my favorite batch!

1. Rode the train, 2. Played with some friends (my favorite decoration...a reindeer family I got when I was about 10), 3. Almost got wrapped, 4. Thought he was a Christmas card, 5. Zip lined across the hall, 6. Snuck into a stocking, waiting for Santa.

I hope everyone has had a fun time celebrating the season. We did, but it went by way too quickly - I can't believe tomorrow morning is Christmas! Yahoo!! Merry Christmas!

first day of winter?

I love random days like today that are great for no real reason. The boys were in good moods all day, lunch was good, we did a fun craft, played outside, etc... And even though Mason chose today to be the first day of his whole life to go without a nap, it was a really good day.

Mason decided to use their sit-n-spin as a drum. He was marching around drumming away.

Later we were able to play outside. We blew bubbles, got out the croquet set and played on the swing set (which will be upgraded to two regular swings tomorrow - the baby seat is no longer acceptable). It made me laugh when I realized today was the first day of winter.

Andrew likes to keep the boxes from his Lego guys. A while ago I hid them under my dresser to see if he would notice, with the intent to throw them away if he didn't care. It was a great plan until today when he was playing with a flashlight in our bedroom and found them. Dang it! He was so excited to find them he lined them up on his bed. So much for that plan.

cake pops

I decided the one little box about our cake pops day wasn't going to do it. We had way too much fun.

For Mason, the fun started with the first step of washing our hands. He loves to play in water!

I'm happy to report that even with my lack of baking skills, our cake pops turned out pretty great. Well, 7 or 8 of them did anyway. : )

they're Christmas lights...

Today's chain activity was to make Christmas candy necklaces. I noticed the kit came with enough to make eight necklaces so we headed over to our friend's house so they could join in.

Two finished Christmas light candy necklaces. Fantastic! {...they're Christmas lights...}

Last night's activity was to make these ornaments I found on Pinterest. I'm kind of picky about what goes on our tree, so I haven't been interested in doing homemade ornaments in the past because (sorry) they would've been ugly. These however, are adorable! They're made with the boys' thumbprints.

Just for the record, I will love the homemade ornaments I get from them when they're in school and will be happy to put those ones on our tree. Okay - I feel better now.

18 days

This was our it's-helpful-my-boys-can't-read-yet week. Only 2 days actually went as scheduled, although in the end I think it was more fun than originally planned.

1. Letter to Santa (he ended up crossing out 'train' and writing 'robot'), 2. Clothespin Animals, 3. Cake Pops, 4. Lego People, 5. Movie (Aurthur Christmas - very cute!), 6. Mason's Gift.

1. Played a game, 2. Snuck into Andrew's bed, 3. Hid in the bathroom, 4. Went fishing, 5. Hid behind a throw pillow (Andrew kept asking why he was never back there), 6. Took a sleigh ride.

sweet timing

This week's chain events have been all mixed up. I had to come up with a new thing to do because we combined two on one day, I moved one to a different day so we'd have more time, and changed one up completely because I forgot to get the stuff we needed to do it. Yesterday we headed to the mall after school to get mystery Lego people (Matt's quick thinking when I realized I didn't get stuff to make ornaments).

We were all admiring the decorations. Bellevue has really stepped it up - the mall was beautiful and a lot of the stores had Christmas scenes in their windows (we watched the train in the McDonalds window for quite a while). The Bravern is also beautifully decorated and with Snowflake Lane lit up, it's very, very festive.

Thanks for the fun milk mustaches, McDonalds.

And because we were there for so long we even got to see Snowflake Lane from a distance (which Mason appreciated). Then Andrew had a great idea to try to get in our car and drive past them. So we ran to our car and got down as fast as we could. We couldn't go down the actual lane because they were only letting traffic go one way out of the garage, but they continue the stuff around the corners so we did see some. And the Christmas fairy blew the boys a kiss and we even hit it while it was snowing. It was the perfect ending to an unexpected fun night.

Christmas concert and some other stuff

Welcome to the world's busiest, and quite possibly cutest, day.

This made my day. There's just something awesome about seeing Santa in line at Starbucks!

I realize the picture is blurry and Andrew looks like he's in pain, but I had to get a shot of Cam's missing teeth. I think it's so rad that he's missing his 2 front teeth at Christmastime - he can sing that song and really mean it! I love it.

We also wrote a letter to Santa (where Andrew asked for a different toy, yet again... He's making it very hard on Santa this year) and did a little Christmas shopping.

Then we headed into Bellevue for Andrew & Mason's Christmas concert.

Turns out the school is filled with talented people. This year some of the teachers surprised the kids by singing a really fun version of Santa Claus is Coming to Town. It was really great and was a nice addition to their concert. The kids loved it - they jumped up & down and danced through the whole song. The lady playing the guitar is Andrew's teacher, the boy is Mason's. They're both very sweet and both love our boys! : )

Then, since we were in Bellevue (and because they're expecting rain on the day we had originally planned to go) we headed to Snowflake Lane. This is always one of my favorites - it's so much fun!

Andrew loved all the characters this year. He danced with, high-fived or talked to them all - Rudolph was one of his favorites. Mason wasn't so sure about the whole thing and definitely did not like any of the characters getting close to him.

Now to come up with something to add to our countdown chain in place of Snowflake Lane... my life is rough! : )