Christmas

Oh what fun to be a little kid at Christmas time... right!   Hunter had a blast and Aidan was along for the ride.

Christmas Eve at Grandma and pa Bell's.   There was no tree... Hunter had to point that out to Grandma and said "but there's presents??"   Like where are we supposed to put them?   We put them on the table and I started my trend of trying to take a picture of both boys in front of the presents before they tear into them!

Christmas morning.   Gotta love Christmas morning!   We hadn't really been doing the whole "Santa" thing.  But we did tell Hunter on Christmas Eve that he had to go to bed so Santa could bring him presents.   He latched right on to that idea and was all about Santa bringing him presents!

Woke up to Hunter yelling "santa brought me a big present!"   You can see how excited he was to open presents that morning.  He was trembling.   Aidan still not sure what this whole Christmas thing is about.

Aidan did get into the paper shredding, paper eating and shaking fun things that made noise.   Opening their "big" present.

Safety first!   Hunter was very excited to get this and keeps calling it his "handy manny tool shed."   : ) 

Another attempt at a picture before presents, later on Christmas morning at my parents.

Baby's first Christmas.  He was pretty tired out from all the excitement and lack of nap.   Hunter helped him open his presents too.

Bit of a whirlwind, but oh so much fun.  We are still trying to make room and do some post Christmas organizing... I think everyone else is too!   And I did already take the tree down, which always makes me a little sad but we needed the room and I was ready to get rid of the pine needles.  I still have my other lights up so I will still enjoy those for now.

Icy Christmas Eve

So we had some crazy Christmas weather.  If you are in this area you know... if not, we started with an ice storm before Christmas Eve and woke up to a very icy Christmas Eve morning.  Thankfully, we only lost power for about 45 minutes.  We were sure as we listened to the icy rain pound down that we were not going to be that lucky.   And we really didn't lose too many tree branches.   It just snapped off one of my little trees (you can see in the pic below.)
It really was a beautiful morning and in these instances (and more) I wish I had a "good" camera to get some good pictures.   

We have so many trees in front of our house and it really was so pretty and icy!!

Gingerbread House

I've been trying to think of projects to do with Hunter.  He loves doing them... but his version of "doing" something is watching me do it.  It's a tough age to find projects for I think. 
I bought a gingerbread house kit and thought he could help decorate it.   I made the frosting and got it ready for him to decorate with candy.... what was left of the candy that he didn't eat!
See the bag of little hard ball candy?   The kind that roll everywhere.   I grabbed a glass to put them in and set it by Hunter, why I don't know.

He seldom spills things but he managed to knock this off the table in about 2 seconds shattering the glass and sending the little candies everywhere.   It just exploded on the floor.... glass and candy from one end of the house to the other.   Grrrrrrr.    I quickly frosted the roof so he could stay busy putting the other candy on it and then went to work cleaning up what was turning into a very messy project!

Despite the mess... he loved decorating the house and did a good job too!

Birthday Boy

My little 6.5 lb dark haired baby boy turned 3 yesterday.  Hard to believe!

Tried to make a fun day for him...started with some presents in the morning, a new monster truck, b-day pancakes, more presents and a b-day party at night he couldn't wait for!

He wanted a tractor cake so I did a barn & tractor cake.   It turned out pretty good since I just worked with an idea I had and a couple different pics online.    Hunter liked it and it tasted good too!

His big birthday present... a mini trampoline!!!   The kid never stops bouncing and now he doesn't have too.

He could not wait to open presents.   A lot to expect from a little boy when he knows there's a pile of presents with his name on it.

He takes present opening very seriously... very, very seriously!!

It was hard to get him away from his new toys to blow out his candles.

It was cute, during the day he kept saying "this is the best Christmas I've ever seen."   Kind of hard still  for him to tell the the two apart since it's so close to Christmas, but cute because I knew what he meant. 

Christmas Tree

We got our Christmas tree the last day of November.   We went to Williams and chopped one down.   We rode in the horse drawn wagon with about 30 school kids out to the woods to find one.   I tried to get Hunter into the spirit of things by having him help us pick one out.

He found this one....

 And several others likes it.   Trees that had already been cut down and were just the bottom branches.  It was pretty funny because he kept saying "maybe this one.."   And I'd try to explain I wanted a tree with a top too!

We finally picked this one.   We always start out seeing a lot we like and then lose them in the woods and then get tired of wandering around and just pick one.    Adam carried it back, I carried Aidan and Hunter walked.   We did pretty good considering...   thankfully it wasn't a freezing cold day so the kiddos lasted ok outside.   And of course Hunter loved the other fun things there like all the dogs, animals, maze.... 

Fun place to get a tree!

I tried to take a picture of Adam carrying it back and he said he was going to throw it if I took a picture : )