Christmas Edition

A wonderful thing happened when Chase turned two this past summer... he suddenly began fighting germs like a champ, and went a solid 4 months without really being sick. As a result, I finally had enough vacation time saved up to take a whole week off with the boys during the holidays. If that's not a Christmas miracle, then I don't know what is.

To prepare, I took a trip to Michael's to load up on all sorts of crafts. Among the boys' favorite projects were the ones that involved candy, of course. This is the first year we did a gingerbread house, and this is definitely a must-do project every year.

Braedyn absolutely loved decorating the gingerbread house with candy. And Chase, well, Chase absolutely loved the candy that was supposed to go on the gingerbread house.

Here are the boys proudly showing off their finished product, giving me their best "Cheese" pose.

It turned out pretty good. And I was somehow able to let go of the perfectionist part of me, and let the kids decorate it all by themselves, however they wanted.

Except for the icing on the roof.

And the door.

And the candy beads that outline the door.



But other than that, it's completely their own creation. My goal next year is to get some windows on this bad boy. Not quite sure what went wrong this year.

On Christmas Eve, we decorated gingerbread cookies for Santa. Braedyn did quite well with decorating the cookies.


And Chase did quite well with stuffing his mouth with the cookies. Do you see a pattern forming here?

And then, they both thought it would be funny to throw the candy everywhere. Yeah, umm, not so funny.

I was the only one not laughing at this moment. So right after I snapped a few pictures (priorities, ya know), this was the precise time that cookie decorating ended, and movie time began.

Later that evening, Braedyn was hypnotized with watching Santa's travels on Google Earth, which is a very nifty, little feature. Even I was watching with anticipation for when he finally flew over our house and came down the chimney. You know, the umm, chimney that we don't have.

We then tried the line of, "Santa is on his way, you have to go to sleep so he can come visit". But that only excited the boys more. Which resulted in excessive jumping and yelling and screams of, "Santa is Coming Now, Santa's Almost Here!" (Note to Self: Nix the whole Google Earth thing next year. Maybe that crap isn't so nifty after all!)

Here is Braedyn completely excited about leaving food for Santa and his reindeer.

And then finally, about 30 minutes later, the kids were all snuggled up in their beds, while visions of toy trains danced in their heads. Or uhh, however that line goes.

Christmas is truly my favorite holiday of the year, and I love it even more now that the boys are believers of Santa Claus. So just like past years, I excitedly arranged all the presents under the tree, while Ben sat in the rocking chair and mumbled something to the effect of, "... bought too much, blah blah, over budget, blah blah ..." I'm pretty sure what he was trying to say was, "Thank you for all you do", so I just went with that translation, and continued stacking the loot under the tree.

This was a fun Christmas with the boys, they are at a really good age. Chase didn't fully understand the Santa connection, but he definitely knew about Santa Claus, if that makes any sense. On Christmas morning, I told the boys to go see if the food we left for Santa and his reindeer is all gone. Braedyn went straight to the plate with Chase in tow, looked at the leftover crumbs in awe, and just stared at it for what seemed like forever. We got good video footage of it, but still working on editing all that up. So for now, here are a few pics of the boys on Christmas morning.

As you can tell, they loved opening presents and all the toys that Santa left them. Especially their bikes. And don't worry, I finally figured out how to put the helmet on the right way, so Braedyn no longer has half his forehead sticking out. =)~

As another year closes, I'm somewhat in disbelief that I have a 4 and 2.5 year old. I know it's so cliche' to say, but time really does fly by. We hope you all had a wonderful Christmas and enjoyed it as much as we did!