Can you tell these two have fun together?

 

Making friends at the children's museum.

So far Evan's favorite toys from Christmas has been these Angry Birds stuffed animals. I grabbed a bunch from Amazon.com when I saw a great sale...they normally sell for around $12.99, but I got them for $3.99 each! He loves them.

Dinner with Grandpa!

Swimming with the Hampton's and Young's! Everyone had a good time and I was surprised that even the small kids swam the entire time, despite the cold temperature of the water. Pizza party afterwards capped off a fun evening!

 

More corn please!

Christmas Day. Evan loved the presents Santa brought him and was excited that he ate the cookies left out for him and that the reindeer got the carrots. Grace didn't care at all :) Maybe next year she will care about Christmas. We stopped by the hospital to wish my mom a Merry Christmas and so that she could see Gracie in her outfit. Then it was off to Ripple's for a lovely time spent opening gifts, eating delicious food, and trying to keep an eye on the kids in their huge new house. Despite my parents, Aunt Anne and Uncle Mike (flu), and brother and sister not being there, it was nice. We did manage to set up the iPad so that my mom could watch us open gifts. That would not have been possible a few years ago!

 

 

 

 

 

Christmas Eve was a little different this year. With my mom in the hospital with a horrible case of the flu (we did manage to visit her but kept our distance) and my dad with a cold, we went to the Young's house for a few hours in the afternoon. It was nice - they set up a treasure hunt for Evan to find his toys, and we also let him open a few presents from us. Then it was back to our house to get cookies ready for Santa and prepare for the next day!

Do you like Gracie's new facial expression? She is so serious these days.
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Scary dude.

Things Evan said recently:

As I was heading into the bathroom, Evan comes running in front of me, drops his pants and proceeds to use the toilet. I say, “Hey, I was going to use the bathroom. He looks at me and says, “We can share?” Don’t worry, we did not.

The night of Christmas Eve, after we had opened a few presents, Evan came into my bedroom to thank me one more time for the presents. I said you’re welcome, but remember, Christmas isn’t only about presents. He said, “Right, it’s also about candy canes and love.”

Aunt Mary got Evan an Angry Birds bath soap gift, and apparently there was some confusion when it was described to Evan. He thought that if he used the soap, little Angry Birds would appear on his body. So that night, when he took his bath, he scrubbed and scrubbed and said, “It’s not working! It’s not working. There are no Angry Birds anywhere. This is boring.”

Family cookie decorating at the community center, although all Grace really did was eat the frosting and sprinkles. She is ready for Christmas and the possible sugar overload.

 

 

 

Baking and decorating Christmas cookies with Grandma!

Evan and I have been playing ALOT of Slap Jack lately, which is great because it's an easy and fun card game. He could play it for hours, but his Mama can't. Anyway, this was his reaction after we had the first "double jack"...

I just realized I forgot to post pictures from Thanksgiving...whoops. To sum things up, it was a great day. This was the year where most everyone attended, so it was a large group. We started the day as we do every year, at the bowling alley. There most of us met baby TJ for the first time...including Grace. She LOVED him. She held him for such a long time, just looking at him, kissing him, laughing when he would sneeze or open his eyes. It was adorable. Then we had a surprise wedding shower for Brady & Katie, followed by a football game and then dinner. A crazy game of 4, 5, 6, ended the evening and it was back to Sun Prairie where the kids passed out immediately.