MW Turns 4

Last Friday a certain little boy turned 4!
Once I can get his daddy to get his video edited for his yearly questions  I will get that posted. But for now Happy Birthday Love!

Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas {2014 Part IV}

Welcome to my final installment of Christmas.

Again, I have to re-iterate that this was by far the best Christmas. The kids were both at such fun ages to do things with and they both seemed to really be in the spirit of it all.

Here is a our family Christmas Eve picture. Stunning I know... ;)

We headed to my mom and dad's for soup post Christmas Eve service. It wasn't planned, but when you have zero food at  home it was a fantastic idea. Finally, after we pried the kids off papa aka the fun house, we loaded up and went home to start the Christmas Eve prep.

Notes to Santa...check.

Cookies for Santa and Oatmeal for the 'deer {because we were out of carrots and I heard once oats are their favorite treat!?! ;)} Check.

Write a gift for Jesus. Check.

Lay gifts to Jesus in His manger. Check.

Go to bed!! CHECK!
I really try to get good pics of the tree and silhouette stuff, but I just can't seem to get it right...
Baby Jesus in the manger.

Santa comes. Check.

The next morning the kids came in to wake us. Lo had this great idea for me to take a photo of them "sleeping" in our bed and then do a WAKE UP face. They turned out cute. Great idea sister!!

IT's CHRISTMAS!!!!

First things first we sing Happy Birthday to Jesus. BUT Daddy filmed it and videos aren't my thing, so just imagine this was us but one year older...

photo from 2013

Then we moved on to the Santa gifts. MW is super hard to buy for because his mind changes as the wind blows. However, he is always super excited no matter what he gets. I realized after just watching him, that he does like to sit and play with his toys, it is Lo who doesn't...so I Santa figured this Rescue Bot Fire House with Heatwave was the way to go. I Santa was spot on.

Lo got her gym bar...only Santa I no Santa screwed up. Apparently even though I Santa read all the pinterest tutorials and even thoughtful planned this DIY endeavor out, it was a bust. Not sure how it all went wrong but the bar just wasn't stable enough to not topple over or bend. Daddy and I tried all we could and spent another $40 trying to make it workable, again a bust...thankfully all of that was returnable, but still she was disappointed. So was I. I Santa worked so freakin' hard on that thing. However, she understood, because she is the best like that and decided it would be ok if Santa brought her a new gift. {2 weeks later...a Bitty Baby Monitor from the AG store for her dolls}
So here it is the only moment of her on her bar. We are going to make a sprinkler out of it this summer, see lemonade.

Opening stockings.

GUM!! HA!

Now for the best moment.
OUR gift FROM Lo. Look she even wrapped it. Bless her. Just bloody bless her heart.

This is what was inside...handmade drawings and notes. I mean I still tear up seeing this. She is just the most thoughtful girl. She just makes your heart explode and you realize the best gifts are never the expensive things, but the gifts from the heart.

This year since they were older we had them each do something for each other. Again, she made MW this car ramp. She came up with the idea, and I supervised some of it, but she painted it and peeled the tape off for the road lines and then picked him out a special car to go with it...here she is showing him how it works. They are just wooden planks that he can take anywhere to make a road or ramps for his cars.

Heart. Puddle.

Oh my gosh, she so wanted a robe. This may have thrilled her more than anything.

Tangrams!!! Just shows her personality. She loves to create.

Christmas morning was so laid back and low key. The kids played and played and Chad and I just sat back and watched and talked. So very nice. We didn't have to be anywhere super early so we enjoyed the morning. 

Lo playing with her bar with her doll, since that was the only safe way to use the bar. HA! She was the perfect coach.

For lunch we headed to my MIL for Christmas "dinner."
Kids saying hello to her baby Jesus.

Then more gifts!! AH! They are two clowns.

Their faces is what is priceless. He got a TMNT plate and he thinks it is the.best.

Transformer!

Dress up stuff. She modeled everything.

Hey it's 2p...why not put on your jammies. It's Christmas. Matching dollie and me jammies. 

MW wore this super hero costume for 3 days, until he spilled OJ on it and I made him take it off. Such a goof ball. He loves pretending.

Mommy got a Christmas day nap while grandma Rachel and daddy played with the kids!! See I am a cheap person to buy for. Just give me things like a nap, or a bed to myself and I am a happy happy girl!

We left around 430p and the kids assured me they weren't tired through their long blinks...uh huh, not tired. Four days of no naps and sugar and grandparent overload does that to a kid. Needless to say they went to bed by 615p that night and slept 'til morning. Even my Buddy the Elf aka MW was down for the count.

And to all a good night!

Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas {2014 Part III}

I came close to getting caught up through Christmas by the New Year. I spent the last 2 days busting out these 10 scrapbook pages to wrap our our Family Christmas trip to KC. I figured that would be easier than loading 100 photos. HA!

This year my side decided we would fore-go the gifts, aside from Thing1 and Thing2 and go on a trip. We have been trying to do this for YEARS. Finally, I took the bull by the horns and started getting the ball rolling early November. I researched, planned and booked/reserved several locations. No flying by the seat of our pants here. :)

Enjoy the pages. I know I do.

Below is a few photos from the Hallmark museum we toured while we waited to get into Kaleidoscope factory. The adults enjoyed this part, but the kids were a tad bored. 

Kaleidoscope is a free area at Crown Center that allows kids to go in for 45 minutes and make crafts/card/ etc with leftover Hallmark card supplies. My little art-tist loved it. MW just loved to run around. That kid is like a border collie. If he doesn't have cattle to herd, he has way too much pent up energy to burn off. HA!

It was a whirlwind 2 day trip. So I packed it in. I made reservation at Legoland at 1p. We easily spent 2.5 hours there taking in all the fun. There were a couple rides and a play place that kept MW and Lo, and maybe mommy and Auntie Meg entertained for quite sometime. 

The kids even got to experience their first 3D/4D movie. They were so funny reaching out and trying to grab the objects that flew toward them. We even got a bit wet in the end, thus making it 4D. 

Us girls had fun at the lego table, with our sorely lacking imagination.

After we finished at LegoLand and had a snack...when you travel with my dad snacks are a must at least every hour. ;) We headed for our hotel. This was the most fun to the kids. HA! We had adjoining rooms, which added to the fun for the kids running between rooms. Of course the kids couldn't be left gift-less...All MW wanted was that How to Train Your Dragon bath toy. His face says it all. Lo was thrilled with AG doll clothes.

We then quickly headed back out to grab dinner and make our 7p reservations with KC carriages. A Carriage ride through the Plaza. Unfortunately, due to early bad weather conditions the cancelled and neglected to make contact with me. Let me say we all were disappointed, especially the kids. I was mostly frustrated because of their refund policy...there isn't one. They like to put the risk on the costumer and if THEY decide not to run you get a gift card {like who is going to use that when they don't live there??!} or re-schedule...which didn't seem like a possibility. Once I finally got in contact with her, instead of fighting about it we decided to extend the trip a bit and re-schedule to the first ride the next night. I am so glad we did, just to do it, but I would NOT recommend them to anyone, mostly because I don't like people who do poor business.

Moving on...we decided to just walk the plaza that first night. Daddy found a Moosejaw store and if you know my husband, you know how much he loves Moosejaw. Not because he is a mountaineer, but because he thrives on the different. 

I was blessed with the gift a of bed to myself. MW slept with grammy and Lo slept with daddy. Bliss.

Day2.

Once we got around we headed to SeaLife aquarium. I wish I would have pre-purchased tickets, just out of savings reasons. But it was amazing. Definitely recommend it.

All mommy wanted to do was see IKEA. It just seems like there is so much hype you have to go in.  I started to feel a little claustrophobic, like I would never get out. I did think it was neat and would have like to actually shop, but when you have 2 kids, 2 dads and a time crunch shopping is a bit out of the question. We also swung by the AG doll store, mostly again to just see it. Lo really loved looking at all the great expensive things there...I mean really it's a doll and you get all that stuff at Target for a 1/3 of the price.

Finally we had an early dinner at Cheesecake Factory on the Plaza and zoomed off to make our 5p reservation for the carriage ride. It was nice to end the trip on the carriage. We then loaded up and drove home. It was a great trip. So much fun and the best present. Sure a sweater is nice, but memories are so much better.

Merry Christmas Family!!

Part 4 will conclude Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas.