Happy New Year Babies

Brothers ringing in the New Year together (early)!

Abilene Christmas trip

After Christmas we made a trip out to my parents house. We made it to two Christmas parties and I saw two of my high-school friends (and bridesmaids) and their kids while we were there! I didn't take the camera out near as much as I should have but here are a few of the photos from our trip.

Hailey and Landon

Adam and Landon

Adam and Ethan. Every morning when he woke up, Ethan would walk around the house  saying "Adam, where are you..." in his sweet little singsong voice. We kept having to explain that Adam doesn't live at Grammy's house and that he'd be over later.

Morgan

Astrid

Ethan in his Christmas outfit

Landon in his Christmas outfit

Family photo of everyone who could make it there for the party. Photo taken by a relative.

Morgan took some photos on her iphone and they are below as follows: 

 {playing Minecraft with Adam}

 

{Adam and Hailey and the boys at the 10-0 party} 

 {Driving AT's car at Warren and Donna's house}

 

{Ethan's first wreck}

We had a good trip! About 20 miles from home Ethan almost got carsick but luckily we heard him saying some things that tipped us off and we pulled over and took a break and managed to make it home vomit free! :-)

In the leaves

Watching or being watched?

The second photo makes me smile because its a pretty good representation of their reactions to Ethan. When they heard him creeping up on them Bailey looked ready for flight and Beau just looked annoyed but ready to hold his ground. Pretty much sums them up these days!

Ghost Bear makes it feel better

With the change in temperatures, Ethan's eczema has flared up again pretty bad on his body and slightly on his face. The poor kid has been quite itchy. The other day he was repeatedly wrapping Ghost Bear around different itchy spots on his legs and telling me that Ghost Bear makes the owie "feel better". Lately he's been into kissing owies so I think this was Ghost Bear's equivalent to kissing to make it feel better.

White Christmas!

During the night we had loud thunderstorms, hail, and high winds but that didn't deter Santa!

Ethan slept in until 9:30. The storms didn't bother him either!

 

Santa brought Landon presents too but his favorite gift of all was getting to play in wrapping paper. He loved kicking around and hearing the paper crinkle.

Christmas present aftermath

It was cold, blustery and sleeting but around mid-day it changed into snow! It was fun getting to watch the snow fall from inside our warm house.

Once Ethan saw the snow coming down in large snowflakes he started asking for his hat and jacket. No amount of cold can deter a 3 year old from wanting to go outside!

We had a wonderful Christmas! It was so fun watching Ethan play with his toys and watching the snowfall. It was nice having all day long to enjoy our little family with nowhere we needed to go! Especially with the snow. It was very magical getting to watch it with my hubby from our warm house. 

Landon's first snow.

At the end of the day Garrett found me asleep while I had been reading and cuddling with a fussy Landon. Guess we were both worn out from all the fun!

We had a very Merry Christmas! Hope your Christmas was merry as well!

'Twas the Night Before Christmas...

After reading our Christmas bedtime story and putting out cookies for Santa, Ethan had to have one last look at the tree.

 

Then I guess he decided to immerse himself in the tree, or maybe it was the Christmas experience? It must have looked pretty magical inside the tree because he did it a few more times. :-)

First Christmas

2006 was our first Christmas together as a married couple. I gave Garrett this ornament and each year since we have each given each other a special ornament on Christmas.

The stockings were hung by the chimney with care...

I finished making our stockings on December 23! Whew, I cut it close. :-) While they are 'finished', I still plan on adding a few minor embellishments to them for next year. I plan on adding white pom poms to the triangular points on my stocking, a single line of green ric-rac on the cuff of Landon's stocking, and a 'line' of white buttons in a pattern of various sizes to the cuff of Ethan and Garrett's stockings. I love that we now have four matching stockings! Can't believe that we are a family of four!

Trick or Treat, Smell my Feet

This is not what I set out to photograph. I actually noticed that the leaves on our tree turned a pretty color today and I was trying to take a sun-flare picture of the leaves through the window of Landon's nursery. (I did get what I wanted, but it didn't look as interesting as I thought it would look. However, I digress.) I looked at my camera to review my shots and out of no where I saw Bailey poke his head up from behind the changing table. Funny cat! He's usually  hiding somewhere in our room during the day.

Chinese Lantern Festival

Last weekend the four of us went to the Chinese Lantern Festival. It was so neat! Much neater in person than my photos convey. I took a few (well a lot) of snapshots while I was there but I didn't focus on trying to capture the whole event- I just wanted to enjoy it. So while I do have a lot of photos, I didn't photograph everything- it was massive. So this isn't really a spoiler if you were thinking of going.

The scale of these lanterns was massive. Take note of the people in these photos for reference. 

One of the most elaborate 'lanterns' was a huge dragon made out of about 15,000 china dishes.

 

I made up a storyboard of photos so that this post wouldn't be so long but then my storyboard isn't uploading the way it should. So I'm just going to upload the photos as is. Sorry for the picture overload!

 

 

The lagoon was by far our favorite.

 

 

It was a magical atmosphere with music, lots of people, and neat vendors. Ethan was just as spellbound as we were and Landon slept the entire time.

One of my other favorites was the Peach Orchard. It was massive!

 

It was a really neat experience. If you're interested in going yourself it'll be around for two more weeks. http://www.chineselanternfestival.com