Simple Pleasures: the spoils of Christmas

Oliver and Lucius's car collection pretty much quadrupled on Christmas. And guess who is absolutely loving all the new four wheeled wonders- two very happy little misters. Here's the cars all assembled/ lined up for some imaginary reason I forget...

And as further documentation on the spoils of Christmas here's all the boys presents after Four Christmas {Eve, morning, Mormor's and Oma's}... we still have Grandpa's Christmas tomorrow.

Thank you all so much for the wonderful gifts. Your generosity is so humbling. Thank you notes have finally been written out and will hopefully make it out with tomorrow's mail.

Chistmas Day: out &about

After Breakfast and a little playtime it was off to Mormor and Morfar's House for Christmas with the cousins. It was a wonderful time to spend with Aunts, Uncles and cousins. We watched the little ones open more gifts. Lucius was not feeling the greatest so he took a nice long nap.

After lunch and a few more presents the boys, Daddy and I headed off to Oma and Opa's house for another Christmas. Auntie Dana played with Oliver for sometime. When the boys' Uncle arrived we opened a few gifts and then had a super yummy dinner. I don't know who had more fun playing with the new cars- the Uncles or the Littler misters.

Chistmas Morning 2011: Santa came!!

Oh what joy and what surprise when you find presents from Santa under a lit up tree early Christmas morning. Oh boy, look what Santa brought ... "can I open them?". I think the boys actually slept in till about 6:30am. Then Marmee and Daddy crawled out of bed to see if indeed Santa had remembered to stop by.

The Presents were opened before too long and the excitement of new toys glimmered in their eyes for most of the morning. I made them a special breakfast of Ebelskivers, a new favorite among the little misters. And then we had a bit of time to play before heading off to Mormor's house for more family and presents.

The Birth Day Celebrating

Friday was Lucius's Birthday.  The Little Misters woke up to find that our "elf on the shelf", whom we call Bumble, had filled up balloons and 'decorated' the play room for Lucius on his special day. They LOVE balloons so it was terribly exciting that Bumble could do that for him. (They really wanted to play with the small pink one that Bumble wasn't able to finish blowing up)

 In honor of Lucius turning Two years old we decided to venture to our favorite little indoor playground. We called around last minute to see if anyone wanted to join us and found a couple of willing cousins to come along to play. The good news is everyone had a blast from what I could tell. The bad news is that Saturday (Christmas Eve) the boys woke up with yucky colds, which in fact turned out to be more ear infections. Bummer.

Yet still we celebrated. After the fun time running around the indoor playground, Mormor took us all out to lunch. The little misters enjoyed the food and a bit of birthday ice cream. Lucius loves hanging out with his Mormor and thanked her very much for the two dollars she gave him in his card.

We hope you had a super fun day and that we find something just as fun to do on Oliver's fast approaching birthday.

Happy Birthday Lucius

Lucius is TWO today!! I can't believe it, wow where did the time go?

A few things you might like to know about our baby:
He takes after his Uncle Scott and climbs on EVERYTHING.

Loves to tackle his older taller brother. Loves to laugh and give big hugs.
He's talking a lot more (finally!), even putting together sentances. A few of his latest words are:

"Whot!" (aka if you ask him a question his mostlikely answer "what?" as if he didn't heard you)
"have a great day" "I love you" ...map, snake, meow (instead of cat), "give it back", snuggle, light, yeah and epple-skee-ber (aelbelskiver- which we've been eating a lot of cause Marmee thinkings they're super fun to make)

This week he got all his baby hair chopped off. I think we picked the 1/4" but really should have used the 1/2" or 3/4" length clipper attachment. Oh well it'll grow back. He sat super still for the whole time, pretty amazing.

Happy Birthday Lucius!!

We love your happy spirit and the smiles & giggles you bring into our daily family life. 

Your joy at the little things is simply amazing.

A Light show in the Park

Auntie Eme, Brianna and Carl came over Monday afternoon to play and hang out with us. Fun times. But as a special after dinner treat we piled all the kids into Auntie Em's Tahoe to take a trip through the park near our home. They've created a really nice display of lights and the eight dollars they charge to drive through all goes to local charities. I think the money was totally worth it for three adults and four kids (even though I do believe Carl slept the whole time).

Lucius seemed the most enthusiastic, Oliver liked it and Brianna kept saying "More lights" in a way that sounded like she might be a little bored with the wonderful light display. It made me smile quite a bit. I love those little ones and their excitement only adds to the wonderment of the season.

The Holidazzle Parade

Well our Festive Christmas adventures are off to a bang. This weekend we ventured out to see the Holidazzle Parade. A parade in the dark with lot of lights. I'd never been before and had no idea what to expect but I assumed it would be a night of magic and wonder for the boys.

Auntie Mick, Uncle Hung and Casen decided to make the trip with us. We'd heard the new Northstar train would be free, so our first attempt to get downtown was to try to ride the train (it sounded like fun). Alas, the train was too full and we were unable to climb aboard. Off we drove in the cars to find a ramp downtown to park in. Which ended up being the best plan.

Then we all wondered in search of food and found a lovely little not so crowded place to eat. After a yummy dinner we headed out to the Parade route to find a nice curb side seat. Good thing we got there when we did cause more people just kept coming. This is our spot upon arrival:

This is a shot of the people crowding in behind us after about half way through the Parade:

We ate a little popcorn while we waited for the floats. It was a lovely parade, even if there were a few gaps between the floats. Overall, I hope the boys had a great time and we can fondly remember the chilly winter evening we went to see a little Christmas magic.

Quotable

We were talking in the car the other day and in response to one of Oliver's many questions I said I didn't know. He stopped me and said:

"No, no, no... You're the mom- you know. I don't"

On another note: Lucius has been saying a lot more words and stringing words together. Although they aren't always the clearest we tend to know what he's saying because he repeats the way we say things. In the mornings he like to say "Bye, have a great day" when Oliver and I leave for work/ school. It's such a cute, lovely way to start my day.

A Christmas song

Oliver and I enjoy singing together. I have a super old hymnal that I got from my Grandmother and a couple of months ago he & I started singing hymns before bed. It's been one of my favorite things. I love that he has his favorites like "silent night" and "amazing grace". We go to church but they don't really sing hymns- just main stream songs. Although they're good songs- I would really prefer traditional hymns.

The other day on the radio Oliver heard a song that became a fast favorite. "Angels we have heard on high" which he calls "the gloria song". We've been singing it a lot...

Thanks for letting us sing for you. Hope you're feeling the Christmas Spirit.

The first year of school sicknesses...

Since Oliver started school in September, no one has really been 100%. We've gotten used to the continuous colds, coughs, ear infections and yuckiness. That doesn't mean we like it. Of course with everyone under the weather off and on we've had several of these snuggly moments. 

Oliver's heard us talk about how we've felt these last few months. So much so that he came over to me this evening and said:

"Marmee, I don't feel the greatest. Can you take my temperature and then give me some medicine or some jelly?"

Okay, I don't think Jelly is going to help with anything- maybe you're just hungry silly goose!

Two Bundled up boys...

Everything Big brother does makes Little brother laugh... most of the time. Other times he needs to be mimicked.

Lucius was so bundled that when he fell down he couldn't get up... eventually he finally figured it out, but it was still pretty tough and most of the time I had to help him up.

I think the little misters could have spent the entire afternoon outside... except I knew it was a lot warmer inside. We compromised staying out about a half an hour. Lucius was NOT happy to be going back indoors.