Christmas Eve!

After we got home from Mimi and Baba's, we prepped for Santa's arrival.

But first I'll hit the rewind button to Sunday night.  Brian was starting to feel crummy, so I let him nap for a bit before we went to the Holiday Lights at the Beach.  I thought it would be fun to make Reindeer Food with the kids.

Yeah. Hudson kept "missing" the baggie as he tried to dump oatmeal in,  Finley didn't bother aiming for her baggie.  Instead she dumped her oatmeal in Reese's hair.  Since there was already oatmeal in her hair, Reese decided to throw some sugar in for good measure (so the reindeer could find her obviously).  It was chaos.  But still so fun!

On Christmas Eve, we dumped the reindeer food out for them to find.  Hudson missed out on the fun because he was sleeping.

We set out the cookies and milk for Santa and the carrots for the reindeer, but Finley took off with the carrots!  She can't be trusted!

Once the kids were asleep, Brian got to work getting the presents from us out for the kids.  How adorable are their matching Duffy's?  They really got hooked on Duffy while we were at Disney World.  Wyatt, who is especially into Hidden Mickeys, loves that Duffy's face is one!

While Brian worked on the present mission, I got to work frantically cleaning (because a house should be clean if it's going to be trashed the next day right?), and then got the streamers up on their doors!

While it doesn't keep them in their rooms until we get them, it does at least make it a little harder for them to escape in the middle of the night!

My 12 foot tree.  It is a beast to get up (and I told Brian I wasn't going to do it this year since we would be in Disney World for so long), but goodness gracious it makes me happy!  Brian already had my presents under the tree.  The bottle of wine shows how well he knows me.  Ha!

Santa came!

I love the way my house looks and feels all lit up by twinkle lights!  It always makes me sad to take it down mid January. Ha!

Christmas Eve at Mimi and Baba's

We spent Christmas Eve at Brian's parents house this year.  The cousins were ready to have their gift exchange before Santa came to town!

Piper and Colin both helped their little cousins open their presents.  Finley is obsessed with that baby doll and Hudson hasn't stopped playing cars all weekend!

 Piper and Reese exchanged art supplies (for Piper) and Lego Friends (for Reese).  And I just made weird faces in the background.

 Wyatt got his first set of Star Wars Command and has amassed a small army of them.  There are a lot of different sets!

 After everything was open, they quickly got to playing!

 And sharing some ice cream together on the porch!

We all had to leave early though - it was time to get home and prepare for Santa's arrival.  Or in Hudson's case, fall asleep at 5:30 and not wake up until the next morning :)!

Trick or Treat!

Another Halloween has come and gone!

The anticipation of trick or treating resulted in some very early wake up calls last week.  Wyatt was awake at 4AM on Thursday and Friday!  He is crazy!

We had pizza with our neighbors before we headed out to get some candy!

 Star Wars was obviously the popular choice with the older boys.  Between the Clone Wars and the new Rebels show and the new movie coming out next year, I predict that Wyatt will be a Star Wars character forever.

 Mulan and Ariel were clearly excited to go trick or treating.

 Captain America was happy to get a refreshing cup of lemonade at a neighbor's house.

 We are speeding up!  The neighborhood is now complete, and they finished the whole neighborhood in an hour!

Now that Halloween is over, we're busy making our Thanksgiving plans!  We've already started some Christmas shopping, and decorating will start soon (I don't like to be rushed!).  Only 3 weeks until our elf Parker comes back!

Easter Weekend

This weekend was a fun family weekend! On Saturday we went to an Easter Egg "Hunt" at a local nursery. Wyatt wasn't exactly "interested" in finding Easter Eggs, but it was still fun. Here's a few shots of him "hunting."

On Easter Sunday, Wyatt got his Easter basket and then we went to brunch with my family. We went to the Founder's Inn, which was pretty yummy. During the brunch there was a small band playing, and the drummer was my middle school orchestra teacher! Wyatt LOVES music, so he enjoyed the tater tots and chicken nuggets (and cheesecake) while he rocked out to the music. Afterwards we went to Brian's parents house and had lunch and another Easter Egg Hunt. Even though his big cousin Colin kept pointing the eggs out to Wyatt, our boy only wanted to play with the soccer ball (or the dogs). At one point during the day we looked at Wyatt and he was standing between two of the dogs petting them with a huge smile on his face! At other times he would be on the look out for Noelle, and would walk up to her. Needless to say, Brian especially was very proud that Wyatt could recognize our girl and wanted to be around her. By the time we got home though, our little guy was pooped. He didn't get much sleep during the day on Saturday or Sunday, so he went to bed a little early last night.

Today we went to the Doctor for the monthly prenatal appointment and everything is going well. And as a perfect ending to the weekend (for Brian anyway, I've still got today!), we got a definite date for finding out what Baby Number 2 is - April 18th!

Easter Bunny

OK, so we aren't 100% sure that the "Easter Bunny" is something that we feel comfortable allowing Wyatt to believe in. There are about a million reasons for this, but most of Brian's involve the fact that a Bunny and a chicken have very little to do with each other, let alone Easter. But that's probably something he will blog about on The 1013 separately from this blog.

Anyway, as you can see we took Wyatt to get his picture taken with the Easter Bunny. Noelle was going to go as well, but she hadn't pooped by the time we had to leave, and it wasn't really that fun to clean up her poop at MacArthur last year. But that's another story....