New Year's Eve

We went over to Amy's house for New Year's Eve this year. Everyone brought snacks to share. I swear we had so much food it was ridiculous. You couldn't even tell we touched it. Oh well, it was all yummy! Everything was very low key. We just hung out and enjoyed each others company. Our little get together was only 2 hours long (7-9pm). Yes you read that correctly, we didn't even stay til midnight. Blame it on the kids. We all have them, so we wanted to get them into bed at a decent hour. Before we left, we all set off wish lanterns. Have any of you seen Tangled? Yes, I'm so cheesy that I stole the idea from a Disney movie :) I had great visions of everyone letting theirs go at the same time and getting really cool pictures of it, but in reality, my camera was not cooperating and everyone was doing their own thing. Andrew's flew right into a tree, but somehow managed to escape unharmed without lighting anything on fire. We were all worried for a minute there. Mike's got a hole in it somehow. And ours wouldn't launch for the longest time. Eventually we got it up there. They still looked really pretty and were fun to try out.

 

 

Smores

This was supposed to be one of our 25 Days of Christmas activities, but I got lazy. So even though it was 68 degrees today, we made smores. Elliot loved it.

Another Christmas Celebration

We had our final Christmas celebration with Lane's dad & Brenda on Tuesday. We all got some wonderful things and enjoyed spending the day with them.

 E's new laptop.

She was ecstatic to see a that she got an electric train set! That was the first thing we had to put together when we got home. I didn't take very many pictures, but there were tons of gifts. In fact, due to the overload of gifts from all the grandparents, I probably could get away with not getting the kids anything next year :) When we got home, I had to reorganize both Elliot's & Davis' rooms to fit all the new things. We are so incredibly lucky to have such wonderful family.

Christmas Day

Despite Lane having to work today from 11am-11pm, we still had a wonderful Christmas. Elliot woke up at 7am (we had to wake Davis up) and things got started. First, she checked to see if Santa ate his cookies.

 Yep, he sure did!

 

And he even left her something special too...a tricycle! She was very excited. Santa was feeling generous this year and also left her some dress up clothes.

Here's one of the gifts from mom & dad. Now she actually has food, pots, pans, etc to use in her kitchen.

 Davis wasn't totally left out. He got some brightly colored books to read.

After we had our little family Christmas, Lane headed off to work & I loaded up the kids & went to Grammy & Papi's house. My mom always makes the best breakfast. We had sausage egg burritos, cinnamon rolls, quiche & wassail. Oh I think I drank 5 cups of wassail!

 

After breakfast, we opened more presents.

 Elliot was super excited about getting some big girl panties. We start potty training in January!

 These 2 are kindred spirits. They get along so well.

 

Later that night, all my aunts & uncles & their families came over for some bbq. We were missing a few families, but here is most of us.

 And here's our family.

Merry Christmas

Christmas Eve

We had Lane's mom & Rich over for lunch today. I made Tuscan Garlic Chicken, caesar salad, focaccia bread and chocolate mousse. It was so good! I wish I would have taken a picture of it. We were all stuffed.

 The grandparents brought some good gifts.

 She loved this bowling set.

 

And this wooden food set is so cool. It's made up of pieces that velcro together, so that you can cut them up.

 My little bear.

 Tonight we made gingerbread cookies for Santa. E kept eating the dough once I had cut it out.

 Leaving cookies & milk for Santa.

 Stealing a sip of Santa's milk!

 Ok, we had to refill his milk.

 And when I wasn't looking the little stinker started to eat his cookies!

She also put out the reindeer food.

Ready to go to sleep!

Date Night: New Year's Eve

It's hard to believe it's been over a month since Lane & I have had a date. I said on my last date post that we were going to make it a regular thing. Well time has flown by, but I have big ambitions for the upcoming year. Last weekend my sister had a Polar Express sleepover that Elliot attended, so we used that as the perfect excuse to go out. Now we just had to find a place for Davis...grandparents (Lane's) of course! I wish I would have taken a picture (again, like I said I would). I actually dressed up. But instead we were rushing and at the same time wondering how the heck we left our house at 5:30 and barely made it to our 7:20 movie in time. Seriously. I guess with dropping E off and then D off, plus traffic across town, it just takes time. Oh ya, about 5 miles into our drive, I asked, "did we remember to turn the George Foreman off?" Lane hates it when I do this. So we had to turn around and go back home to check. Of course it was unplugged, but you just can't take that chance, right? Anyway, we went to see New Year's Eve. It's one of those movies I didn't have high hopes for, but wanted to see anyway. Well I really liked it. Maybe it was the low expectations. But I thought it was very entertaining & it even got a few tears out of me at the end. All in all, we had a great time together, and the cheese fries at Studio Movie Grill were awesome too!

25 Days of Christmas- Day 22

Sugar cookies with Grammy. My mom came over today and Elliot got to be her apprentice. Now I have a ton of cookies that I don't know what to do with :) I've already eaten like 10 & I'm not even a fan of sugar cookies.

 2 cooks

 Rolling out the dough

 Testing the dough

 I love both of their faces.

Inspecting her work

25 Days of Christmas- Day 17 & 19

I've been really bad at keeping up with these. The other day, Elliot had a craft day with grandma! I was seriously expecting just a simple craft. It wouldn't have made a difference to Elliot. But Brenda had much more planned. They made a Christmas tree ornament to hang on her door, a Christmas tree to put in her room, a hand print (for my Christmas gift), and had snacks. E was in heaven.

 Isn't that an adorable hat? It's fleece & has a tassel on the end, and there's buttons sewn all over it. Brenda made it for her because E loves hats. Of course that day she barely wanted anything to do with it, but has since warmed up to it.

Smiley Face

Is this not the sweetest baby you've ever seen?!

I just want to eat him up!