Christmas Eve Eve

It's our family tradition to get together on the Eve of Christmas Eve with Nana, Pops, Eric, Jen, and Ashley to open our gifts to each other. The kids have so much fun opening presents and playing.

Three grandchildren.

Passing out everybody's presents.

Sam tends to sit on his presents.

Alex loved his Iron Man action figure and of course an Iron Man shirt!

Santa and Trains

I'm still getting caught up on posts! Early in December we went to see the trains exhibit and Santa! We heard Santa's storytime and got to see him! Even Sam loved Santa! It was a really fun day!

Happy Birthday Sam!!!

It's hard to believe that Sam is now 2 years old! We had a wonderful family party for him and we all had lots of fun! Of course we had to have a Disney Cars theme...Sam LOVES Cars! He really enjoyed his special day!

Love the Cars balloons!

Cars cake just for Sam!

Birthday boy!

Presents!

This toy is a big hit with the kids.
Family picture before singing to Sam.

Sam loves to blow out candles so he was really excited to blow out his 2 candles on the cake.

Nana and Pops.

How much fun is this huge Cars balloon??

Tis the Season

There were so many fun things we did this Christmas season! And lots of cute pictures. The boys were at an age to really enjoy it all...which makes it even more fun for us!

A Night in Bethlehem
One of the local churches put on a really neat night in Bethlehem. The children were given shekels to use in a very neat market place where they could make different items typical of Bethlehem back in the time of Jesus. Afterwards, the children go to hear a story from the inn keeper's wife and see a live nativity. Nana and I took Alex and we had such a wonderful time. It was the most meaningful Christmas activity I've done in a long time!

Christmas Lights!
We looked at LOTS of Christmas lights this year because the boys LOVED it! One night we went out with cousins to see the lights in Deerfield. We parked and walked through all the displays, which a lot of people did. It was such fun!

Family picture

Alex loved it all!

Sam and Matthew

Whoa. Move over Clark Griswold!

Fun at the Malls
We loved going to the malls to see different decorations. They had lots to see!

Polar Express theme!

Catching snowflakes in the giant snowglobe.

Santa's Village

Earlier this month we went to Santa's Village with Nana, Pops, Eric, Jen, and Ashley. It was so much fun to see all the beautiful decorations and for the kids to visit the themed dwellings. It's one of my favorite activities each year!

Sam not wanting a family picture.

Sleigh ride.

Christmas fun stuff

Decorating for Christmas has been a very big deal at our house! Alex is so excited to get everything out. His favorite thing is the nativity. We have several, and he likes to arrange them. It's very important to Alex that all the figurines can see Jesus so he always puts them in a tight little circle around the manger. It's so sweet.

Our Christmas countdown stocking. Alex is excited every morning to move the star over to the next day and count how many days until Christmas.

One of our nativities- with the figurines positioned so they can all see Jesus.

Our playgroup had a fun gingerbread decorating party. Alex loved it! We found a gingerbread train and he had lots of fun decorating and sticking candy on it.

The boys love to get in their jammies and watch Christmas movies!

The Making of a Christmas Card

Here is our Christmas card for this year, but getting a picture of the boys was no easy task. We had TONS of out- takes- some of them actually kind of cute.

Final product.
We used this picture for our printed gift tags.

They always think something is funny.

We tried various locations. This one did NOT work. They just got all muddy.

Another attempted location. Too much going on for a little boy to sit still.