Family Christmas

We were sure busy this christmas . . . after opening presents christmas morning, we headed to Wisconsin to celebrate with Grandma and Grandpa with the tractors, and family, and then at 3pm, headed to St Cloud to Grandma and Grandpa with the choo choos and Troy's brother from PA for the first time in 17 years! We couldn't have asked for better timing - the roads were basically cleared just in time for our travels. God was certainly answering prayers. We are so very blessed, the boys got so many gifts, I think we could supply 5 other households!

Christmas Eve and Morning

What a wonderful christmas - I just have the most wonderful life! We spent christmas eve with our family - went to church (and enjoyed a live nativity, animals and all), then we picked up chinese for mommy and daddy (3rd year tradition), made the boys dinosaur nuggets (their favorite food), then enjoyed playing outside in the piles of snow, making a snowman and throwing lots of snow at daddy!!! At last we came in an opened gifts - the boys were so much fun - brennan actually got most excited when he opened up a shoe box, and immediately said "new shoos", and still got excited when it was a jersey, and responded with "vikings"!!! Kobe was elated with every gift, and when we tucked him in, he talked about how excited he was for stockings from santa because "you get all the stuff I like, treats and chapstick"!! Christmas morning they were elated over their gifts from "santa", and my sister shari joined us for another tradition of carmel rolls (yes, I LOVE traditions, almost obsessively)!!!

MOA

We've spent a lot of time at the mall of america lately - a great place to run around in the winter time, coat free!!! Every week they have toddler tuesdays, so there is always some kind of free event, which is really nice. We've gone a lot with our wonderful friend jenni, and her two girls, which are the same age as my boys. This past tuesday it was just the boys and I, and they had the teddy bear band - the boys had great fun dancing and jumping and coloring. They actually even did really well while mommy got in a little christmas shopping in. It probably helped that a lady was handing out free chocolate suckers - let's just say a face and hands covered in brown chocolate is frowned on at Macy's, but hey, it kept them entertained!!!

Preschool christmas concert

Kobe's second preschool christmas concert was today! It was so cute - all the kids participated much more in their second year, and it was 12 minutes instead of 10!!! All the hand motions made the songs so much more adorable! And of course we got a picture of Kobe and his "fiance" Samantha as he announced they were going to marry when they get older, and Samantha told us today that she kissed Kobe. I'm not sure what her mom is teaching her??? J/K julie. :)

annual tree cutting

Christmas 2009 - what a blast we're going to have this year. We kicked it off by cutting down our 13 foot christmas tree! Pretty slim choices this year - but at least you can see all the ornaments - front and back standing in one spot! Every tree needs a home, right? As you can see in the pics - the ladder was a popular item. After Kobe got done hanging his ornaments (all in one spot as high as he could reach with the ladder), mommy had to spread them out a little. Brennan loves to walk by the tree and just give an ornament a little nudge to make it go swinging. That would be a two year old for ya. Merry christmas everyone.

PRE preschool???

Yep, that's brennan - not sure about going to school without mom. Three weeks ago already he started a program called Bright Beginnings at our church. It's for 2-3 year olds the year before preschool. He was a little shy the first day, but never cried, and yesterday, he took off, running into the room without even a goodbye to mommy. My baby is growing up - what am I going to do when neither of them need me??? Next monday is his special day - stay tuned.

first time bowling

Okay - here I go again, trying to catch up the blog - sorry in advance. The weekend after thanksgiving Kobe and brennan got to attempt bowling - it was really cute, and brennan lasted almost the whole game. Luckily I actually got a few more points than my 5 year old. whew - that won't last long I'm sure! We followed bowling by going to the hollidazzle parade downtown minneapolis - normally we're buying hot cocoa to stay warm in the frigid weather - this year at 40 degrees, the boys ate supper outside waiting on the curb for the parade. It felt different, but we'd take that any year!