Let's start with the feast of St. Nicholas...December 6th. The boys left their shoes outside their bedroom door on the 5th, and the next morning they found all sorts of surprises.
Chocolate coins! (Can we just mention how the third child is so spoiled? Daniel never got chocolate candy at just over a year old...and especially not first thing in the morning!)
Opening presents.
The big hit were these painted wooden saints dolls. A group of 12 of us mommies each chose two saints to paint (12 of each) and then got together to trade so everyone received 24 different saints to take home for the kiddos to play with. The boys love them, and have only used them as bowling pins once or twice. :)
One of our St. Nicholas day gifts from Nana and Papa was this fun gingerbread decorating kit. Everyone had a great time decorating (and eating) the cookies.
Matthew can't wait for the frosting and candy...he needs a bite now!
Hard at work decorating.
Taking a frosting break...
Finished!
Yummy!
Every year, we look forward to the annual Christmas party at the home of our friends, the Goff family. Five years ago we started taking pictures of the kids at the party. This is what that first year looked like:
Three two/three month old babies (Nick, Cora, and Daniel).
Here's this years group:
Quite a few more...
[Maybe one year somebody will take a picture of all of the parents trying to get their kids to look at the cameras. It's quite amusing]
School Christmas pageant time....
...doesn't Daniel look spiffy?
"Cheese!"
And we've finally arrived at the big day. The boys were super excited to see what Christmas morning would bring. Nobody was disappointed:
Our breakfast birthday "cake" to honor baby Jesus' birthday. After a failed attempt at Santa Lucia bread for her feast day December 13, we tried again on Christmas morning since the bread looks like a birthday cake. This time it actually turned out! A Christmas miracle?!
Opening presents. What can it be?
This was the year of the fire truck. Some very generous family members had saved these amazing fire trucks from when their kids were younger and passed them along to us over the summer. Knowing a good thing when we saw them, we saved them for a more appropriate occasion. Fast forward to this fall/winter and it just so happens that the boys are incredibly into playing fire and rescue games (Fireman Sam, anyone?). When it came time to think about gifts for Christmas, there was no question about what to do. They were perfect gifts, and it was especially nice for us to save a bit of money at the same time.
The rest of the gifts were forgotten as Daniel and Matthew went straight into rescue mode.
In the days/weeks following Christmas we added a burning building to the rescue play, complete with a starbucks on the bottom floor and a helipad on top for the rescue helicopter to land on.
Daniel shows Aaron how to be a good firefighter.
I'm not quite sure how realistic this is...
Matthew's favorite is the ambulance.
The complete set up. (Daniel has become very particular about things being "set up." While this is nice, he gets pretty upset if people then play with the set up...)
Hooray for brothers playing nicely together!
But, wait, there's more!
We added a fire station to house all those emergency vehicles! (This is about as close as we'll get to a doll house here without any girls...)
Daniel has added a few additional "rescue" vehicles... We're now complete with "space rescue," "farm rescue," and "air rescue" teams.
We hope you all had a wonderful Christmas!
