And so this is Christmas...

...only a little over a month late. We are busy, busy, busy here, but I don't like leaving important things out. So, here we are, the last day of January, with our post about Christmas. Well, Advent, too.


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!

Hiatus

 We've been out of touch for awhile. But, if you check in regularly here you already know that. Things got pretty busy around the holidays, and then we wanted to post about our Christmas but we didn't really get around to taking the pictures we wanted to take. I considered getting the boys all dressed up in their Christmas outfits again and taking their pictures by our nearly-dead tree, but it's rare to have the well-behaved enough to get good pictures when I'm here during the day, and by the time Daddy gets home the only clothes we want to be putting on the boys are pajamas. So, maybe we'll get to some Christmas-y pictures one day, but for now here's just a few shots of the boys.

We haven't had any accumulation of snow here yet, but we have had a couple of days where it snowed for a few hours. The boys all love watching the snow fall from the front window.

 Of course, being on the couch together for more than 30 seconds usually turns into some sort of wrestling match.

 Matthew looks way to happy for having his big brother sitting on him...

 Aaron gets in on the action. He loves to jump on his brothers.

 Daniel takes a costume break. I'm not sure who he's supposed to be.

 Matthew and Saggy claim victory on the couch.

Our sweet Aaron recuperates for next time. :)

Story Time

Here's one of those super-sweet moments we love so much.... After bath time tonight, Daniel found a favorite book and took it to the couch to read to Matthew. He didn't get very far in the story before Aaron climbed up to join them. Love love love that Daniel can a) read simple stories, and b) likes to read to his brothers. :)

Front Door Scripture Study

The boys were arguing the other day about who got to walk in the house from outside first.  It usually goes something like this:

"Daniel, I go first into house."

"No Matthew, I'm going to go first.  You go last."

"NO! I go first, YOU go last!"

"No, I'm going first!"

(insert crying)

You can see a pattern forming...

Since this argument occurs most days, and sensing a teachable moment, I decided to bring in some scripture to settle this once and for all.  So, feeling very wise and fatherly, I said:

Chris: "And Jesus said, 'the first shall be last, and the last shall be first!" (Matthew 20:16)

Daniel didn't skip a beat, and as I opened the door he scoffed, "Uh Dad, how does that make any sense at all?"

And he pushed his brother aside and walked in first.

We'll try again tomorrow.

Le Premier Sera le Dernier

James Tissot, French, 1836-1902

Saturday Morning, Part 2

I posted a video a few Saturdays ago of the boys jumping on the couch. Going through some photos I found another video from that morning and thought I'd post it. My favorite parts? Matthew's pants issues and Aaron's acrobatics. I'm also pretty impressed with Daniel's jump roping skills using a short fire hose.

The good old days

Daniel came home from school today with a bit of a history lesson to share.

D: I learned about cell phones from when you were a little girl today.

Me: Oh really? And what were those like?

D: They were pretty terrible. They had to be hooked up to a telephone pole with a wire.

After laughing for a minute, I asked Daniel who told him about these "cell phones." His response?

"Ms. Blair's mom. She knows a lot about everything. I think she must be 35."

I don't know if I should be excited or disappointed that I'm only 5 years away from the age of such complete wisdom.

Look at my face

Matthew is really enjoying his terrific twos. We're really needing to work hard with his listening and following directions. Part of that is using the phrases "Where is my nose?" or "Do you see my eyes?" in order to get him to look at us and focus on what we're asking him to do. Matthew's a quick learner, for better or worse. For the past week now, when trying to get our attention he yells "Look at my face!"

With such a cute face, how can we not?

Matthew's motorcycle

Matthew likes motorcycles. So much that he's turned a bus into one. He even has a helmet. Safety first!

Prepared for anything

Daniel has recently been interested in different "ranger" type play. He's always discovering something, rescuing something, hunting something, or doing some general exploring. This is his usual get-up for this kind of play. He likes to be prepared.

Happy Birthday, Baby!

Aaron's birthday was Friday--what a year it has been! Aaron is currently sporting the "ultimate fighting champion" look...he falls at least 20 times a day and his face is pretty banged up. He climbs on EVERYTHING, and is so fast that we can barely keep up with him. He is really working hard on his babbling, and can say "mama," "dada," and a few phrases that sound like "all done," "bye-bye," and "nigh-night."  He has seven teeth, four on top and three on the bottom. He enjoys feeding himself, but is still learning to not throw food over the side of his tray. He adores his big brothers (the feeling is mutual) and we can't wait to see him start to play more with them as he gets bigger!

Aaron celebrated his birthday all week with a visit from Grandma before his birthday, cupcakes on his birthday, and a small family party today:

 Aaron's first birthday present. Matthew supervises.

 Thanks for all the clothes, Grandma!

 Bath time! Everybody loves a clean birthday boy!

 Today I am one year old!

 Aaron loves to clap, and will show off his clapping skills anytime he hears somebody say "Yay!" or "Good job!"

 Birthday bruise on his left cheek. He danced himself right off a chair. :(

 Oooh...cupcake!

 For a minute it looked like he might actually blow out the candle.

 Birthday party day!

 Awesome new football!

 Cake time! Thanks, godparents!

 Our baby is growing up!