Whew! It's been a CRAZY RIDE!
The holiday season just blew by us this year - but not without much activity and sharing joy with our kids and family and friends.
Early in December our town hosted a "Pictures with Santa" event. This was the first year that "SANTA" had meaning for both boys...so, we took the boys and watched Santa arrive via Fire engine. Then we waited in line for our turn to talk to Santa and have our picture taken. When it came to our turn Ronnie didn't even hesitate this year - and because Evan does EVERYTHING Ronnie does - he paused only a couple of seconds before joining his brother. This was the first time we actually heard that Ronnie had a definite 'Wish List' and there was only 1 item on it - a tunnel...from that point we had a mission - to find out what he meant by tunnel.
The answer came during the next week - after grammy paged through the TRU catalog with him - it was a TRAIN TUNNEL!
Over the course of the next couple of weeks we had several cookie baking sessions - some which included small boys, and some which did not. Ronnie is a MOST ENTHUSIASTIC participant in kitchen activities, and was VERY proud of his cookie efforts! As this was Mommy's first year in a LONG time to actually bake, it was time very well spent! And MUCH appreciated by Daddy!
We celebrated the Winter Solstice as a family, by noting how far to the south the sun rose (it was to the right of our LARGE pine tree) - and trying to remember where it rose in the summer(much farther to the left over our greenhouse we think). As observed from our kitchen's bay window, this is a VERY wide arc of rising points. In the evening we celebrated by extinguishing all of the lights in the house to symbolize the dark time - then we began to bring back the light by lighting a small candle for each one of us -we then went through the house turning on all of the lights to help us remember that the darkness won't last forever and that the sun's course has changed to bring back the light again.
We bought our tree - in our family's tradition - close to the last moment - Dec 23 - and brought it inside. We decorated it on Christmas Eve when we had another small housefull of guests - Grammy, Grampy and Auntie Jill. The boys were exstatic - and VERY excited! Ronnie set out the cookies for Santa - and both wanted Grammy to put them to bed, but the excitement was so high that it took Mommy and Daddy to do the job that night! Then we had to stay up getting the train table setup and the presents under the tree!
Christmas day was AMAZING this year! The boys loved opening their gifts - were SO happy with everything they got - which was A LOT! And SO happy to play with it all. Nap-time was non-existant - there was FAR too much excitement for that!
We had our dinner at my brother's new house this year. It was delicious and the kids had a blast....all 4 of them running like crazy people around the downstairs hallways!
The boys' daycare closes for the 'week between', so I was home with the boys all week. We got in some play time with friends we don't see very often which was very nice. It was my intent to have Evan pottie trained during this week, but he had other ideas....
And then all too soon, it was New Year's Eve. Again, this year, we played dominoes with a couple of friends - a quiet and relaxing ringing in of the new year.
Hope every one had a wonderful holiday - however you celebrated - filled with family fun and magical moments!
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