Christmas

Well, we finally made it to Christmas. Did that seem to take forever to anyone else?

We spent Christmas Eve with the Grover family like we do each year. It was so nice to see everyone.

I always try and buy us all new sweaters for the occasion. Here is Will in his.

Aunt Elaine always buys all of the kids new Christmas PJ's. Here is Will and Sophie modeling theirs.

We stayed at Grandma Rhonda's and Grandpa Bob's that night.

When we got up in the morning Erin had set up one of Will's presents. It was a building set where you can put together all kinds of crazy paths for marbles to drop through. Will literally squealed when he saw it. He kept coming back to it throughout the day.

Once we pried him away from the marble toy we started opening packages. Here he is opening his gift from Great Grandma Donna and Great Grandpa Bill.

Grandma and Grandpa sent him a firetruck toy and a police car toy. He liked the firetruck so much that we had to open it right away and let him play with it. Mom even went into his room and got his fireman's helmet.

Grandma Rhonda and Grandpa Bob gave Will lots of great stuff. Here are some highlights.

Grandma showed Will how to use his new toy laptop.

Will had fun learning how to make his new Sit-n-Spin work.

Grandma gave Will a shopping cart and some plastic food.

The biggest thing was a Little Tikes car.

Here's Will and Daddy playing with some of Will's stocking stuffers.


Aunt Sue sent Will a new outfit for his monkey. He looks pretty cute.

Erin, of course, bought Will something inflatable, this time with water involved. It's a small Pirates Cove inflatable play pool. There are little inflatable pirates and plastic ships to sail around in it.

I think that Erin does really well picking toys for Will because she gets him stuff that she would have loved to play with when she was a kid. In fact, most of the stuff that she gets is stuff that she would like to play with as a grown-up, too!

Once all of the presents were open we cleaned up and the Grover family came over for dinner. We all played with Rhonda and Bob's new Wii game system.

Eventually everyone went home we played with Will's toys some more. We brought out his tent (which actually was given to him months ago but is still one of his favorites) and played with it. He likes to go into it and zip the door closed behind him.

We then packed everything up and drove home. It was a long but fun day.

This morning after breakfast we put together Will's present from Paul and I. We got him a little kids kitchen play set.

As usual, the box is always a way better toy.

Once we had everything put together we played with it until lunchtime.

We had a great holiday and we hope that everyone else had a merry Christmas as well.

First Haircut

Will got his first haircut today. I didn't really want to, because the little curls on the back of his head were adorable, but Paul said that it was starting to look like a mullet.

So, we went down to Supercuts. Will did really well. He didn't cry or fuss at all.

The only part that he didn't like was when she sprayed his hair with the water. He would cringe and put his face into Paul's chest.

Christmas Trees

Okay, I want to know who ordered the snow so that I can smack them. Our house is buried!

The only good things about it were that it forced us to stay inside all day Saturday so Paul was forced to help me put up our Christmas tree, and it gave us an excuse to put Will into his snow suit.

Here's the snowsuit.

And here's the tree. Paul did a great job at putting all of the ornaments one while I tried to keep Will from running off with everything.

It finally stopped snowing late Saturday afternoon so we decided to brave the elements and go to the Festival of Trees with Grandma Rhonda and Grandpa Bob.

Here are some of the highlights...

Will liked all of the pretty things to look at, but he got tired of being in the stroller for so long. So, Grandpa and Paul took turns carrying him

There were a ton of trees this year. I tried to narrow it down to some of the fan favorites.

This one was an ice cream tree.

This one was not the biggest or grandest tree, but in my opinion it was the coolest. There were about 5 little trees all covered in Star Wars toys, still in the packages. Then in the middle there were toys set up to look like a battle scene.

According to the volunteer that was working at this tree it was still for sale. You could buy everything that was on display for $3,000, or you could also purchase the 9 tubs of Star Wars memorabilia that was supporting it, making the total $13,000! I tried to convince Paul that we could afford it and that it was for a good cause. No dice.

This one was a knights tree.

This one was covered in cars. (The boys all approved of this one.)

This one was put together by one of the insurance companies that mom and I work with, WISE Provider Networks. It was all done in Chinese lanterns and umbrellas.

This one was called "Christmas Vacation". Notice the lit-up cat on the fence.

This one was done by a local middle school. If you notice the tree is a shark, with the head at the bottom and the tail coming out of the top.

This is the diver that the shark was after.

This one was entirely made of metal.

This one didn't look very impressive until you looked down. The theme was "Lord of the Rings" and it had a ton of the figurines at the base.

This one was built by a friend of Paul's.

PS... RED SOCKS RULE!!!

This one was made of a stack of rocks. Kinda cool...

This one was "I Love Lucy". I just loved the colors.

They also had some awesome ginger bread houses this year.

This one is Jack's house from "The Nightmare Before Christmas".

This one is the house from "Up". If you haven't seen this movie I highly recommend it.

This was the most awesome of them all. I tried to get some of the people in the background so that you could get the size of this castle. It had to be at least 4 feet tall.

Once we had seen everything we went to the kids craft area and got Will an elf wand. He loved it.