Christmas Eve

On Christmas Eve we went to my Mom and Dad's house. We had a lot of fun we got a big surprise when we arrived. My brother and his girlfriend Emily got engaged!! We are very happy for them! Here are a few pictures of the happy couple and some from our night.

Present Time!

Henry loved his first Christmas, I think he enjoyed the paper more than the actual gifts.

Amy and Cole check out Cole's new Blues Clues book.

This was a nice attempt Bryan made to have a picture of me and the boys.

Cole and Luke got a John Deere tractor from my grandfather and they were very excited!

Bubba's Homecoming!

My brother Brian (a.k.a Bubba) came home from Spokane, WA where he is in the Air Force. The boys have been anxiously awaiting his arrival and were good sports about being put off a day due to weather. Finally last night he arrived around 6 pm. We were all at the airport, sign in hand, to welcome Bubba home. He will be home for about 10 days and we all look forward to visiting with him over that time. Here are quite a few pictures from the visit last night, the boys had so much fun!

Here we all are waiting for him to come around the corner.

Bubba and Cole getting reacquainted. Bubba thinks Cole has changed the most out of all of the boys, I guess I didn't realize that he wasn't even fully walking when he left in May. Now he he running and talking so I guess that is a big transformation.

Bubba and Henry, I think Henry was still warming up at this point but he was all smiles the rest of the night.

Cole and Bubba playing the piano.

The bigger boys had a great time wrestling with Bubba.

The boys also had a great time trying on all of the various parts of Bubba's uniform, here is Luke with the coat and hat.

Jack's turn with the hat.

The big backpack was a big hit, some preferred to try it on.....

.....others preferred to get strapped into the backpack. We tried putting Cole in first but he was pretty unsure of the whole idea but to no one's surprise Luke jumped in very willingly and loved every moment!

I bet Bubba's glad he didn't have to travel with that carry-on.

Here is a quick video of his arrival at the airport. (note: to listen to the video you have to pause the music player on our blog)

Another Visit With Santa (this makes 3!!)

Today was Luke's Christmas party at school, we had a great time singing, decorating cookies and visiting with Santa. There aren't too many pictures since I was by myself with Luke, Cole and Henry, that doesn't leave many free hands for pictures!

Here is Luke singing to Ms. Fern's guitar. I think he is really looking for his mother who unfortunately was 30 mins. late due to being told the wrong time. (sorry Luke)
Cole sat nicely on Miss Amy's lap for the music.

Even Henry joined in with some bells, here he is showing off his bells to the camera.

Santa made a surprise appearance at the party.

This was Henry's first encounter with Santa, I don't think he was too happy with me for making him do this.

Visits With Santa!

We started our day yesterday with a visit to Bryan's work to see Santa. I only have pictures from Cole on my camera, the big boys were taken by the elves there. Cole was a little hesitant at first but I just plopped him up there and he sat and talked with Santa.

Later in the evening while we were at the Rice's Santa came for a visit, complete with gifts and a guitar for a little sing-a-long. The boys were all very surprised and excited to see Santa, they had no idea he was coming!

Cole didn't warm up quite as quickly to this Santa, he hung back with Dad for a while.

Here are the boys checking out their gifts from Santa.

Santa asked them if they would like to sing some songs while he played the guitar and I think every one of them really enjoyed that.

Cole decided to pose for one quick picture at the end of the night with Santa and the boys.

Here are 2 videos of the boys singing, my camera cut out before the second one was complete, they also sang Rudolph but I didn't upload that video.

Finally Done!

Well here is the finished product! We are finally done decorating the tree. I don't think we've ever had it take this long to get a tree up. We are very happy with it and are going to enjoy it for the next month and not even give a thought as to how we will remove it from our house.

The boys had fun looking at all of the decorations and then handing them to Bryan to put up on the tree.

Cole lasted just about long enough to give a big "CHEESE" for this picture.

When we finally had enough of him beating on this poor singing snowman we brought him up to bed.

1200 Lights!!

Well the tree is lit and it took 1200 lights to do so. Tomorrow we decorate stay tuned!! (Sorry the quality of the picture is so poor, with all of the lights and the flash or no flash it was hard to get a good picture).

Part 2: Getting The Tree Into The House

After we arrived home with our tree Bryan got the stand on and the guys dragged the tree up onto the porch. We knew it would be a tight squeeze through the door but we really thought we could do it. After much discussion about how much the tree would scratch and wreck our house we decided it should be wrapped in a tarp to try and shrink it down a bit and to protect our doorways and walls.

Here are Bryan and Aaron pulling it up onto the porch.
The tree laying in front of the front door.

They tried hard to convince me that the tree would look great on the porch!

Plan B: wrapping the tree in the tarp, actually it took two tarps!

Cole and I waited patiently on the porch playing a little peek-a-boo around the wreath.

The tree is finally in the room!!

This picture does not even give a good idea of how much of the room this tree actually takes up! Stay tuned for part 3 as we are putting lights on and decorating the tree tonight and I will try and get some better pictures. We are a little concerned since we have new furniture being delivered tomorrow for that room and we aren't sure it's going to fit with that tree!

Our Tree

This morning we went to get our Christmas tree. Let me start by saying that we tend to go a little overboard every year with the size of our tree. Naturally I thought that since we have a bigger house now we should have a bigger tree, you can't even imagine how big this tree is. This will be at least a 2-3 post subject! Getting the tree; getting the tree in the house; and trying to decorate it. We will be decorating it tomorrow since we do not have enough lights. Here is the first part of our tree adventure. (Luckily Bryan's friend Bob came with his truck to help us get this home otherwise it may not have happened!)

Here is Luke at the start of the morning, ready to go! It was really pretty out since we got snow last night.
Bryan and the boys looking for that perfect tree!

We found it!! It's really deceiving when you're in that field, they are much bigger than they look! Trust me!!!

This is right after Bryan cut the tree down, I think this is when we realized we were in trouble, look at the size of that!

Bob drove his truck back into the field so we didn't have to drag it to the top. We all piled in and Jack and Bryan rode in the back to hold onto the tree. Stay tuned for Our Tree part 2!

The Gingerbread Train!

Today Jack and Luke decorated a gingerbread train. We had a little trouble getting it to stay up but they sure did enjoy all of the candy! Here are a few pictures of the finished product and the process of decorating.