Christmas in July - Virginia

We took it easy on Christmas Eve Day last year, visiting briefly at Elena's and Tim Sr's before going to the children's service at Timmy's preschool's church.  The kids get to dress up like a Shepard or Angel and there is more singing then talking.

When we got home I made slice and bake sugar cookies for Santa while we watched a Christmas movie.  After the movie, Timmy wrote a letter to Santa, thanking him for sending Fuzzy, our elf, to keep an eye on them before Christmas.  Timmy also suggested putting out water for the Reindeer, along with their carrots and the milk and cookies for Santa.  Then Timmy was easy to send to bed, but Tyler wasn't quite ready to go down.  He helped Santa out by licking the icing off a few cookies before he went to bed.

Christmas morning Timmy hoped out of bed and waited fairly patiently while we got Tyler up and changed.  Timmy sort of waited for Tyler to come down the stairs too.

Anticipation!

A trampoline was top on Timmy's wish list

Checking out how many cookies Santa ate and getting started on presents!

Tyler opened his Light Saber first, Timmy went frantically searching for a matching box!

So fun!

More fun stuff!

The Angry Birds game got the biggest squeal of delight of all of Christmas!

Should have gotten two of those...!

Lucky Mommy

Timmy passing out our gifts he had picked out for us

First round complete!

We headed to Elena and Al's for breakfast, visiting and presents.

Griffin-ing!

Then to Tim and Susan's for visiting, presents, and dinner.

It was another wonderful Christmas!

Christmas in July - Ohio

Yes, I am seriously posting last Christmas's pictures now.  When I make my blog book, they won't be this far out of chronological order! ;)  We went to Ohio for a whirlwind trip of about 2.5 days.  We did manage to see all of the Shultz' and Machak's while we were there, so it worked out well.  The night we got in we visited with Dale, Paula, Ed, and Joyce at Grandma's with my parents and Joe.

Our first day we mostly visited at Grandma's.  Tim and Timmy also got to play in the snow, and it was the most snow he ended up seeing all winter!

The next day we opened presents with my parents and Joe.

Then had a delicious lunch and fun visiting with the Shultz'.

That evening mom kept the boys and Tim and I got to go out with all of my cousins, which was a big treat!

The next morning we met the Machak's for brunch and went back to Dale and Paula's house to exchange our presents with them.  Ashley and her family even stopped by, I don't think I had seen her since I was pregnant with Timmy, and not telling anyone yet!

Timmy went to a special "store" before Christmas where he got to pick out presents for us, Tyler, and his Grandparents.  He was very excited to give everyone the gifts he picked out.

From there we went to an awesome sports bar to watch the Redskins game.  Mom and Joe came for the whole thing, and most of the Shultz' came to meet us later on.  We drove home right after the game!

Timmy's 5th Birthday Party

Timmy's birthday party this year was a blast!  It was the first party we had outside of our house, which was really nice, and we had a huge surprise lined up, thanks to Uncle Joe.  We talked Timmy into a National's themed birthday party, because we had arranged for Teddy Roosevelt, Timmy's favorite Racing President, to be a surprise guest!  The party was at the NZone where we had a private turf field and a moon bounce and then a private party room.  About half an hour into our time on the field we had Timmy and all of his friends line up for a big race and by the time they got to the far side of the field, Teddy had appeared among them!  We had thought that Timmy would poop his pants when he saw Teddy, but he just said, "Teddy!?! What are you doin' here?" pretty nonchalantly!

A few kids were shocked or otherwise unhappy to see him, but the majority of them came right back to the starting line on their own, they knew Teddy was there to run!

 We gave Teddy a break by taking a bunch of pictures while other guests got back into the moon bounce.

 Next Teddy played baseball with the kids, first as the pitcher and then he took his own turn batting.

 Timmy was smiling from ear to ear the whole time!  He was so excited to see his friends since it was a few weeks into summer and he loved getting to just run!

 
After Teddy took a short break we asked our guests to head to the party room to give Timmy a chance at a private race.

Teddy came to the party room to lead us in singing Happy Birthday to Timmy and then he headed home.  Timmy and his guests devoured the pizza.

The cake went pretty fast too, even though it looked much better then it tasted (too much red coloring!).  We put re-lighting candles on the cake and Timmy thought it was funny.  I love his amused expressions in these pictures.  I love Tyler's face in all of these pictures too, wondering why Timmy can't blow out the candles and then finally trying to help.

We had some time left in the room so Timmy opened his gifts, surrounded by his friends.

We considered the party to be a huge success!  On their way home Tim asked Timmy how he knew Teddy would be there, our smart boy said, "Well, you put his picture on the invitation, so I thought he might come."