Christmas Prep

We have been busy with lots of fun activities getting ready for Christmas!  We started with decorating the day after Thanksgiving, and then did the tree on Saturday.  I was impressed with how long Timmy and Tyler stuck with helping me.  When they did burn out they snuggled up with Tim and watched Frosty while I finished up.

I was passing out non-breakable ornaments, Tyler was stock piling them instead of putting them on the tree!  Every so often I would have to tell him he couldn't have any more until he used the ones in his pile!

I made this for the boys last Christmas and a matching one for our nephews, they enjoyed putting it up but have not been redecorating it this year!

The following weekend we went to visit with Santa!  It was a rainy day so the cookie decorating was under the overhang and after Santa arrived by boat, he met with the kids in the book store.  Santa told Timmy and Tyler that he loved their shirts!  We had been practicing their lists and they told Santa what they wanted.  (We had to give Tyler some guidance, as his only wish for Christmas was for a "gun that shoots money"!  He's pretty excited for his items now though, and I haven't heard him mention the money gun since seeing Santa!)

This was our 5th year seeing Santa at this event.  I sent him this as a Thank you for always taking his time to see us here!

That Monday we went to Ice! at National Harbor with Elena, Al, Becky, and Chris.  It was a great display and we had a lot of fun.  We had to pull Timmy and Tyler out of the slides!  This year they added an area where they showed how the display is made, it was pretty neat.

This past weekend Brayden and Bryce spent the night on Friday, so the 4 cousins all put on their matching PJ's and cuddled up with Grammy and PawPaw to watch Rudolph, PawPaw's favorite.

On Sunday I took the boys to Aunt Jenny's house for Cookie decorating with their cousins, and their cousins other cousins!  They had a lot of fun decorating gingerbread boys and sugar cookies.  Tyler decorated one for me and then ate a plain one!  Timmy decorated 3 or 4 cookies before they all decided it was time to run around.  It was a lot of fun!

We've also had a few movie nights, Tim and I went to a neighborhood cocktail party, I went to a cookie exchange, and I've had a few nights of wrapping presents!  Tyler had his class party already and Timmy's will be Friday, the day we leave for Ohio for the weekend.  So class party pictures will have to wait til we return!

Happy Thanksgiving!

We had a very relaxed Thanksgiving this year with only one dinner to attend!  We spent the morning relaxing and watching parts of the Parade.  Around 1 we headed over to Tim and Susan's, joining them, Connie, Jenny, Brett, Brayden, Bryce, Becky, Chris, Andrea and Clint.  Later on Rocky, Margaret, Christa, and Brandi joined us.  It was a full house!  The food was fantastic and it was so nice to get to visit together all evening.

This was the main course, after a table full of apps had been cleared and there was a third table of desserts!

The next day Tim had to work, but the boys and I headed to Reston Town Center to be in the annual Holiday Parade.  We got to walk in the parade with Tyler's Preschool so we saw lots of his friends.  Timmy chose to stay bundled up in the stroller the whole time, but Tyler and I wandered around to meet some characters while we were waiting for our time to walk.  The kids got a kick out of the parade itself.  They waved at the crowd and Tyler jingled his bell the entire time we were walking!

The week before Thanksgiving we went to Timmy's school for the annual Thanksgiving Luncheon.  It was hectic but fun!  Tyler was so excited to be there and really wound up.  He and Timmy were going back and forth between loving on each other and hitting/tackling each other the whole time!

I love Timmy's Thankful Turkey.  He's thankful for his brother, his mom and dad, his hair, and his pool!  :)