Christmas Eve!

Christmas Eve was a lovely day at our house! We invited the Cornia and Coburn families over to have an early dinner and then decorate cookies for Santa. The Coburn's brought a set of chimes with a book of carols so we had a great time playing carols on those.

The Cornia's! Shelley, Reed, Beatrix and Callum

The Coburn's! Cami, John, Daniel, Clara, Aaron and baby Lily

After our friends went home we had our family gift exchange, opened Christmas jammies and ornaments, talked to family on the computer and did the extended family gift exchange and read Christmas stories and the Christmas Nativity before bed.

 

Wesley got Sophie a book for the family gift exchange

Brian had Miles' name and got him a game he liked as a kid called, "Two-Cushion Bumper Shot". We've all loved playing it!

I had Nora's name and got her a Care Bear book with playmat and Care Bear characters.

Nora had Sullivan and made him this mobile to hang over his crib.

Bits and pieces

Just some bits and pieces of our life right now:

 These three (and I) had a yucky cold for a while. Sullivan is still getting over his and I'm hoping it won't be a long winter of sickness for him!

 With it getting dark at 4:30 and being cold we get a lot of inside play time.

 The girls have fun "teaching" Sully to sit up.

 Wes and I went to Costco and shared a giant piece of pizza. Yummy.

 Wes brought me our advent calendar and asked, "Can I please just open the pause one?" Haha! He thought the number 11 was they pause symbol. I don't think this means he uses electronics more than he uses numbers....

 Here is an updated picture of his tongue. I showed this picture to my dentist when I went in for a cleaning and he had me make an appointment with an oral surgeon to most likely have it removed. Ick. Our appointment is next week so we'll see what they say.

 Wesley loves making gingerbread cookies. I found these teeny teddy bear cookie cutters at the thrift store and we've had a lot of fun with them.

 We got out our Christmas Thomas the train set and the boys play with it every day. So fun.

 Mr. Sully's adorable rolls are much admired around here.

 Miles and his cinnamon toast. He was eating this and said, "Mmm.... toast. One of the things that matter most in my life." I asked him what else matters and he said, "My family, my remote control car and chalkboard erasers!" Ha! Silly boy.

Thanksgiving weekend.

 For the first time ever Thanksgiving this year was just us. I had invited a new family from our ward to come over but the dad is a medical student and ended up having to be in the hospital the whole day. Once we found that out I asked around a bit, but everyone else we asked had already made plans. And it was a great day. Sophie was pretty sad we weren't having any friends over, but we convinced her we'd survive. It was nice to not be worried about dinner being right on time or cleaning the house for guests. It was strange making a big dinner for just our family! After our turkey dinner we went sledding and then came back for pie.

 The Saturday after Thanksgiving we went to get our tree! We went to the same place as last year and had a lovely time.

 Nora wanted this huge tree that would probably take up our entire living room!

It's tradition to let the kids sleep under the tree the first night we put it up. A tradition that gets more fun the older they get because they will actually lay down and have fun looking at the tree rather than jumping all over the furniture until way past bedtime! What a fabulous weekend!

Boston

Last month I went on a trip to Boston! I haven't been away from my kids since I was pregnant with Wesley (except one night in Colorado when Brian and I went to Estes Park for our 10 year anniversary while my mom kept the kids). I don't like leaving my family very much, but I had a great time. I went with my mom and John to watch my sister compete in the WNBF Bodybuilding Competition. My mom and John flew into Milwaukee and Sullivan and I drove there and we flew to Boston all together! Sully was a champ and did awesome (he did have the full attention of three people, so how could he not be happy?)

We were only there from late Thursday - early Sunday, but we packed a lot in! Friday morning we went to Salem, which is a place I've always wanted to go. The history of the witch trials fascinates me. I wish we could have spent a whole day there!

This was some super yummy tomato basil soup I had there. Mmmmm.

                                                 

After the morning and lunch at Salem we drove to Concord and went to Sleepy Hollow cemetery. It had all kinds of hills and a swampy forest area behind it. Sufficiently creepy for this famous cemetery! We saw the graves of Henry David Thoreau, Louisa May Alcott and Ralph Waldo Emerson. It was a really old cemetery and had graves for Civil War veterans and tombstones so old you couldn't read anything on them. I think cemeteries are pretty neat, especially old ones.

We went to take a tour of Louisa May Alcott's home, but they had closed 15 minutes before we arrived. I was sad about that, but still glad we were able to see it. Sophie has read Little Women quite a few times so she thought this was neat.

We made a quick stop at Walden Pond right before it closed as well!

Sullivan slept pretty well by  me in the Hotel. Sweet baby.

Friday night we went out to eat with Emily, Paul and Emily's friend Stacy who was there helping her. After being on a very strict diet for weeks we got to watch my sister eat a steak and baked potato with butter! Very exciting stuff. Saturday morning was the competition. We watched the pre-judging show at 9am and it was pretty awesome. The dedication and commitment you need to have to do this is pretty amazing!

Here she is in the morning at pre-judging (in the maroon).

We had to be back by 4:30 for the results show so we walked like crazy and saw all that we could between the shows. We stopped at Quincy Market and there was a huge farmer's market and they were selling raspberries for super cheap, we bought 6 packages and a bunch of Honeycrisp apples. So yummy. Then we walked along the Freedom Trail and saw all that we could.

Below is the site of the Boston Massacre. Boston really is a beautiful place! We stopped at Paul Revere's home, the old North Church, Mike's Pastry and a few other spots I can't remember now... I guess I'll have to go back one day!

It was really weird traveling with just Sullivan! I didn't have to worry about 4 other little people to keep track of! It was a very strange feeling.

The results show was exciting to watch. My sister got first place in the middle weight division and then competed for the overall title. The light weight champion ended up winning that (apparently because her waist measurement was more symmetrical to her other measurements, they get pretty nit picky about that when choosing the winners), but obviously we were still pretty excited and proud of my sister. She's in the turquoise here.

After the show we went out for pizza to celebrate. It was pretty late and Sullivan had been so very good up until then, but at the restaurant he'd had it and was not happy. He cried and cried until I almost went back to the hotel, but then I put him in his car seat with my white noise app and he finally fell asleep. Poor baby!

Sunday morning we had to say good-bye to Naunie and Grandpa. Sully and I flew from Boston to Minnesota and then to Milwaukee and then drove home from there. We got home about 7pm. Kind of a long day but he was so very good! And my mom and John have some good friends in Milwaukee, Connie and Bruce, who were kind enough to let me leave our car at their house and pick us up from the airport. What a great trip!