Christmas Cheer

I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas and has started a great New Year! We had the best Christmas. The boys are at such a fun age, the pure joy that they had was infectious. :)

We spent Christmas Eve at my parent's house, with them and my sisters. We stayed the night and had a great time! That morning before we left we let the boys opening their stockings at home (I know, before Santa even came :))


We opened the family presents that night- here are a few pictures from that:
More stockings from Grandma:

Teamwork:

Collin:

Brendan:

O
Oh the trouble they can get into with these stools Aunt Mandy gave them!

Aunt Shelley gave them a double-sized easel which is perfect for my aspiring artists:

Happy Faces

And then there was Christmas morning-Santa's gift. The boys left cookies and milk for Santa, but he didn't finish them so they did that morning - it was the first thing they spotted! Then the presents...


Christmas Day we headed over to Mike's aunt's house for his family celebration. As always, it was a full house! We had a blast and filled the car up (again) with way too many toys.




We had a very nice New Year's as well, but I didn't take any pictures! We are sad as our 2-week vacation with Mike home is coming to an end - now back to reality. :)

Merry Christmas!

We would like to wish all of our friends and family a very Merry Christmas!!! I hope everyone stays safe and happy. Here are a few of our photos over the last couple of weeks.

We saw Santa! They were very excited about the idea of him but once they learned they had to sit on his lap, they weren't too excited! At least they didn't cry.



They also got to help us put up the Christmas tree a few weeks ago.
Brendan really wasn't too excited about it. He just wanted to play with his toys.

Collin was a lot of help!

Here they are helping Daddy:

And a finished one of the tree:

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Outdoor paradise

The outdoor playset is finished!!! Well mostly, there are a few minor things that still need to be done, but it is usable. This was a huge project that started back in June/July!! Many thanks to Grandpa & Grandma, Aunt Shelley and Pete and Joel for the picking up process. But a special THANK YOU goes to Grandpa who did all of the sanding/staining and rebuilding of new pieces. We are so grateful for all of you and want to send you a HUGE thank you!!

If you remember, this is what it looked like when we acquired it from the last owners:

Here is the progress made over the last two weeks:





The boys played while we worked:

And finally the boys are able to play!! They are IN LOVE with it!





I am so happy with how it turned out and I'm looking forward to many, many years of enjoyment it will provide our kiddos!

It's been awhile...

I can't believe it's been a month since I've posted last. The holiday season is always so busy and life just zooms on by. I want to back track a little bit to the week of Thanksgiving so that I have it recorded for my "virtual scrapbook."

The week of Thanksgiving was wonderful. Mike was off of work the entire week so we got in lots of family time. On Monday we took the boys to the Fort Worth Zoo. This was our first time, as we usually go to the Dallas Zoo. It was *infinitely* better than Dallas Zoo! We were so happy to see that the animals were in a more natural environment, it felt cleaner and there were more animals. The boys had a blast. Their favorite animal, by far, were the monkeys. Won't you know I didn't even get any pictures of the monkeys! I guess we were too busy watching the boys be so excited.
Here are a few pictures of "our" wild animals (Brendan in red and Collin in grey):


And a few of the real wild animals:



It was an exhausting day, as you can see:

We also visited the trains at Northpark that week, which was also a huge hit. We had a great Thanksgiving with both of our families. Overall it was one of the best weeks of the year so far. We have a lot to be thankful for!

Photo Shoot

We finally took the boys to get their 2-year photos! We also tried to get a few holiday photos, but those didn't turn out as well. Brendan wouldn't smile and Collin wouldn't sit still. It's very difficult to get good pictures of two-two year olds!! We did manage to get one good family shot-which is our first, so I guess we can't complain. :) Enjoy!

Brendan-this is the best we got of him. He was not being cooperative and smiling.

Collin was all smiles the whole time.


I LOVE this one:

Brendan:

Collin:

This is the *best* xmas photo we got! Haha!

And the only family shot with everyone smiling: