My Santa and My Present Inspector

I got the boys these Christmas pjs this year. I LOVE Jackson's Santa pjs. I'm so sad they didn't have Cooper's size or else I'd have two Santas! We put a small tree with their homemade ornaments in their playroom this year.

Cooper looks SO old in this picture I think!

My little Santa!

Isn't this a fun hat? Adult sized by the way. J has lots of brains!:)

Cutie Cooper.

Both the boys in front of the front room tree. This is the first year we've done two full-sized trees. The tree in the front room my "themed" tree with aqua and red ornaments.

I LOVE this picture of them!

I thought this was just hilarious. We were eating something chocolate (I can't remember what exactly) and J's tooth got blacked out. Funny boy.

For Thanksgiving my mom and dad gave the boys this advent calendar to make. It was fun and easy!

Peppermint Party and Polar Express

Our jam-packed Thanksgiving week is coming to a close. My mom had so many fun parties planned for the kids!

The day after Thanksgiving she had a peppermint party for the kids. Another cute cute party! I wish I had pictures of the invitations. Precious.
The kids watched Frosty the Snowman and had peppermint popcorn (yum!).

Then they had a special lunch.

Aren't the headbands hilarous?

Jackson insisted on wearing his this way!

Christmas Bingo is always a hit.

Every time I looked Jackson was shoving a marshmellow into his mouth.

That night we went to the Polar Express. It was so much fun. The kids all wear their pjs and they had some fun activities set up (ornament decorating, pictures with Santa, etc...) We had tickets for 6:30 and people lined up early! They let us into this room and they had a little show for us to get us excited to get on the Polar Express!

Here are all the kids excited to start!

Getting ready to make some ornaments.

Here's Jackson's ornament.

Here's Coopers! (funny story-Santa comes on the train to meet all the kids and Cooper held up his ornament to show Santa. Santa thought he was giving it to him and very graciously took it. Cooper got a little upset but held it together and didn't cry. I think he was kind of proud but also upset that Santa had his ornament! :))

Once the show was over we walked through this Christmas tree maze to get on the train and they were blowing snow on us. The boys thought it was amazing!

Here are some of us on the Polar Express! (My big head blocked Laura in every picture, oops.)

Meeting Santa! They were SO excited.

Santa gave them jingle bells. They had the train all decorated and Christmas music playing, it was really fun!

We tried to get the kids to pose in front of the Polar Express.

The Christmas lights were GORGEOUS on all the buildings around the Polar Express so we walked around and checked everything out.

All of the kids! The next morning our out-of-town relatives got up bright and early and drove home. We miss them and wish they lived closer!

Thanksgiving Day

The gingerbread party was on Thanksgiving I just realized, so here's the rest of the day! The three boys all had matching outfits so we changed them and went outside to play for awhile. It was a beautiful day but it had just been raining so the leaves were all wet. They didn't play in them very long before moving to something else, and I was really wanting to get some pictures in the leaves! Oh well, our leaves at home are dropping so hopefully we can get out and play in them soon.

Here's cutie pie Ben.

Elizabeth and Emma in their matching outfits.

Not a great picture but I wanted to show how cute my mom's little playhouse in the back was decorated for Christmas! They were having fun serving eachother.

Here's cutie pie Evan!

They were having so much fun chasing each other in the backyard.

They were having lots of fun walking back and forth on the "bridge" and Jackson got really brave and walked across. As he was walking back over the bridge he of course fell in and got his cute outfit all muddy. He cried and cried and kept saying "I dirty! Yucky!" Yes, it was yucky.

Thank goodness I brought him another outfit, even if it wasn't anything special. Here he is waiting for dinner. Aren't the hats adorable?

Here's Cooper waiting for dinner!

Then it was present time. We exchange Christmas presents with our cousins while they're in town for Thanksgiving.

The hit for the boys was definitely these light sabers. They all LOVED them.

My mom got my dad an electric train to run around the tree this year and they all were enraptured by it! Evan especially LOVES trains so he was very excited about it.

I thought this picture of Emma and her daddy (Jim) was so sweet.

So then we left and went to bed! Next up was the peppermint party and the Polar Express!

Gingerbread Party and More

After the hotel, everyone came back to our house to play outside and have a little birthday party for Emma.

A favorite activity of the kids is tackling!

They think it is so fun to climb on this house.

Emma's 6th birthday!

She's waiting patiently for her cake!

The next morning we tried to get to my parent's house relatively early for the gingerbread party my mom had for the kids! Isn't the table so cute? Can you see how each child had their own personalized placemat?

She got them all these matching gingerbread pjs. The plan was to have them spend the night and then wake up and have this party. Unfortunately there was some illness making the rounds so a few of the activities had to be scratched. But they still looked cute in their PJs!

She also got them these gingerbread headbands. Hilarious!

Yummy breakfast! See the cute drink glasses there on the front of the table?

After reading a book about the gingerbread man, each sibling group got to decorate a gingerbread house.

They FILLED our house!

The finished product.

What a cute party, huh? So glad my kids were invited! :)