Christmas 2014

Santa arrived!!!

Elliot woke at his usual bright and early time this morning, so we woke up Henry and had the kids run downstairs. There was much excitement over Santa's gifts (a requested Lego set plus a bow and arrow for Henry, a trampoline and puzzles for Elliot). We moved on to stockings:

After a brief rest time (Elliot was desperate to put his new puzzles together, while Henry was dying to attack the rest of the gifts - negotiations were made) we moved on to the rest:

We are following our usual tradition of "stay in, don't get dressed, play with toys, and snack all day". The unusually warm weather means Henry was even able to go outside to break in his new skateboard!

Merry Christmas to everyone!

Christmas Eve 2014

Henry and Elliot are VERY excited about Christmas. Elliot in particular will need to go through some type of Christmas detox program in January - opening his advent calendar and finding Whizby our elf every morning is a BIG DEAL for him. Henry, of course, understands that tomorrow mornings the real deal and has been VERY excited to see what Santa brings him from his list.

We celebrated Christmas Eve this year by having our friends the LeWinter-Christs over for dinner. We got the house in a festive mood:

The kids played a wild game of charades:

Christmas crackers were opened at dinner:

Christmas Eve gifts were opened and played with:

And matching PJs were put on!

Cookies were put out for Whizby and Santa:

Now we just need Santa to arrive!

Holiday Weekend

Nana and Papa came for a visit this weekend and we managed to fit in a lot of holiday events during their trip! On Saturday we went to the Boston POPS holiday show at Symphony hall:

We made another gingerbread house:

And many cookies were baked:

We are almost ready for Santa!

Xylophone Man

Today was Henry's winter concert, and he was VERY proud that he was one of the kids selected to play an instrument during a song - the xylophone! Not great pictures, but he rocked it. Apparently, one of the bars actually fell off the xylophone during the song, but he didn't even miss a beat!

Gingerbread Houses

Henry's school had a giant gingerbread building activity after school today - here is Henry's masterpiece

Polar Express - 2014

We had our annual trip to the North Pole today! We skipped last year since Henry was getting a little less into it and Elliot was too young to understand, but figured we needed to get back into the swing of things this year. Elliot lacks the extreme passion for trains that made The Polar Express such a favorite for Henry, but he was still excited to go and see Santa again.

So we got the kids into the special holiday PJs and off we went!

On board the kids wrote their letters to Santa:

Listened to a reading of "'Twas the Night Before Christmas":

Sang carols (Henry got to lead off "The Twelve Days of Christmas" on the microphone and held up the card for 6 Swans a Swimmin'....he was very proud):

And of course were very excited to spot Rudolph, Frosty, and the elves as they came by:

And, of course, Santa!