Christmas Weekend 2011

I got fantastically lucky to have the whole Christmas weekend off!!!  We had a great time!  Had 2 Holiday celebrations (& we have 2 more to go!)

We packed up Friday morning & headed to Jeff's parent's house for a few days.  Had our Maas Christmas dinner Friday night & then opened presents.  Had all day Saturday to play with our new goodies with Addie & Ava.  I got in some good Ava cuddle time.  And we all went to Church Christmas Eve night.  The kiddos did fantastic at Church!  They were scared for the first 1/3, ate a snack for the next 1/3 & were a little rowdy the last part.  But I only had to chase kids down the aisle once.  Overall they behaved fantastic!!!  I was so proud of their behavior this weekend.

Toddler Table for Christmas dinner

 Present time!!!

 This one has Thomas wrapping paper, it HAS to be good!

 "Ohhhh!"

 Cheese!

 This was hillarious!  I so wish we sould have caught it on video.  First the boys opened some CARS lego sets & Logan wanted nothing else to do with presents.  Hayden opened another one & it was a tractor.  Logan saw it & came sprinting across the room to find HIS next present, ripped the paper of at light speed, shouting "tractor-tractor-tractor!!!" the entire time.  Look at his hand in the picture, he was moving so fast I even caught it in the picture!!

 Uncle J helping us open our tractors....

 .... and build trains....

... and singing Elmo songs. 

They had a BLAST with their Uncle J playing & hunting monsters in the basement!!  They did such an awesome job not being mommy-daddy needy clingy kids this weekend.  Maybe daycare is finally paying off??  I was so excited to see them play & explore a little on their own.

 Awesome train from Tisha, Aaron, Addie & Ava had all the kids mesmerized!

 Playing CARS Legos Saturday.

 Logan could hook all the other cars on Mater's tow hook & drag them all around.

Logan hanging with "Papa Maas" at Church.  The kids started calling Jeff's parents "Mama Maas" & "Papa Maas" this week!!

 Me & Hayd at Church

 Mommy & Miss Liv at Church

Then Sunday, Christmas day, we headed to my Grandparent's house to celebrate & open some more presents.

 Poor Livi woke up with a fever Sunday morning.  Check out those rosy cheeks!  She was pretty bummy the first 1/2 of the day.  Some motrin & tylenol & more motrin & finally her fever broke in the afternoon.  She had a great time playing after that.  Spunky as ever.  And she has been perfectly healthy & fever free since, so I'm not sure what was troubling her?

 Analeigh opening her presents

 Livi not exactly cooperating with Molly

 Mommy & Logan

 Livi doing some cooking with "Mama See-cert" & "Papa See-cert"

 What else would we cook but tractors??

 Hayden is such a sweet boy.  He had to share his "cycles" with Analeigh. 

 Isn't she beautiful?  I can't believe her eyes are staying so blue!!

We had a very blessed Christmas Weekend.  We were able to spend time with our families, eat good food, & watch our kids get spoiled!   

Hayden Thomas Christmas 2011

Olivia Paige Christmas 2011

Logan Daniel Christmas 2011

Merry Christmas & A Blessed New Year. 

Love:  Jeff, Katie, Hayden, Olivia & Logan

Merry Christmas

MERRY CHRISTMAS!

We had a fantastic Christmas weekend! 
We still have one more Christmas this week & we still have to open presents at home!
Then a few days off home as a family, before this mama has to work the New Year away...

We hope you had a wonderful Holiday & the opportunity to spend some time enjoying your families too.

My kids are AWESOME!

Logan likes to sleep sideways in bed.  Makes me smile when I see him that way, makes me think of when I was pregnant & I could feel his little head & butt sideways like that, curled up in my rib cage.  AND it makes me smile to see him with FIVE little cars "sleeping" with him :)

They love looking at all our Christmas "mail!"  Pinterest inspired.  I think maybe next year I'll paint it?

Randomly... more Pinterest inspiration.  I cooked with some green onion & afterwards put the bulbs in a jar of water instead of throwing them away.  Jeff laughed.  3 days later....

They LOVE lotion!  Love, love, love it.  After I covered them all in lotion after a bath, I got them to have fun rubbing it all over MY back!!  Ahhh!!  (please excuse my love handles, yikes!)

And the awesomest of all..... my 30 beautiful toes!!

I see RED!

Today we had such a fun day!!  We may have never changed out of our "nammies" {jammies}, but we did some fun things today!  After breakfast we watched Sesame Street.  Today they talked about birthdays & baked a cake.  Ever since the kids' birthday when they got a cupcake set, Livi has been obsessed with playing with her cakes.  So after seeing it on TV she spent a good hour this morning walking around asking "Ya-ya make cake?" & her little toy cakes just weren't cutting it.  Luckily I had a box of cake mix we had gotten over Halloween & never made sitting the cupboard.  So.... yes, we baked a cake.  Just because.  I officially do not run this household anymore.  She SOO calls all the shots.  I told her we were making Baby Jesus' birthday cake, & she repeated it once or twice, but it didn't really stick.  We had a blast!  And daddy stopped for some funfetti frosting for us on his way home (I LOVE me some funfetti frosting!)

 Pouring in the eggs

 And water.  If you look close... he missed with about 1/2 of the water, but that was our biggest mess so I'll take it!

 Hayden stirring...

 Liv stirring...

 Logan wasn't quite as into it.  He did dump one egg in, but prefered just to stare into the bowl during his turn to stir.

 Hayden enjoyed stirring so much, he had a hard time waiting for his turn to come around again.

 See!

 Black & Orange funfetti cake.  Not exactly the right colors for the Season, but oh well.

 Watching it bake in the "hot."  They are starting to do a good job listening about staying away from the stove & oven & even the dishwasher because we tell them "owie, hot."  So they call the stove/oven "hot!"  Kitchen gate not coming down anytime soon though.  Its about the only major toddler proofing item in our house.

So far Logan is the only one who has eaten any.  I figured the boys wouldn't want any & Livi would, as she has been the only one who has been into sweets.  Hayden of course didn't want any (so anti-sweets like his dad) & surprisingly Liv didn't either.  But Logan, who I never imagined would even try one bite, chowed through 2 pieces!!!

To keep them busy while the cake baked, I got out some string & noodles.  I've been working on filling out their TIPS preemie developmental follow-up paperwork & one of the questions on there was if the kids can string noodles onto string.  It was the only question on the questionnaire that I had to stop & think, I have absolutely no idea!  I didn't do anything fancy like color the noodles, or have different shapes & sizes.... but we made our first macaroni neclaces!!  They did GREAT!  Livi & Hayden needed a little help pushing the noodle further down on the string so they didn't fall back off when they tried to put the next noodle on, but Logan was a PRO!  He did his whole neclace without any help!

Hayden

The hardest part was them remembering to not try to put the noodle on the end with the knot in it.

Such concentration!  Logan didn't even have to have a car on hand for this!!

Livi's working so hard.  Look at her tongue!!  Makes me giggle!  Why do tongues have to hang out when we concentrate so hard??

Logan had to make a "choo choo train" out of the noodles too!!  They all say "choo choo train" all of the sudden instead of just "choo choo."

One of our creations!

Tonight I trimmed the kids' finger & toe nails.  {Pure torture for all involved, not exactly part of our fun day.}  While I was cutting, I was thinking about how I desperately need to do something with my own toes, so asked Livi if she wanted me to paint her toe nails for Christmas.  She of course said yes!  Then as I trimmed the boys' nails (holding them down with all my might) she repeated, "Paint Ya-ya toes" over & over.  So I got out some bright red polish to help celebrate the Season.

This is just the 2nd time Little Miss has had her toes decorated.  She held perfectly still & even helped me blow them dry.  The boys watched in admiration.  It wasn't long after her toes were dry, that I had 4 little boy feet up on my lap, "Maas toes!" {Hayden}   "None-en toes!" {Logan}  "Toes Poppies" {pretties}

So tonight {as if a day of baking & making jewlery wasn't enough}.... we kissed them goodnight, said our "I Love Yous," & tucked 30 red toes into bed!

It was bedtime, so they weren't really into cooperating tonight, but I will try to get a picture of all their toes.  But for now, here are Logan's sports jammies & painted toes!

{So thankful to have a husband who is OK with his sons having painted toe nails & doesn't buy into the controversy that THIS ADD stirred up back in April.}

Because painted or not, we're just thankful to have our 30 toes.