Lazy Snowy Sunday

We started out our Sunday with pancakes.

But not just any old pancakes, you see.

In our house we have Mickey "Waffler" which totally makes Mickey pancakes, not Mickey waffles, so I feel the "waffler" title is misleading. 

I have had this thing since about 2001 when I got it clearanced for $15 at the Disney Store in Utica. You can still buy them at JC Penney now but they're over $60!! so it has seen better and cleaner days...but it still works so I still keep using it! (if you look closely enough you can see black electrical tape holding the broken top handle together haha)

Well anyway they are delicious and always perfectly cooked thanks to a built-in timer.

After breakfast we all bundled up and headed to the park because I had a photo shoot so Ry figured he would bring the boys along with our sled since there are a few small hills at this park...and our backyard is completely FLAT.

They had a great time and I managed to get some shots of everyone enjoying themselves!

Snow Day

They were forecasting for snow yesterday and we actually got it. Being a CNY-er I  was excited because I really miss the snow from home in the winter. I mean seriously it took until Jan 21 to get some snow here in PA. Ugh.

The downside was that it made it a little tricky for me to travel to a first birthday shoot that I had scheduled yesterday so I had to reschedule that which totally bummed me and my client out.

Luckily the night before we were at Kohl's looking for a new baby one piece snowsuit (or pram I think they might be called?) and ended up with actual snow pants and jacket for him instead. It seems the stores that I've checked for these baby snowsuits only go up to 9 months. Well he has a 9 month one and it's pretty small so I wanted to find 12 months but of course anything we found in 12 months was actual "big boy" stuff.

So... official snow pants and jacket it was!

Now he can actually go in the snow with his big brother!

I took the boys out to play while Ry was at work and we had a blast!! After lunch we even went back out with Wells and Maddox...and Aidan insisted on pulling Mason around the snowy parking lot in his old baby sled. It was super cute.

When we got back in Aidan had hot chocolate, took a nap and Mason got to play with his brother's "off-limits" toys and wear his slippers to warm his cold little feet.

Elf Hair?

Santa brought Aidan this neat little Elf planter in his stocking this year. It came with seeds and soil and all we had to do was fill it up and water it! 

Within 2 or 3 days we had grass hair for our Elf and Aidan was soooo excited.

Now we give him haircuts very frequently and keep watering his head. He even survived the week were in Disney with no one to water him!

Gingerbread House

Ryan and I did our annual day after christmas shopping after my Dad left on Monday.( I always grab things like treat bags, wrapping paper and gift tags on these trips. You can't beat 50% off!)

We were actually looking for some new lights for the tree and outside because we didn't have any left this year to do the front of the house! Also we use like 4 strands to do out tree because our longest strand isn;t long enough, so then we added like 3 sets of 10 lights to it. Each set of 10 lights needed to be plugged in to the previous large strand because they were so small they didn't have a plug part on each end.

Talk about a fire hazard.

So anyway all the lights were gone, but we did find this sweet gingerbread townhouse kit that I decided we would use when Nani and Uncle Ama came to visit.

 $4.50? yes please.

It turned out that the house came pre-assembled to all we had to do was the fun part:

Decorate it!!!

I don't know who had more fun....Aidan or uncle Ama.

Uncle Ama's creative decorating skills sure shone through!!

Christmas 2011!!

Our Christmas holiday was pretty fun this year since Aidan actually understood the idea of Santa. There were multiple times a day where I would threaten to call Santa to report on Aidan's naughty behavior and he would freak out telling me not to call him, that he would be good. Hahah it's so wrong, I know.

Grandpa and Uncle Larry were here again this year, and because I had to work Christmas Day, we made Christmas Eve our Christmas.

Hey, Aidan doesn't know the difference!

The night before our Christmas I let Aidan decorate some cookies for Santa, and he sure had a blast. There was royal icing and colored sugar everywhere!

When he woke up Christmas morning we brought him down and watched the look of awe on his face as he saw the piles of presents for him and Mason.

He checked to see if Santa ate his cookies, and he did!! He had also left out some glitter oatmeal (aka reindeer food that he made at Michele's) and it looked like that had been spilled and eaten too!

Everytime he started to open a gift he would exclaim:

"my very own new toy!"

(like he's never had his own toy in his entire life......)

Mason tried to get in on the action too, but he wasn't so good at unwrapping, so his big brother helped him.

Once he got all the presents unwrapped, Ryan got out the tools needed to remove kids' toys from their boxes (a full set of tools most times), and started getting everything opened so Aidan could play.

We spent the rest of the day watching Christmas movies and playing with new toys until it was time for dinner.....

Filet Mignon has become the family Christmas dinner tradition around here so we ate like kings! Since I know Aidan can really chow down on steak when he wants to I actually had the butcher give me a small one for him (because I sure as hell wasn't sharing!!!).

Before we knew it  our Christmas was over (actually christmas eve for the rest of you), and we were all off to bed and I was off to work early in the morning.

Working on Christmas wasn't so bad because I was at muhlenberg and since it was so slow I was able to read a book on my new Kindle from Ryan and he even brought Aidan in to have lunch with me!

I hope your Christmas was great too!!

Snowflakes and Dinosaurs

I bought some giant foam snowflakes for Aidan's first Christmas fully intending on doing something fun and creative with them. 

Yup.

And as Aidan's THIRD Christmas rolled around I realized I STILL had them in my "box-o-craftiness" (yes  I call it that, and I even wrote it on the box).

During my travels to the dollar store one day I found some bags of foam stickers that were holiday shaped and grabbed them figuring it would be the perfect addition to the foam snowflakes.

Aidan had a blast letting me peel the stickers for him and he placed them wherever he wanted.

Perfect ornaments!

We also had a bag of dinosaur-shaped foam stickers in the box-o-craftiness which he insisted we use as well. So I complied but only picked out the red and green ones for him to use haha. 

Christmas Dinosaurs!!