Christmas Eve!

I am shocked that I didn't take ANY pics on Christmas Day because I ended up taking video of it instead. But here are some pics of the kids decorating cookies for Santa.

They LOVE to decorate cookies.

Olivia likes LOTS of sprinkles on her cookies and she likes to eat a lot of cookies, too. She's our little cookie monster.

We were supposed to go to my parents the day before Christmas Eve but my niece Gabri got the stomach bug, then my Brother-In-Law, Chris got it, then my Mom got it.  It was very contagious so we stayed away and hopefully will celebrate with them tomorrow!

We bought their cousins matching Christmas Pj's.  So cute!

Luca being goofy.

They were having fun posing.

Olivia asked me to take a pic of her giving this goofy face.

Luca said "Let me take a picture of YOU!"

Finished product...

Luca always goes up close to the camera and I loved this in black and white.

Putting out cookies and milk for Santa. They were SOO excited. This is the best age for Christmas.

Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night!

Let it Snow! Let it Snow! Let it Snow!

Now that our Christmas cards are out, I can share my photos! This pic was the kids 1st visit with Santa this year. We've seen Santa several times. Not sure if we'll be able to do that next year b/c I think the kids will start noticing how different each Santa looks. I have to say, every Santa we've seen so far has had a real beard which I love that!

Olivia would like a new stroller for her baby that has a "hood" on it like her stroller.  She also wants a bed for her baby, and an electric toothbrush. 

Luca wants a scooter, super hero watch and an electric toothbrush, too!

I really loved how these pics turned out.

Can you see the snow?  Corey was my prop guy for this shot. :)

I was hoping to get a shot of them BOTH blowing the snow at the same time, but we were at Easton and we were making a big mess so I only had a couple of tries.  But I did capture Luca's beautiful long lashes in this pic.

Luca laughing at the prop guy! :)

Since it's snowing today I thought it would be a perfect day to post these pics! 

We went to the zoo the other day before we got this cold and snowy weather.  It was a great day, because it wasn't TOO cold and it wasn't too crowded.  The kids had fun even though they fell asleep on the way there. 

Fabulous!

I was at the mall the other day and while I was trying something on in the dressing room with the kids I asked them what they thought.  Olivia said "That looks fabulous Mommy!"  It was too funny because Corey and I don't ever use the term fabulous and I asked Olivia where she heard that word from and she said her teacher, Mrs. Brown says it all the time. :) 

We were having lunch today and I love listening to Luca and Olivia's conversation after school because they have so much to tell eachother like who they played with and what they did.  Luca out of the blue says to Olivia "Christmas is about giving.  So, what are you giving me for Christmas?" 

The Countdown Begins!

The kids are thrilled that Buddy the Elf is back! They LOVE looking for him every single morning. I remember last year someone was always in tears b/c they didn't find buddy 1st, so this year we told them whoever finds Buddy first and doesn't point him out to the other person so they can still find him gets to open up the Advent Calendar Prize. This new rule has been working well so far!

The kids dressed up very festively to visit Santa at the library.

We are trying to teach our kids that Christmas isn't about getting gifts, but it's about GIVING them and being THANKFUL.  We wanted to GIVE something for the librarians because we are GRATEFUL for them.  The kids wrote a note "We LOVE STORYTIME" and signed their names on it.  When Luca gave it to Ms. Kate he said Merry Christmas! I got this idea from Pinterest and it's very inexpensive to make - I just used an empty can of Tomato Soup and wrapped a rubber band around it. Then we put as much candy canes as we could all the way around the can in the rubber band.  Then we tied a pretty bow to hide the rubber band and to dress it up.  The kids made Monkey Munch and put it in a decorative bag and placed it in the can.  It's such a pretty gift that only cost approximately $3!  The librarians loved it.

Olivia modeling her super cute Christmas Outfit.

So sweet and I love my new lens!

I have to say that so far we have visited 3 Santas this year and ALL of them had real beards.  This one was a really good santa and he even had Mrs. Claus sitting in the chair next to him.  The kids told me they were excited to meet Mrs. Claus because they never met her before.

Telling Santa that he wants a scooter, spider man watch and an electric toothbrush.

Later that night I hosted a Moms Night In with my Moms group.  There were 21 Moms.  When I typically host, I normally make all the food, desserts, etc. but this time I made it a Holiday Traditions theme and everyone brought their favorite dish or drink.  There was a ton of food from sushi, to potstickers and Oreo Cheesecakes and a Winter Sangria and much, much more it was all so good! 

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas!

Our friend Sam brought this Gingerbread Kit for the kids on Thanksgiving. The plan was to have them do this on Thanksgiving, but it takes 3 hours to get the house to set with the frosting so they worked on later this week. They love it. We don't love all the sugar that comes with it! ;)

I had some left over candy corn from Halloween that we let them use.

I love matching Xmas PJ's!

I was actually practicing taking pictures because I have 5 sessions this weekend and since it's been really cold I'm assuming we are going to have to go indoors for the pictures.  I'm better at taking outdoor pics b/c the lighting is better.   Hopefully one day I will have a studio with real lighting so I can do better indoor pictures.

A lot of them came out blurry b/c of the settings I was using to try to get the "glow" of the Xmas lights.  I need to practice some more to get it just right.

Luca is so cute.  That night I noticed his underwear and sock drawer were very organized and he said to me "I couldn't fall asleep last night, so I turned on the light and I organized my sock and underwear drawer."  He's too funny.

Luca loves it when we give him a job. His job lately is to turn on all the Christmas lights - he loves his job.

Olivia always does a good job of putting her milk back in the fridge when she's not finished with it and she also loves to put her dishes in the sink.  I have such good little elves.

It was jammy day in Luca's class and he was so excited to wear these new jammies.  But as we were walking to school he said "Is my teacher going to be mad that I'm wearing my jammies?"  They are talking about nocturnal animals this week.

This is my favorite picture but it took many shots to get this some turned out like this and some didn't so I still need to figure out how I did this!

Pre-School Crushes....

Olivia always talks about a little boy in her class, Emmett.  Whenever she talks about him her face just lights up.  She told me that Emmett protects her.  We saw Emmett at library storytime the other day and I said "Olivia look, Emmett is here!"  She got all shy but had a huge smile on her face.  She wouldn't say hi to him even though she talks about him ALL the time. 

There is another boy, Leo, in her class.  She talks about him, too. Yesterday, she told me that he gave her a hug and a kiss on the cheek and said "I missed you!"  So cute!

Luca on the other hand does not play with girls because they don't play Super Heroes with him. LOL Such a boy!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving! This pic was taken yesterday. Every year we take the kids to see Santa a little early to avoid the lines and also so we can take the kids Xmas pics for Christmas cards.

I like this pic but it looks a little hazy from the sun flare.

This was at the mall and it would have been nice to get a family pic, I should've asked someone to take a pic for us.

Here's a pic of Thanksgiving.  We invited our friends Sophia and Ethan and their parents to come over for dinner with us.

They liked the rolls the best and they ate all their turkey but they didn't like all the sides.

I made mini apple pies and they were DELISH!  Sam also brought Jeni's Ice Cream to go with it.  Jenni's Ice Cream is seriously the BEST ice cream ever. So good!

Since we didn't have a lot of people to feed I didn't want to buy an entire turkey so we just bought turkey breasts. Which is my favorite part of the turkey anyway. There was also another tray of it that we didn't even eat.  It was also delish!  I brined the turkey which made it really moist and juicy.

Yummy! So very Thankful for a warm meal, a roof over our heads and especially my two favorite kids on this entire planet! Thankful for my husband who is now out for some Black Friday or should it now be called Black Thanksgiving Shopping?