Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas!

We had a really lovely Christmas and hope that you did as well (whether celebrating Christmas like us or otherwise!). The boys conveniently woke up at the same time, so we were able to all head downstairs together to see if Santa had stopped by last night. He had! I have to say, though, that Santa's magic crystal ball might be slightly damaged, because he apparently thought Alexander and Jack were very good this year! ;) No, seriously, they were little sweethearts today and they do indeed deserve to be on Santa's good list!

We opened presents, played, played, played, and ate, ate, ate! PopPop and Uncle Tim both joined us for dinner and a visit and I do believe all my guys had a good Christmas!

Jack LOVES his new piggy bank and played with it for so long that I was starting to get concerned that there was some OCD issue underlying. Alexander loves his new Planet Hero figures but also spent quite a bit of time playing with one of Jack's presents: the Melissa and Doug stacking alphabet boxes. Who knew that toy would be so popular with BOTH kids? Thanks, Uncle Matt and Uncle Harry!

Here's hoping the new year brings my children the desire to pose better for pictures! ;)

Herding Cats (or "T-ball," whichever you prefer)

Today Alexander finished up a 5 week T-ball class. It was... uh... interesting. There were about ten 3-4 year-olds, two coaches, and chaos. I'm pretty sure that at least one kid cried at each lesson, today being Alexander's turn. Overall, though, I think he had a really good time. I am not sure how much of the lessons he retained, but he was taught "fielding position," "catch and cover," "bounce and turn," and "point and throw" for fielding/throwing, and then also coached on his hitting. One lesson that did not sink in for most of the kids in the class is that when you're fielding, everyone should refrain from tackling each other in order to get the ball. I guess they all still need some practice. For the next "season" I signed him up for a science class, so hopefully that won't result in any tackling!

This is the best shot I could get of him playing:

Visit with Santa

Today we took the kids for their first ever meeting with Santa!

We saw some of our Tot Lot friends there:

We played reindeer games:

We did some crafts:

We got painted faces:

And, of course, Alexander met Santa and Mrs. Claus:

Then we tortured Jack for a bit:

We arrived to the event pretty early and were able to walk right into Santa's room with absolutely no wait! We talked to him for a few minutes. Unfortunately, Alexander was feeling rather shy at the moment, so we decided to go do some of the other activities before trying for a photo op. When Alexander was ready to go actually talk to Santa, the line had grown and we had to wait almost an hour for our turn! Thankfully the boys were *fairly* good about waiting, and it paid off because Alexander was really excited to see Santa this time and goofed around with him and got tickled. I was so proud of him (and happy that we didn't wait an hour in vain)!

Know-it-all

Today while out walking, Alexander asked a question about house numbers and street names, so I talked a little about why we have addresses. His response?

"Oh, I know that, Mommy. I know all about everything."

Just a picture post

Two of the cutest kids in the universe:

Dressed up to go to a tea party. Alexander would not cooperate for a picture.

Just being cute:

(I don't know why blogger is insisting on rotating that one picture, but I'm including it anyway.)

Scary Children:

Uh... yeah.

Another Alexander quote: "Mommy, is it still today?"

Brotherly Love

This really needs no other explanation besides the quote. ;)

Alexander: If Jack keeps trying to knock over the lamp, we will have to send him away to live somewhere that there are no lamps and then the only people that will live with me will be my Mommy, my Daddy, and my Uncle Tim.

The rejects

Looking over the photos that I've taken over the past couple of weeks, I am reminded to be thankful that I have my children in the age of digital cameras, having purchased my first one some time before Alexander was born. For every good picture I get, there have got to be at least 10 rejects! I would go broke having to print all these photos in order to find the good ones! So, for a kick, I thought I'd share some of the rejects and some of the common reasons that photos I take are rejected.

Someone is being overly silly:

Someone has food on their face and/or looks scared of the camera:

Someone is scantily clad:

Someone has snot coming out of their nose:

Someone wildly changes position at the last second:

Someone is eating something and/or I have a double chin:

Someone suddenly puts something in front of their face while someone else makes a very odd expression indeed:

And, my personal favorite, someone looks drunk (who really should not be!):

"Gingerbread Xander" recipe

Alexander and I spend a lot of time pretend baking, and he has an excellent recipe for "Gingerbread Xanders" that I thought I would share.

Gingerbread Xanders
Ingredients:
1 cup sugar
2 cups flour
2 peppermint eggs (these are special eggs with edible shells- they can only be found at the grocery store in our coat closet)
2 cups pepper
3 cups ginger
an unspecified amount of bacon

Directions:
Mix first 5 ingredients in a big blue bowl while bacon fries. Then pour mixture over bacon. Put entire pan in "very hot" oven for 3 seconds. Take the cookies out and decorate with pink icing and candy.

Viola! Gingerbread Xanders.

Enjoy.