Advent Fun

Last year, in an effort to make myself get out of the house in the cold winter with a 1 month old, I adapted an idea I stole from Pinterest or somewhere about doing a different activity each day of December until Christmas. I came up with our activities and then found a Bible verse advent to tie it to that we read every day. This year I found one that linked the Jesus Storybook Bible to each day, which Tucker has loved doing each night on the iPad:)  Some things are the same as last year and some are different, but we're having fun with it again!

December 1- Decorate the house with lights and other decorations

 December 2-decorate the kid's felt tree (somehow I don't have a picture of this this year yet!)

December 3-Open a Special Gift-boys got a book about the movie "Cars"

December 4-Read a Christmas book. 

One of these nights we also went for a walk around the neighborhood after dinner to see all of the lights that were up so far.  Tucker has been really into the "Dis-mis-lights" this year.

 December 5-Buy a gift for a child in need. I was able to adopt a child from Bridgeport to buy gifts for through one of the schools I'm at this year. It was a challenge to explain to Tucker what we were doing, but he finally got that some kids don't have toys, so we are going to get some toys for them, and no toys for Tucker of Brayden:)

 December 6- We ended up going to the Toby Mac concert this night! It was not the plan all along, but Tucker had a blast and so did I! We had great seats-perfect for him to be able to move around, since we really only had my seat anyway! Whenever you ask him if he had fun, he always says "Yes, Toby Mac was loud too."

December 7- Christmas Tree tailgate with friends and get our tree. If you saw my previous post, we decided to get our tree the weekend earlier, long story. This is the 5th year (I think) that we've been doing a tailgate to cut down our trees with a bunch of friends. It's certainly grown and changed from the original four of us that went, but the kids and cold weather this year made it just as fun...and the food was great and so many friends came to celebrate:) Since we had already had our real tree up, we set up the fake one in the basement for Tucker & Brayden to start putting their homemade/kid ornaments on.

December 8-Again we tanked our original plan, but ended up making Jiffy Pop (not to be repeated) and watching the Bubble Guppies movie! Yes!

 December 9- make Christmas Cards to friends (we sorta did) and go to Nana and Poppy's for lunch:) Times with my Grandparents are more and more treasured the older they get. They have always been such an involved and integral part of my life, and it is SO fun to have Tucker be able to be blessed by them too. My grandma made us French Toast, which of course the kids loved, and the had a blast checking out all of the ornaments on the big Christmas tree. It's fun to hear my Grandma tell the story of all the cool ornaments to the boys now. My Grandfather has already started soliciting Tucker for the Naval Academy (he lost that battle with the older set of Grandkids so he's trying the younger set and the great-grandchildren now!), but it was really so cute to see Tucker sitting with him as he told him about the ship that he was on during his time in the Navy. I pray Tucker and Brayden get many more years of stories from my Grandparents.

December 10- Open a new ornament and put it on the tree

December 11-Watch a Christmas movie. We watched Charlie Brown's Christmas. We've watched the Great Pumpkin and the Thanksgiving special this year too, so Tucker currently gets really excited about all things Charlie Brown when he sees them.

 December 12-This was supposed to be a visit Dad at work day but that didn't work out, so we made an impromptu stop at the library. This was big for us-we never go, but I think we'll start taking advantage of the free play space this winter!

We're about halfway through the month already! I can't wait for the rest of the month as we celebrate Jesus' Birthday! Christmas is so fun every year, but now with kids that can appreciate many things with the season, I feel like all of our old traditions are new again and we're having fun making new ones with the boys too!  I love Christmas:)

My birthday-31!

I had a very laid back birthday this year-quite a difference from the celebration last year! It was very nice to actually sleep through the night this year on my birthday...last year Brayden was one month old so there wasn't much celebrating going on:)

We hung around the house and got the Christmas decorations out and then ended up going to get our tree and decorate it before Max and I went to dinner.

Tucker checking out all of the Nutcrackers.

Tucker's interest in the Nutcrackers must have rekindled Max's thing for the Nutcrackers...he actually got around to fixing all of the broken ones. Of course Tucker had to be in on the action.

Brayden enjoyed checking out the decorations that he could actually get to.  We don't put a ton of stuff out, especially now that the kids will wreck the good stuff, but we leave a couple of the unbreakable things for the kids to play with:)

It was a beautiful day to get the tree!

 This is the one!

Brayden's pretty much dropped his morning nap (somewhat encouraged) but if he's in the car during the morning he'll fall asleep usually. Suddenly, he also will stay asleep when you take him out...on multiple occasions. And on this day, he will also sleep through most of your lunch until you wake him up so that he'll actually fall asleep again. He's such a cutie:)

I've officially turned into my mom-I unwrapped the ornaments and Max and Tucker put them up. And he only broke one! He's still talking about it so if you're curious which one it was, you can ask:)

Brayden was forced to eat lunch during the decorating to make it a more pleasant experience for us all:) But he had fun watching!

This was so cute. Max stood up on the ottoman to put the star on, and Tucker climbed right up there next to him wanting to "my help too daddy." He barely fit on the stinkin' thing, but it was so cute!

We finished the day out with a delicious and fun meal at the Melting Pot. Love it all:)

Sunday we celebrated with my family and the best freaking cannoli cake! Max ordered the good kind with the flaky filling and asks for 5 cannoli's on top-something apparently the bakery had never had before:)

Tucker putting on his usual show-fueled by the cannolis that he loves:)

 After a cannoli for dessert the next day, he invented "Mr. Napkin hand," his trusty side-kick.

This has nothing to do with anything except that it's cute...Brayden looks like he thinks Tucker is a nut...and has too many stripes on!

Thanksgiving

I'm clearly a little delayed with this one but I wanted to at least get some pictures up from Thanksgiving-not many to choose from as I've been WAY lazy in getting my camera out lately!  We went to Max's mom's house for Thanksgiving this year and had a nice time with everyone up there:)

Like I said, not many pictures....but the ones I did get were cute!

A Weekend Away!

Max and I were blessed with a weekend away a couple weeks ago! My parents too the kids for the weekend which was such a gift! We had so much fun exploring New York City differently than we have before. We wanted to do some different things than we've done before. For some reason I've never been to Macy's at Herald Square and conveniently, our hotel (Groupon deal!!!) was right there! We had a blast walking a TON (12.5 miles on Saturday!) and eating (a TON) and spending some quality time with each other.

Our walk to the hotel Friday night. I love the library-never been in, but it's beautiful!

This was the view from our hotel room...hello Mr. Empire!

We got tickets to watch UCONN in a tournament at MSG Friday night. It turned out to be awesome because they were in the championship game against Indiana, and it was a SICK game! Max lost his voice from yelling SHABAZZ so many times. We sat right in front of the mini student section so I think we were living vicariously through them, thinking we were back in Storrs.

I told the front desk it was my birthday when we checked in (technically this wasn't a birthday trip, but it was the weekend before) and we got back from the game to find this tasty treat and nice note:)

On Saturday we slept in (a little) and went to breakfast at a cute place in Chelsea. We walked from Herald Square all the way to the Freedom Tower. It was ridiculous how far we walked, but it was really cool to be able to walk through so much of the city, which we never do when we usually go in. I just love looking at all of the architecture in the City too.

We stumbled through Washington Park. Such a pretty entrance! We saw a man entertaining the passersby with his piano playing, and a wonderful little bird man (shown below).

The freedom tower. Incredible.

The lone picture of the two of us this weekend. We were not about to walk back up to Times Square for the TKTS booth...hello Subway!

 I love seeing all of the store windows decorated for Christmas. This was before we made in INSIDE the 9 floors of Macy's. The funny thing about me wanting to see it so badly is that I rarely shop at the one in our own town!

Herald Square was getting ready for the Thanksgiving Parade. On Friday night they had an outdoor showing of Miracle on 34th street. So cute!

Saturday night we went to see a great play called ONCE. It had great music and was so fun to see. Not too "show-y" and there was a bar on stage-part of the set, but you could go up to get a drink before the show and during intermission

 Sunday we got up and walked to Bryant Park to have breakfast at a really cute cafe/restaurant right there. Then we walked around all of the cool Holiday shops. So many great vendors with unique products!

 We had a blast an were worry free knowing that the kids were in good hands:) At least that's what we thought...we got home Sunday afternoon and when it was time for baths before bed, this is what we found...we THOUGHT they were being taken care of well...I'll give you one guess which "adult" wrote this in the bath...

For real though, the boys love Nama and Papa and had a blast being able to have a special weekend with them. I think they were tired, but the boys were wondering where they were when they woke up from naps!  Tucker in particular was not excited about them leaving!  What a nut.