Merry Christmas

Yesterday we had a "Happy Birthday Jesus" cake for lunch and opened our stockings.


Hope everyone has a great (WHITE!!!) Christmas!

A Cohen Post

The past few months Cohen has changed a lot. He is definitely transitioning from a baby to a toddler. Unfortunately I think his biggest goal in life is to irritate his brother. :) But that's the job of a little brother right?
He is walking like a pro. Says mom, ball, balloon, and woof-woof for dog. He has also starting making train noises even moving his arm like he's blowing the whistle. We teach our kids the important stuff! :)



This one is from his birthday so it's a little old, but I had to share it because he looks like such a big boy in it!

A Judah Post

The other night I made him a comfy bed in his giraffe tent. In the end he decided he wanted to sleep in his bed. I think I have the strangest kids. :) What little boy doesn't want to have a slumber party in a giraffe tent??? I thought he had a pretty sweet set-up.

He loves walking around in dad's shoes. It's strange to think that someday those boots will actually fit him!

coming up in 2009

I've decided that 2009 is going to be our "year of homemade gifts". Everything we give as a gift birthdays, new babies, weddings, etc will all be something homemade. I think it will be a fun chance to get creative and will also help us to be less "consumer". I always appreciate and love homemade gifts and I hope everyone near and dear to us does too because you're going to be receiving some. :)

My sewing isn't that great but I'm working on it and I've found a bunch of other ideas that don't involve sewing, so this should be fun and interesting. I've already had a lot of fun brainstorming ideas for people. Justin's birthday is up first but I already bought his gift, maybe I'll have to figure out something homemade to go along with it.

I know a lot of people give homemade gifts, but does anyone else do all homemade gifts?

more snow pictures

If you've been to our house before you can tell how deep our snow is by looking at the fire-pit. It's almost covered! (Justin is trying out my new camera lens with this picture! It's a little something different to play with, I'm sure I'll be posting more pictures with it in the future)



Don't be fooled by these pictures, I think our boys are the only kids that have zero interest in sledding. Poor Justin just wants to take the boys sledding and they keep turning him down!

3 boys!!!

This is the picture we used on our Christmas card. 2 smiling boys both looking at the camera...perfect! :)



I like these too.



Next year we are going to have to get 3 little boys to look at the camera and smile! What am I going to do with 3 boys??? I have no idea, but it's gotta be fun right? :) To make it even better I'm going to have 3 boys under the age of 3. I have a feeling our next few years are going to be complete chaos and yet the most fun we've ever had, all at the same time!

boots and hot chocolate

I think these pictures sum up our last few days perfectly. :)

santa

We aren't going to do the whole Santa thing with our kids, I'm sure I've posted on that before so I won't repeat my reasons again. :) But the tradition of our kids sitting on Santa's lap is one thing I can't picture not doing. It wouldn't be Christmas without a picture on Santa's lap, right? I hate the photo places at the mall, it's such a rip off, so last week we took the boys to a party at my moms school and were able to take our own pictures of the boys on Santa's lap for free. Perfect. Well, perfect except that Judah wouldn't sit on his lap! He has been really into Santa (which is weird because we don't talk about Santa) so I thought he would love it, but he was more into a train on the wall of the classroom. And surprisingly Cohen willingly sat on his lap. It's so funny to me that kids rarely do what you'd anticipated!

croup and snow

Judah has croup again. I think it has been worse this time than it was the time I took him into the ER. Our doctor was able to meet Justin at the office on Saturday and get a nebulizer to us. Between doing those treatments and things like a steamy bathroom or sitting outside we've been able to manage it without going into the ER.

We did take both boys out into the snow for a little bit today. Cohen wasn't all that thrilled with the snow, but Judah had fun. I am sad for him that he's sick because we didn't let him stay out for very long. These are the type of days that little boys are supposed to spend outside coming inside only for hot chocolate breaks.



Justin built a snowman and Judah decided he needed to kick it down. It brought him great joy to do it too!







Then the boys came in and took a nice warm bubble bath complete with hot chocolates! Lucky boys!

craft time

Everyone always says that the 2nd trimester is the best part of pregnancy, and now at 24 weeks I am finally starting to get there. The last few days I have had more energy and motivation to actually get some stuff done. And along with that comes CRAFTS!!! :)
Take a look at a few we've made lately:

This robot did have a head, but Judah kept taking it off the refrigerator and throwing it away. I guess I didn't fish it out after him one time because it is now missing.

These are snowmen. Both of the boys did one. Judah's is on the right, Cohen's on the left.

I finally found a use for the bells the boys got on the Polar Express train ride.


I got several of the ideas from this blog.

who knew it would be so difficult

We've had several photo shoots trying to get the perfect Christmas card picture. I finally got one that will work, but wanted to share some of the rejects. They make me laugh.





These next 2 were in the running, but they weren't "the one".


That one is our favorite. I really wanted to use it because it is so typical of our boys. This is what our life is like on a day to day basis. I didn't choose it for 2 reasons 1. we send cards to people that have never met our kids and you can't really see their faces in this picture 2. it needed a really catchy saying and I couldn't come up with one.

Stay tuned, after I get them mailed out I'll share the winning photo!

operation potty training

Today began Judah's official potty training. We've worked a little on it here and there, but today he is in big boy underwear and we have a timer set for every 20 minutes.

Wish us success!

a tree

We got our Christmas tree yesterday. I think Judah was more excited to play in the dirt than he was to find a tree.


We got a little tree so we can put it on a table behind the couch. Away from little hands. Now we have some decorating to do.

yummy

My kids sure know how to eat cupcakes!

a day late

The boys wanted to wish their auntie a Happy Birthday!

This is an old picture (that's Judah not Cohen!), but it's one of my favorites of her. It was after Judah was past the stage of falling asleep on peoples laps, but he totally conked out!:)