christmas

We had a very nice Christmas!

The boys made cookies for Santa Claus on Christmas Eve.  I think this was a highlight.  Kara made the sugar cookie dough the day before and so when Kara got home from work on Christmas Eve we quickly assembled the troops to get the cookies all cut out and decorated before bedtime.

Here are the boys paying close attention to the instructions.  Actually I think both boys are just trying to figure out when they get to eat the dough.

And watching them decorate the cookies was the best part.  I think Jakob managed to get 10 sprinkles on the cookie and 500 sprinkles on the floor and table.

Alex only fared a bit better because his sprinkles were smaller!

The finished product.  The boys each got to decorate a big gingerbread cookie for Santa.  Here they are leaving cookies for Santa trying to eat Santa's cookies.

I wrapped the gifts after the boys went to bed on Christmas Eve while I indulged in a bit of Home Alone.  It was perfect!  And Kara worked hard in the kitchen getting food ready for our Christmas dinner the next day.  Here is a picture of the tree once all the gifts were wrapped for the boys.

 
The boys woke-up in the morning completely oblivious to the gifts under the Christmas tree.  Here are the boys ignoring the gifts.

But then suddenly ... GIFTS!!!!

And Jakob wasted no time tearing into each of the presents.  We had to do some wrangling to make sure the boys were open the right presents.

It took Alex a bit longer to get the hang of opening presents.  I love this picture.  Alex was just watching Jakob to see what the deal was with the presents.

"I'm not so sure about this."

"Now I got it! This is fun Mommy!"

Our problem was the toddler attention span.  Of course we had to play with each gift right after we opened it.  I think this is why it took us until afternoon to open all the presents.

And sometimes it took a tag team effort to get the job done.

And at the end of the day the only toy I really needed to get Jakob was the Yo Gabba Gabba figurines.  He is a bit obsessed.  You can even see them sitting on the gift in the previous picture.

The boys took a nap after all the gift unwrapping excitement.  We then had some family over for Christmas dinner.

This is a wonderful picture of the boys with Grandma and Grandpa.  There are no words that can adequately describe how blessed I feel to have my parent's so involved with the boys.  A story - We had to wake Jakob up from his nap on Christmas day because our family was due to arrive in only a few minutes.  Jakob went into full on meltdown mode and there was not a single thing Kara or I could do to calm him down.  I just kept thinking to myself, "Grandma is coming over.  Grandma is coming over." because I knew the moment that my mother walked into the room Jakob would calm down.  And it worked.  Jakob immediately reached for Grandma when she walked into the door and he was quiet and smiling in only a few seconds.  The boys adore them to pieces.  And so do we.  We are blessed.

This is also another fabulous picture of Great Aunt Judy with Jakob.  Again.  We are so blessed.

And of course the boys were spoiled with even more gifts.  And this time Alex did not hesitate in tearing open the paper.

It was a wonderful day.

Merry Christmas.

Mary