Post Christmas Visit up North 2012

I am not even sure where to begin here!  There really wasn't much we didn't do during this trip and there weren't many people we didn't get to see. We stayed the first two nights with Grampy and Grammy Civiello, where the kids opened more presents and had so much fun playing with their new cardboard playhouse.... until Ben woke up... he thought that going in and out of the window was a great idea and that was the end of clubhouse fun;)  We got a huge snowstorm while we were there and were able to take full advantage of walking on the pond and snowmobiling.  We did even get James to get on this year which was very exciting!  Noah absolutely loved snowmobiling  this year and did so well driving solo around the figure 8 "track" daddy made for him on the pond.  James still refuses to try out the tractor, but one of Noah's favorite parts was plowing the road with Grampy.  Benjamin really loves playing out in the snow so long as he has a path to walk on;)

We spent the next two nights with Grandpa and Nannie, and for one night Aunt Amy and Trey stayed over too... thanks snowstorm #2 for keeping them with us;) The first day we spent "snowshoeing" and sliding in their yard. Day #2 brought a trip to Uncle Jon's farm where the kids did more sledding and all took a turn driving the Bobcat to plow the snow... after playing with the animals of course. Saturday afternoon we went to watch Mikayla's basketball game, went sledding with the Pelkey girls and had a fun pizza party with the whole family!  Thanks for coming everyone, it was so great to see you all!!

On this trip I think I actually took zero pictures, so thank you to Grammy, Nannie and Hillary for sharing yours!! 

Christmas 2012 and Orange Peeling

We had an absolutely wonderful Christmas this year. Gabe had some time off a few days before so we really felt like we got to spend lots of fun family time together... which, shockingly, makes for much happier kids and parents;) On Christmas Eve we spent the morning making some soups... including taking on Great Grammy Civiello's meatball soup "recipe" which turned out pretty great. Noah, James and I attended the Christmas Eve church service which is always a great family pageant event and to top it all off we were able to get a decent family picture in front of the tree!  The kids set out the milk and cookies for santa and excitedly went to bed.

Christmas morning we had some EXCITED boys.  Santa brought everything they wanted and more... Ben's first stop was the left over milk and cookies on the table from Santa.... I think him spilling the milk was just a distraction so he could eat the cookies while we got some paper towels... next year maybe we will ask Santa to eat all of the cookies;)  Present opening took what felt like an eternity given that they so badly wanted to play with each gift.  As always they received more than they needed, but loved it all. Thank you everyone!  They spent the rest of the day playing while Gabe and I took down and packed up all of the Christmas decorations... The neighbors were probably judging us for having our tree on the curb by 1pm, but oh well:)  We made a great lamb roast for dinner and finished packing for our trip north tomorrow!

The bottom picture is of James's new found use for all of the "picking" he does.  He loves to peel clementines and he is really good at it.  They are pretty juicy though and had gotten the juice in his eyes more than once... here is his solution... genius!

Christmas Cookies

We are planning to visit our families up north the day after Christmas, so I started packing a few days ago all of the "winter gear" we would need..... the boys had a great time with their skating/sledding/skiing helmets.  Seriously.... padded walls in our next house?  All of them put on their helmets and were running into each other, falling to the floor head first, wrestling, etc...... I just watched in horror as they were having a ball and I was fearing for our walls over the next 5 years... how do they know that helmets = more dangerous tricks??  Who will be our first ER visit..... shall we take a poll??  The up side to this, though, was that as soon as I got the helmet on Ben he stood up on the couch and fell back hitting his head on the coffee table... unscathed and laughing thanks to the helmet... maybe permanent helmeting??

Next on our Christmas preparation list was cookies for Santa.  Given the difficulty of baking from scratch with an active 15 month old in the house we opted for mix cookies this year (a mistake I probably won't repeat, but it worked fine). Mistake #2 was the frosting... I don't often buy canned frosting, so all I had in the pantry was orange halloween frosting... I thought I would have to use LOTS of red or green food coloring to compensate for the orange tint... I was wrong... just a little would have been enough:)  Even after baths everyone was stained for about 48 hours.... lesson learned, but the kids obviously very much enjoyed it!

Visit with Santa

Nanny and Grandpa came to visit this weekend and we tried to squeeze as much Christmas cheer and activity as we could into one short visit:)  Our first stop on Saturday was the mall... I wasn't super excited to be at the mall on a Saturday just before Christmas, but thankfully we didn't have any shopping to do.  The Maine Mall has a fantastic model train display run by some very enthusiastic older gentlemen.  This kept this kids very entertained while we waited in line to see Santa.  James and Noah were thrilled with their Santa visit... Benjamin had other feelings toward santa, which left us with a classic "picture with Santa".  After our Santa visit the kids purchased some reindeer antlers, that have been a surprising hit with everyone, and got to take a ride on the carousel in the mall.

There is a really neat parade of lights in Portland harbor each year at Christmastime, but we have never made it.  This year we had the opportunity, but the frigid temperatures and us running a bit late made it more of a driving by to see the boats in the parade instead;)  By the time we made it to Bug Light Park the boats were already on their way to Portland.  By the time we figured out the best place to watch from (which is the ferry terminal in the Old Port... FYI) we were able to drive down Commercial Street and see the fireworks display at the end.  The kids were very disappointed that there way not an actual parade with candy, but the fireworks made up for it;)  

Christmas 2012 Preparations

The kids have been talking about Christmas since before Halloween, so this has been a long wait for them;)  I tried to put off getting a tree as long as possible because I knew it would be a problem for Ben to not be able to leave it alone, but the kids kept insisting, so we went to get it.  James was so excited that he started decorating it before we even took the netting off.  We have far fewer decorations on the tree than ever before... only those that wouldn't get broken went on the tree this year;)  The kids have had an absolute ball going through all of the decorations and playing with all of the "new Christmas toys". We have done a little decorating each day, mainly while Ben is napping.  Grandpa sent down some of his special Chex Mix which we let the kids snack on... when it fell on the floor James and Ben immediately sat down and started shoving as much into their mouths as they could.... thankfully the floor was *relatively* clean... not much food gets wasted in this house;)

The bottom picture is from last Saturday when we took the kids to see the Sesame Street Live show at the Civic Center in an effort to take advantage of Portland's offerings while we are still here.  The kids loved it and were all quite entertained by all of the music.