After Christmas Visitors and Portland Children's Museum

After Christmas both Nannie & Grandpa and Grammy and Grampy came to visit.  They all got to spend the days playing with the kids, their new gifts and playing outside.  Noah was even able to show off his new skiing ability:)  The kids and I spent New Years Eve day in Portland at the Children's Museum where they ring in the new year at noon time.  As an added bonus I also got to stock up the freezer at Trader Joe's. 

Audrey Turns Nine Months!

This sweat pea turned 9 months old on Christmas and is so happy!  She is just so content to sit and watch her brothers play and run around. She is such an easy baby and so flexible about napping that she just kind of goes along with whatever is happening.  She loves playing with her friends at playgroup on Tuesdays and her friends at the gym on some mornings.  She is interacting with all the boys so much and is starting to get upset with they *Ben* take things away from her.  She still isn't moving anywhere (which we would never complain about;)), but is finally sitting up on her own which makes life easier for everyone.  She has two bottom teeth and, like her brothers, likes to feed herself whatever everyone else is eating. We are all so thrilled that she is part of our family!

Christmas Day 2013

Christmas Day this year was just so much fun!  The pictures sum it up pretty well, new toys and hours of fun play.  Santa brought Noah a pair of binoculars, James got his much coveted green umbrella, Ben a mailbox with letters and Audrey a pink dump truck... they were pretty happy kids:)  James had left Arnold (our shelf elf) with a roll of green wrapping paper he hoped his green umbrella would be wrapped in.  I think that he had forgotten this request and was a bit disappointed at first when he thought santa left him a roll of wrapping paper!  Merry Christmas!

Christmas Eve 2013

We had a wonderful Christmas Eve this year!  In the morning I asked the kids to go in and wake up Audrey and this is what I found... thankfully she likes them.  It was such a beautiful day! We had had an extended ice storm for about 2 days before, so the sun was a welcome sight, and it made everything just gorgeous.  We got everyone geared up and went snowshoeing.  Audrey was not super excited about being in the carrier at first, but she really did end up having a good time. James and Noah did so well on snowshoes this year and really enjoyed exploring our property in the snow. Ben tolerated being in the carrier and was pretty glad when it was over;)  We got to walk all around the pond to see what is at the back and on the other side now that it is frozen.  Snow shoeing was followed by some really fast sledding down our hill and lots of laughs.

During nap time Gabe stayed home to start the Christmas Eve soups while Noah, James and I met some friends at the movie theater to see Frozen.  It was a great movie and a really nice way to break the day.  After supper we let the kids open one present. In the present was a movie (The Incredibles) and movie snacks (a pretty rare treat:)).  We tried to have a movie night, as we thought it would be a fun way to pass the time waiting for santa... what we didn't anticipate (but in retrospect should have) was Noah's anxiety... He was so worried that santa would pass by our house because they weren't sleeping.  They were up for maybe 5 minutes past bedtime, and after asking to check the santa tracker about 10 times, we finally stopped the movie halfway through and went to bed... maybe next year:)

PreChristmas Visit North 2013

This year Gabe has to work right after Christmas, so we made our annual visit north the weekend before.  On Saturday we drove to Grammy and Grampy's house for the night. The kids got to open some presents there and were so thrilled with lots of books, dvds and two new hockey sets! In the afternoon we got to go and watch daddy play in an alumni basketball game (Schenck vs. Stearns) which was very exciting for the kids to see. We made gnocchi for supper and Noah and James got to get out for some snowmobile time on the pond.

Sunday we stayed at Nannie and Grampa's house and got to visit with lots of family.  The kids opened more presents and really seem to be enjoying the "Christmas everyday" theme of the weekend.  The hit of the day was definitely the toy chainsaw!  We missed the Witham Family and Uncle Jme and David due to the gross snow/freezing rain.  We did get to visit with Uncle Jon & his family and ALL the Pelkey's which is always an exciting time;)

Thanks for the great time everyone and for braving the elements to see us!