christmas morning

We hope you all had a wonderful Christmas with the ones you love!  Our family feels incredible lucky to be together this holiday when so many army dad's are deployed and away from their families.

Here are a couple pictures from Christmas morning at our house...

Drake loved Christmas. HE. LOVED. IT.

Cody and I had so much fun experiencing Christmas like a kid again.  Drake was so excited by everything!

 He liked shopping for the presents and wrapping the up.  He ruined one surprise fairly early, "mommy, open this, it's a flash!" Luckily he kept quiet about the rest of the packages.  I was really impressed with his patience, he didn't try to open any of them early.  Every day he would tell me who all of the packages were for and move them to a new location under the tree from time to time.

  We loved having "Pat's" help, it kept Drake from doing anything that Santa might consider naughty.

Drake's favorite thing about Christmas day may have been that he got to stay in his jammies all day long!!! He also got to eat snow doughnuts for breakfast and snack on cookies all day too!  He was bouncing off the walls, running around playing with different toys, and laughing, lots of laughing.  He was one happy little maniac.

It was Connor's first Christmas!  He had no idea what was going on, but loved the chaos.  Connor thought it was a lot of fun to sit in a huge pile of wrapping paper and make it crinkle.  Playing with his new toys wasn't too bad either!  The boys had matching jammies and looked adorable in them I must add. The hardest part about Connor's first Christmas was that it meant my baby is 7 months old!  It can't be possible, just can't. 

There are tons of stories I want to share about the holiday, little things Drake said or did, sweet snuggles with Connor, the FOOD, my lack of planning ahead, the amazing job Santa did at stretching a buck, and getting to spend extra time with Cody but this will do for now :)

all i want for christmas...

...is my two bottom teeth, and Connor got them! Now you can see the pearly whites without squinting. 

In other news, Drake is sleeping much better! We had another night without any wake-ups, WOO-HOO!

Connor has become a pretty good sitter, but still tips over from time to time.  He also does an inchworm style crawl! Time to install the safety gate on the stairs :)

merry christmas

who's who?

who's who at 6.5 months?

Obviously you can tell the difference, but they are really starting to look similar to me!  

matchy, matchy

It hadn't donned on me to dress the boys in matching outfits yet, but I am so glad it finally did! It makes me giggle looking at them. Drake also found it really neat that Connor was wearing the same shirt he was.  It did cause a little confusion, at one point in the day Drake was upset that Connor had taken his shirt.  After taking them over to the mirror the problem was resolved. :)

break on through

It was a pretty huge morning, Mr. Connor woke up with teeth!!!  We have been waiting and drooling for a long time for these bad boys.  The bottom left came through first and a couple hours later the bottom right was through too!

 here is the perfect shot of the teeth...you might have to enlarge the photo, I swear they are there!

Drake reminded me that he too has teeth and asked me to take his picture!

behind the scenes: holiday photo

On Monday, approximately 2 minutes after Cody took his boots off I had the idea to take the boys Christmas picture outside.  Cody really loves my timing...this type of thing is always happening, I need something from downstairs moments after he gets upstairs, etc. and today was no exception. He gave me a smirk and got the lader out and placed in the snow for me while I got the boys dressed in their adorable holiday sweaters.  

They were both posed perfectly, but one problem...I left my memory card inside!  So I ran back in the house hoping nobody would freeze in my absence, luckily they didn't! 

Here the cuties are!  You will see them again on our holiday card...coming soon to your mailbox!

thanksgiving

There is so much to be thankful for...and that is a great feeling!

For the holiday Thanksgiving we went to Idaho Falls to spend some time with my in-laws.  The roads had quite a bit of snow/ice on them but we made it there and back safely and without any screaming kids!!!  That alone is something to be thankful for :)

After our delicious turkey dinner Becky and Annie braved "Brown Thursday" with me. We hit up Toys R Us and Walmart and made it home just before 2 am.  Not sure that I converted either of them over to the dark side of Black Friday shopping but it was fun!

here is the crew

It was a very relaxing weekend filled with yummy food, catching up, SHOPPING, gift exchange and playing!

celebrations

Today was the 1-183rds Family Christmas party.  It was our second Christmas party (we had one over Thanksgiving in Idaho Falls that I still need to post about!)  I thought Drake would be really excited to see Santa, but he really wasn't.  He hid and almost started crying when it was finally his turn to go up. 

 Here he is doing the pick and roll

 Ready to smile now that we are a safe distance away

It also happened to be my Grandma's 78th Birthday.  Connor and I joined some of my family out for dinner to celebrate.  Drake crashed on the way home so we couldn't all go...but you can't keep this girl away from a steak dinner!

Connor with Great-Gram B

rutzyb

Tonight I had my my very first show! My cute friend Amber invited me to be in a Holiday Boutique, I couldn't say no...so I said yes, then waited until two days before to start working on my items!  So typical of me!  Anyway, I think the bad weather kept a lot of people from showing up but I am grateful for the jump start it gave me, I might actually put things for sale again in my etsy store rutzyb.

Yesterday my house was super clean...today there was paper everywhere, toys everywhere, you get the picture...a disaster! 

Here are a couple pictures I proudly snapped after setting up my table (aka Cody's camp table).  I need to develop a fun set up for my things, but was pleased with my very last minute option. 

Merry Christmas!