Merry Christmas!

With lots of love!

Lucas dances with baby SpiderMan

Just click on the "Play" button ( > ) on the bottom left corner to play the video.

Snow Day Fun!

We had more snow yesterday, then freezing rain overnight that added a layer of ice on top. So today, we sledded! John blew up our inner tube and we sledded down our driveway. It was more fun than I thought it would be for a relatively small hill, we had a fun time! It is really cold out there though, especially when the wind blows!

A view of our frozen trees:




The boys in their ski bibs before we headed out:



The front yard's snow. The boys are sitting on the retaining wall but you'd never know it from all the snow piled up under them:



Josh starting a trip down the hill!

Snow day fun video!

Turn your head, I couldn't figure out how to rotate this video, sorry!


It took me several tries to just get it uploaded, I've been having a lot of difficulty getting videos up on Blogger since August. Hope this one works!

The Holiday Express

Last year, Josh had two train rides with Santa. First, we took the Polar Express out of Hood River, a two-hour round-trip drive from Portland. The Polar Express followed the story from the book, with servings of hot chocolate, a reading from the book, and then our arrival at the North Pole, where Santa and his elves got on board and came through the train, taking pictures and visiting with each child, and handing out bells as well. Josh loved it. (Lucas was only 6 months old, so he could take it or leave it).

But then, he was also invited on a second train ride in Portland with his buddy Ben, in which Santa also came through and handed out candy canes. It seemed to us that he loved them equally, and really only remembered "Santa" and "train." So this year, we saved ourselves the drive and only booked the local Holiday Express ride. We went last weekend, on a frigid night that seemed much too cold at the time, but it has been snowing ever since (a rarity in Portland, which hardly ever gets snow and never gets 7 days of snow in a row!) so I guess we were lucky.

Here are Josh and Ben after we boarded:



and Mommy and Lukie:



Here comes Santa!! It was very fun seeing him make his way toward us, the boys could barely contain their excitement:



A big hug from Josh:



And nothing but tears from Lukie! (again--he also cried when we saw Santa for their picture earlier in the month)

He still got a candy cane from Santa though, which he loved (me, not so much, what with the exceedingly sticky hands and face afterward):



Josh and Daddy were pretty happy too:



Overall, a very cold but very fun night.

Then, as it turns out, Josh does remember the Polar Express ride. As we've read the book at bedtime this month, Josh has talked about when we rode the Polar Express, on the "other" Christmas (he doesn't use temporal words like "last year" or "yesterday" yet; it's just the "other" one). He remembers getting the hot chocolate and, especially, getting his bell. But he isn't disappointed this year, the Holiday Express was satisfying enough and he's thrilled to have ridden with Santa again. But next year, it may be back to Hood River RR for us.



Brothers. They kill me with their cuteness sometimes (lots of times).

Tis the season

Well, before the snow hit we had plenty of Christmas activities planned to carry us through the holiday season. But a couple parties were cancelled due to the snow, and we stayed home and warm instead of seeing Zoo Lights or the Christmas Ships (although there's still time). But even at home we found some holiday fun.

Here is our tree, now inside, lighted and decorated. We had to keep the glass ornaments off the bottom, after Lucas' curiousity broke several right off the bat. My Aunt Pat sent the boys some stuffed ornaments they could color, so those are taking care of the bottom, where nothing can be broken! Thanks Aunt Pat!



When the first boxes arrived, Josh thought that meant it was Christmas--after all, there were presents under the tree, which meant there were presents to open! But we explained the wait and made a calendar so he could count down the days, and then the boys moved on to the second best thing about receiving boxes of presents: the box! It's a spaceship, it's a fort, it's everything they need it to be.

The Christmas Tree Farm

We made our annual trek to the Christmas tree farm Saturday. It was a dry day here, which is somewhat rare in December, so it was busy. We found our tree right away, but kept looking a bit to make sure. But we didn't want to wander too far and let someone else sneak in and take our tree! We are very pleased with it. It has great color, proportions, and size, and looks fantastic in our house.

Here is our chosen tree, still in the ground:


Daddy makes the first cuts:


Josh is helping out with such determination (while Lucas wandered all about, eating branches):


Josh's turn at the saw:

Success!

Miscellaneous unposted photos

Things have been busy here for any number of reasons, and I haven't posted since my birthday, I think. We had a great celebration with some friends on the weekend before, then celebrated Thanksgiving at home, caught the Macy's Christmas parade in Portland Friday morning, and then went to some friends' house at the Oregon coast for the rest of Thanksgiving weekend.

Josh has really been into wearing my boots. They make him feel like either a cowboy or a rock star or a rock star cowboy. He is surprisingly mobile in them, despite a 3 or 4-inch heel. He runs all around and feels so cool. Here he is rocking out on Dad's guitar with Mom's boots and his favorite groupie: (and just look at that face!)



This was just a super cute picture of the two of them bonding and watching what was probably Spongebob. They get along so remarkably well. Which is not to say there aren't fights over toys, but they really love and enjoy one another. Every night after I get Lukie ready for bed, I tell him to go out and kiss Josh goodnight, and to my surprise now he just does it (he is starting to follow a lot of instructions, which caught us off guard because we didn't really realize he understood what we were saying). It is so cute to see them kiss and hug goodnight.



Here we are at the coast. Gary and Elizabeth live one block inland from this stretch, which was just gorgeous.





And finally, like the instructions we were surprised to see Lucas follow, he also surprised us when he started doing the movements as baby Spiderman sang "the itsy bitsy spider." Here he is doing the spider part, with his little fingers together. He also does the "wash the spider out" movement, and then the "up came the sun" movement (arms in a circle over his head). So, so cute.