Christmas Eve

We spent Christmas Eve at our friend Jen's with her family and our other good friends the Nazworths.

It was a great time of food and watching all the kids (6 in total). The biggest hit amongst the three 2 year olds were the xmas lollipops.

Here is Noah enjoying his.

Lucas with his.

And Lucas, Brandon, and Noah all showing theirs to each other.

Polar Express Train

Every year the Railroad Museum in old town Sacramento does a Polar Express Train ride during the holiday season which includes an hour long ride along the river with the story being told and cookies and hot chocolate served. There is also a visit to the North Pole where Santa comes on board and delivers bells to all the children "who believe." In order to get the boys ready, we watched the movie several times (which I must admit I still didn't completely understand) and the boys happily call is the "polar conspress."



Here are the boys with their bells (ans yes, all the kids were encouraged to wear their jammies). Here is Noah on the train with our good friends the Kornaks kids Max and Alex sitting across the table from him

Here are the boys coloring at the station while we waited to board the train.

Here I am with Lucas in old town in front of a train (yes, it was quite cold out!)

Christmas Tree

When I was growing up every year we would go the mountains to cut down our Christmas tree. This year for the first time we did the same with the boys. We joined Jen (our surrogate & good friend) and her family (daughter Casey, baby son Shawn, her Mom Joyce and her fiance Larry).

Thanksgiving

Sorry for the long time between postings, not really sure where the time has gone :)

For the first time we hosted Thanksgiving at our house this year and were lucky enough to have my parents and sister & family all over for 2 nights. The four cousins (l to r: Noah, Lucas, Melina, Kai) had a great time playing together.




They all also had fun having Grandma and Grandpa read them the Curious George books they brought over and over and over and over...