Christmas Pictures

We hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas! I know we did. This year was the most fun so far since Ryan actually understands most of what we told him about it. He was up bright and early at 6am on Christmas morning. Poor Lucas was sick and slept in until about 9:30, so the boys opened their presents separately, which actually was quite nice.
Since Ryan was too excited to sleep, Dave and I dragged ourselves out of bed to go check out what was under the tree. Ryan ran out first, gasped, and with the widest eyes I've ever seen, said "Santa brought this for ME?". He was referring to Kota, the giant green triceratops that he's been begging for since the first time he saw it at Toys R Us. He then spent the entire day with Kota, not leaving his side. It took him a good 20 minutes to finally sit down and start opening his other gifts. When he was done he said "wow, Santa is a pretty great guy" and then hopped right back onto his new best friend.

Lucas joined us a couple of hours later. Santa, Grandpa & Grandma and Auntie, Uncle Rick & Gavin got him more gifts than any 5 month old needs! He had a great time ripping the paper and his big brother did the rest of the work.

After presents, we watched the Disney parade and started preparing for our guests. Grandma, Grandpa, Uncle Rick, Auntie Jaclyn and Gavin joined us for a nice Christmas dinner.

I was too busy cooking to take pictures, but here's Ryan....STILL playing with his dinosaur

The three amigos

And Lucas opening even more presents

Pajama Playdate

Today we went to a Christmas play date and the best part-we got to wear our pajamas! Ryan was super excited when I took off his pajamas this morning and put on another pair. He immediately grabbed 2 dinosaurs and said he was bringing one for him and one for Dru to sleep with. It took me about 10 minutes to explain that he wasn't sleeping over at Dru's house!

Dru, Marley and their mommy always host such fun play dates and today was no different. Ryan, Lucas and I all had a wonderful day. Thank you Angie, Dru & Marley!!

After some playtime and lunch, the kiddos got to frost and decorate their own cookies. Ryan started off nice and easy with the icing, but...

after stepping away to make Lucas a bottle I came back to find that he decided that he needed an entire jar of sugar on top. Luckily he ate most of his lunch so he was stuffed after just 2 bites!

Lucas' very first Christmas present!

Thank you Alex!!

Thomas and his mommy made Ryan's day with this dinosaur play set. Normally I have to bribe him or drag him kicking and screaming from play dates, but once he opened this gift he took off and then he reappeared a few minutes later with his shoes and said "come on mommy, let's get these guys home." Then he took it with him to bed for his nap! :) Thank you Thomas!

Ryan and Landon decided to play everyone a Christmas tune before we headed home.

Another busy weekend

We had another weekend jam packed with holiday (and birthday) fun. First up, a Christmas play date on Friday. Thank you Jess, Joey & Caleb!! Ryan had a great time hanging out with his buddies and playing with Caleb's toys.

This is the first time that he actually sat through an entire craft! He LOVES his hand print reindeer and will tell anyone that will listen all about it.


This isn't the entire group, but I had to post it because I captured a very rare moment...Ryan is looking at my camera and smiling! (I have to admit, it's because I promised him a Hershey's kiss, but I've gotta do what I've gotta do!) Normally he does everything BUT look at the camera. Y'all will have to tell me if I'm the only one that dreams of the day he will cooperate for photos??

The whole gang


On Saturday we got to celebrate Charlie's 1st Birthday at Little Bear's Indoor Playground. Ryan loved it! It was our first time, but we'll definitely be going back!

Happy 1st Birthday Miss Charlie!

I had put Lucas in this swing which made Ryan want a turn. I think he exceeded both the height and weight limit because it was on the verge of tipping over the entire time, but what Lucas gets to do, Ryan wants to do.


Lucas was perfectly content watching all of the big kids play. (He can sit up on his own now! I keep meaning to take pictures.)


I keep telling Dave that I wanted to do one wall of Ryan's room in chalkboard paint, so I'm glad we went here first-apparently it's fun to write on, not so fun to clean!

And the best part...

After Charlie's ladybug party we drove straight over to Gavin's spiderman party!

Happy 4th Birthday Gavin, we love you very very much!

Most of you know by now that Ryan is obsessed with temporary tattoos, so he was psyched when he got a spiderman on his hand

And even more excited about the web-slinging fun he got to have with a big old can of silly string (hopefully Santa doesn't keep any of this stuff on his sleigh because we don't want any!)

And yesterday, we were lucky enough to get to go to yet another play date with Ryan's buddies to do a special Christmas craft. Thank you Dana, Thomas & Nicholas!

Unfortunately, here's my best group shot.


While all the moms worked hard on their crafts, the boys found Hungry Hungry Hippos and Elefun to be more entertaining.

So, Lucas has a jumperoo but seems to get bored pretty quickly. Rather than buy an exersaucer we borrowed Landon's. Lucas likes it, but Ryan loves it! Last night he was pushing Lucas all around the house making car noises. I asked him what he was doing and he said "Lucas and me are going to dinosaur world, we love you, bye!" First I laughed, then I grabbed the camera!

Santa, a play date and cookies

Well, I still can't get the pictures from the tree lighting to download-but here's Ryan's Santa picture. We waited in line for over an hour just so he could ask for a Ceratosaurus. Once it finally came to our turn, Lucas had gone to the car with daddy to eat, so Ryan got to do this one solo.

Yesterday we went to a Christmas play date and as a special surprise, Santa stopped by! (a great big thank you to Tara, Randy, Olivia & Alex!). I thought for sure Ryan would be excited. Ever since he saw Santa at the tree lighting he's been telling me that he changed his mind and wants a Spinosaurus instead-all week he's been saying "I better tell Santa quick". But, instead of telling him about changing his mind, he ran from him...literally! After all of the other kids sat on Santa's lap, he came looking for Ryan, who was hiding under the train table!! Santa proceeded to follow him as he ran circles around the house. Not sure what that was all about!! This morning I went into his room and he greeted me with "mommy, I'm very sad that I wasn't nice to Santa". I told him we'd see if Santa was available for a visit this weekend so that he could say he was sorry. :)

Luke, on the other hand is a big Santa fan...

Ryan refused to hold Lucas in the group shot so we talked Landon into it, but by the time we got them settled, all the other kids had disappeared. Landon was so sweet with him and is going to be an excellent big brother!!

Last night, the weather was blah and we were bored, so we decided to make some sugar cookies. A few months ago I was grocery shopping and in the peanut butter aisle I found a dinosaur sandwich cutter-best thing I ever bought! Ryan refused to eat sandwiches for as long as I can remember, but now he asks for dinosaur sandwiches and thinks its hysterical to bite their tails off (strange, I know, but whatever works!) Anyway, he wanted to make dinosaur cookies, so that's exactly what we did.

We let him do his own thing with the decorations...not our best idea!

Ryan's brachiosaurus cookies


Lucas watched :)

This is a random picture. Dave watched the boys while I did some Christmas shopping on Tuesday and he took some pictures of Lucas, I thought this one was cute.

Holiday Fun

I am having a terrible time with our computer tonight-I can't download pictures off of our camera and the scanner isn't working...so, I'll try to add the pictures once I figure out what's going on.
We had a busy busy weekend! We kicked off the weekend with a play date at Cooper & Fletcher's house. The boys and I had a great time as always with great friends. Thanks to Nadine, Cooper & Fletcher for letting the kids destroy their house! :)
After leaving the play date we headed over to grammy & papa's house to get ready and went straight to Hiram for the tree lighting. Ryan and Gavin had a great time at the petting zoo, they met Santa's reindeer and visited with Santa. Ryan asked for a Ceratosaurus (shocker!). (These are the pictures I can't download)
On Saturday, we woke up bright and early to meet up with some friends at a nursing home in Kennesaw to spread some holiday cheer! Ryan wasn't too sure about the whole thing, but Lucas was a big hit with the ladies!

After that, we drove straight to Yorkville to have some photos taken with Santa. It turns out that Lucas LOVES Santa, he stared and smiled at Santa for the entire photo shoot-Ryan...not so much. We ordered a bunch of pictures that we won't get back for a week, but here's the 1 shot I was able to take with my own camera. We also got some with Ryan, Gavin & Lucas too. I'll post them when we get them.

And finally, on Sunday we drove up to Cartersville to check out Petit Creek Farms Drive-thru light display. They also have a hayride, which was our original plan, but we decided to let Lucas stay nice and warm in the car.

On the way home we stopped at a house in Rockmart-these people have an insane amount of lights throughout about 2 acres of their yard and let people drive-thru, all while they sit out front by a fire dressed as Santa & Mrs. Claus. Now that's Christmas spirit! I took some pictures of all of the inflatables lining the driveway.

Sorry for the lack of pictures--I'll try to get them posted soon!

Cookie swap play date

Today Ryan got to play with his friends at a cookie swap play date. He got to enjoy the play date part and us mommies got to enjoy the cookie swap part! Thank you to our amazing hosts-Kim, Jack & Caroline! We had a great time.

Ry even got to do a Christmas wreath craft (which he came home and immediately put on the tree)

My attempt at a group shot while trying to convince Ryan to get in the picture