Christmas Celebrations

We had a lot of fun with Christmas and New Years this year!  Here are some highlights...

We decorated ornaments to give to family

We had lots of fun opening presents on Christmas morning!  Tyler "helped" all of the rest of us open ours  ;)

We enjoyed some time at the Festival of Lights with friends

Alex turned 11 months old!

 And Tyler built his first snowman! (with our 1/2 inch of snow)

I'm a little sad that it's over, the tree is gone and the decorations put away. But we are looking forward to 2012!

Tis the Season

Well, even though it's almost Christmas, I guess I should catch up on the last few holidays!

In general we have had a lot of fun this fall.  We always take an annual trip to Iron's Fruit Farm for some fun hay rides, apple goodies, and generally enjoying being out in the country. This year we lucked out with amazing weather! (although that also made the place extremely crowded, the only down side).  Tyler had a lot of fun "guiding" us through the corn maze

We also had a lot of fun on the hay ride!

After all the fall fun, it was finally Halloween! We had a really fun Halloween this year.  Our street doesn't get many trick or treaters, so we usually go visit our friends house who live around the corner on more of a main street.  This year Alex was a turtle and Tyler was Spiderman, one of his favorite characters lately.

Tyler had fun stuffing his face with candy, passing out candy to trick or treaters, and then trick or treating himself at a few houses. Our friends have a little girl who is about 3 months younger than Alex, so this year was a lot of fun having the babies together.  Mostly they enjoyed watching the other trick or treaters and trying to eat leaves (don't worry, we swooped in after this pic was taken). 

Thanksgiving followed Halloween, but I guess it's true what they say about the second child and how they have less pictures taken of them than the first... because I have no pictures from Thanksgiving (whereas with Tyler I had many)  It was  a lot of fun though!

And now it is finally Christmas time!

My dad has his christmas light spectacular set up at his house.  If you are ever in Finneytown, check it out! It is a programmed light show to about 7 songs or so. Tyler loves it and wants to watch it every single night.

I also got the kids their traditional Christmas pajamas.  I think they're so cute :)

we've had a lot of fun going to things around Cincinnati, like Light Up the Square and attending my work party at the Festival of Lights at the zoo.  Tyler was really excited to meet Santa, but Alex not so much...

We are really enjoying this Christmas season, though we're also still trying to figure out how to help the kids learn that it should be focused on Christ and giving to others, and not just all the lights, cookies, presents, and candy.  We're trying to make sure to talk about Jesus's birthday, explain why we have Christmas, etc. so hopefully it plants a seed. :)  Anyway, we have lots of fun planned the next week or two as well and hopefully I'll actually find time to post since I'll be off work for the next couple of weeks!

Monster Birthday Party

Tyler had a monster themed party this year! We had monster invitations (here), monster plates and napkins (after scouring the internet and several craft/party stores, I found them at Wal-Mart of all places!), and monster cookies and cupcakes!

I really enjoy baking, and had a lot of fun making these treats.  To create the monster cookies, I made my favorite sugar cookie recipe (here) and sugar cookie icing (here), then painted on some funny faces.

To create the cupcakes, Tyler "helped" me make funfetti cupcakes, then I piped on some buttercream "fur" and added some googly eyes.  The more googly eyes, the better!

He had a lot of fun opening his presents this year

And we all had a lot of fun trying to put everything together!

8/3

We took some pictures today to capture Alex turning 8 months old (though i'm of course a little bit behind) and Tyler turning 3 years old (though that's actually tomorrow, so I'm actually early!!!)! 

Alex is sitting up on his own, army crawling everywhere, eating cheerios & puffs, and loves exploring the house!

I told Tyler to pose for a picture, so he situated himself by the tree! He is definitely a little ham! He is growing up so fast! He's talking all the time, loves going to school, is a great big brother to Alex, and is really excited to be playing on his first soccer team starting in November.

Vacation: Part 2

Vacation was really relaxing. We spent most mornings on the beach soaking in the sun and playing in the sand, or going to the pool that was right next to the beach. We probably only got into the ocean once or maybe twice - Tyler was not a fan of the waves. And I'm not a fan of stepping on scary things. :)  Poor Alex was covered in sand head to toe.  Tyler loved digging in the sand though, and generally running around the beach. Here are some pictures from our beach time!

Vacation: Part 1

We went on vacation to Hilton Head the week of Labor Day.  It was a great time and a much needed break from everyday life!  We decided to break up the drive there into 2 days since it was about 11 hours (+a few for kid stops).  On the way there we spent our first night in Asheville, NC.  The next morning we went to Chimney Rock State Park.  The drive to the park was really cool - it turned out to lead you through "Apple Country" where every few miles there was a different farm/apple orchard.  We stopped at one and bought some fresh apples and treats - yum!  We then headed to the park.  You can see the "chimney rock" in the picture below, the park's namesake. 

There is an elevator to take you to the top of the rock where there is supposed to be a great view ... except when we got there we were told the elevator was under rennovation and we couldn't take it.  So we had a choice - carry Alex & Tyler up around 500 stairs to the top, or hike the other trails. We opted for the hiking. :)  Tyler walked for around 5 minutes or so, then of course wanted to be carried. We weren't prepared with a carrier for Tyler, so Ed had to carry him basically the whole time.

We finally made it to the end.  At the end was a beautiful waterfall that you could play in. I couldn't get too close because I was carrying Alex in a carrier and couldn't climb over the rocks to get to the base of the waterfall, but Tyler & Ed had a great time playing in the water and exploring the rocks!

After our hike, we got back in the car and headed to the beach! We finally got there in the early evening, and headed to the beach to expore.

The whole week was great! More pictures to come!

Fun in the Sun

We took the opportunity of having a Saturday morning with nothing to do to go up to the local water park at Winton Woods.  It was a lot of fun (and so affordable)!!  Alex (mostly) enjoyed his first water park experience.  Tyler loved it, especially the water slide!