The Polar Express

We had a big weekend with lots of activities! Sunday we went on the Santa train in Canon City. It's a lot like the Polar Express, we wore our jammies, had cocoa and cookies and went to the North Pole. It was really cute.



Alyssa and Mason in their Christmas jammies. (Thats our new family picture in the background, love it!)



Sweet boy



Mason looks huge! He's really not that big!




Getting ready to board the train.









Mason spent about half the train ride looking out the window like this. He loved looking out the window even when there wasn't much to see. It was nice that he was so entertained!





The "real" Santa



Telling Santa she wants a dollhouse for Christmas. My mom, Bethany and I have been working on restoring a dollhouse that has been in our family for 100 years. My great, great grandfather made it for my great grandmother in 1910. Then my grandma had it when she was little. My grandma gave it to me for Christmas when I was 3, and now it's going on to the next generation. I'm really excited to give it to her and hopefully she won't mind that it's not from Santa.

It's been really fun doing all this christmasy stuff, but I hope Alyssa isn't missing the true meaning of Christmas. How easy it is to get busy and wrapped up in all things "Christmas" and not focus on what truly matters. We are reading through the Christmas story and doing a cute little nativity activity. I really hope her 4 year old heart can understand a little of the miracle of Jesus being born as a baby, for us.

It's a bird, It's a plane, It's...Santa!

Nate's work put on a really cool Christams party for the kids on Saturday. Santa and his elves jumped out of a plane and parachuted down to where we were waiting. It was neat.






Santa!







One of me favorites of these two :) Bethany has been hanging out with us a lot and joining in all the fun!



Alyssa knew this wasn't the "real" Santa. She said she could tell he was just dressed up like Santa. We decided Santa probably didn't know how to jump out of an airplane.

Ice skating

Alyssa went ice skating for the first time on Friday. She really liked it and actually did pretty well. She was unsure at first but by the end she would skate holding on to just one persons hand. It was fun!



Ready to go!




One of my favorite pics of the two of them :)

Christmas playdate

Had a playdate today with Emily, caleb and Ryan and Katie and Fisher. The kids made ornaments and decorated cookies. It was fun to visit with friends from WA!



Decorating cookies




Fisher




Emily and Caleb




Alyssa's creation




Mason and Ryan



All the kiddos, too bad nobody is looking.

Some Christmas Festivities

Santa breakfast







Mason was adorable with Santa. He just wanted to snuggle up in his beard. Santa loved him too and said he wanted to keep him. This was after he'd seen probably a couple hundred kids. I guess most babies aren't a huge fan of Santa.




Our gingerbread house. We worked on this when Nate was home last weekend.






Some of Mason's new moves.... He can pull up on some low things like the fireplace, and is trying really hard to get the coordination to crawl. He's close, but the scooting works fine too.



He didn't get up on his own but he stood there for like 5 minutes.




Alyssa and Caleb



Emily and her kids are here to visit so we've been hanging out with them. It's so hard to get a good picture! We are going ice skating with them tonight. I'll let ya know how that goes!