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!

Beauty and the Beast

Grammy and PopPop took us to see Beauty and the Beast last night. Alyssa was very excited about it, but as it got closer she started acting really whiney. I was a little frustrated that she was acting like that when she was getting to go to such a nice play. We got there and she was still acting funny, saying she was tired, which she was since it was bedtime and she hadn't napped. She came and sat on my lap about 15 minutes into it and and I knew what was up. She was burning up. So we only lasted until intermission. She really wasn't feeling well. PopPop took us home so Grammy and Sarah could watch the rest of the show. It was really good! The first half anyway. Alyssa was pretty bummed she didn't see her favorite part (when belle and the beast start falling in love). And she asked if we could come back tomorrow, sad :( The funny thing is, this isn't the first time she has been sick at a show like this. Last year when we went to see The Rockettes she was sick too. Man, better luck next time. Thank you Grammy and PopPop!

Christmas Lights

Our cul-de-sac is famous for Christmas lights. When we tell people where we live we've had people say, "oh, thats the neighborhood that has a ton of Christmas lights." And then we say,"yep,that's our cul-de-sac." Two of our neighbors have been putting on an impressive show for 20 years. It pretty much looks like National Lampoon's Christmas vacation. Our landlord was nice enough to leave all their decorations, which made it a lot easier for us. We have about 1/20th of the lights that our neighbors have, but it's the most we've ever done. You will have to drive by and see for yourself!

Thanksgiving

Mason's first Thanksgiving




Alyssa checking out the Black friday ads.






Olive fingers!






Eli trying to steal some of Mason's puffs. It was funny!





Playing piano at Grammy's. We may have some budding artists.