She's all girl!

Karissa LOVES her Christmas presents. She is wearing an outfit from her Aunties Brittany & Elyse, it's a little big but I love it!  She accessorized with her new purse and beads.  She is teething right now and has a bit of a cold in these pictures so you can see her poor raw little lip. 

This aquarium Tyson and Karissa got from their great uncle Mike.  She really likes to watch the fish swim by. 

Christmas Day 2010

We had a wonderful Christmas!!!  Aunt Julie spend the night so that she could be with us to watch the kids in all their excitement Christmas morning.  Sue joined us too as we let the kids walk out and discover what Santa had brought.  Karissa be-lined for the bead necklaces in her stocking and Tyson was over joyed to see a Transformer for him.  As gifts were handed out one by one Tyson was more excited about giving the gifts he had chosen for each of us than opening his own.  His thoughtfulness and giving heart amazes me sometimes!  

Karissa I think was a little overwhelmed by all that was going on.  The poor thing wasn't feeling well having had a cold for the past few days plus teething on top of that. Her poor little nose was raw and you could see in her face that she wasn't feeling good.  It took her some time to get into the whole unwrapping thing, but she eventually caught on and was having fun. 

Once all the gifts were opened, we got ready for breakfast.  It is a new tradition, started last year, that we have Eggs Benedict for our Christmas breakfast.  It is definitely not the most healthy food, but it is Ben's favorite and oh, so good!!!!

Later on in the day we had the privilege of joining Doug and Sue and many other family members for a early Christmas pot luck dinner.  Lots of yummy food to gorge ourselves with and lots of good company.  To top off the day my brother, Nigel, drove out to spend the next several days with us.  I don't get to see my family too often and to have one of them join us for Christmas was extra special.  I am looking forward to the time we will have to spend with him!

 Thanks so much for spending Christmas Eve and Christmas morning with us Julie!  We sure loved having you!

 Tyson told me weeks ago that he wanted to get a baby for Karissa. I took him out shopping and he chose the perfect one...she LOVES her baby!

This is the gift Tyson gave to me.  He even wrote his name and "mom" all by himself!

 Now we have another game we can play together!

 Tyson was SOOOO... excited to give this game to Daddy.  So excited in fact that he told Dad about it the day we bought it.  He picked it out all by himself.  He loves to play the Wii with Daddy!

 Karissa's first My Little Pony.  Ben was so excited to give this to her, he picked it out just for her.

 Robot Legos set.  Tyson loves robots!

Christmas Eve Cookies

Growing up, it was a tradition in my family to make sugar cookies for Santa on Christmas Eve.  Since I always loved that tradition I wanted to carry it on with Tyson and Karissa.  We invited Aunt Julie to spend the night with us so we could have fun with her too!  Tyson cut out the cookies, I baked them, then Julie, Tyson and I all helped to decorate them.  Then of course we all helped to eat many of them when we were through. Yes, we did save a few for Santa to enjoy too!  They sure were yummy!!! 

Preschool Christmas

It was my week to teach Tyson's preschool and what fun it was.  I love Christmas so I really enjoyed coming up with crafts and games for the boys to play. I had so much fun I had to post this!

 One of the boys was unable to come the first day so there are only six of them here.  We sure missed him!

They love the silly pictures!

The first day we painted snowman photo ornaments, and made beaded candy cane ornaments.  The lesson for the day was on service and giving and the letter that was taught was the letter "C" (thus the candy canes). I made some candy cane reindeer for each of them to take home and for the service and giving portion of the lesson I made little mangers for each of the boys and gave them each a bag of straw and a little baby Jesus.  Their assignment for the week was to do nice things, give extra hugs and kisses, etc. and for each kind deed they were to put a piece of straw in the manger.  The goal was to get enough straw in the manger to make it nice and soft for when they placed baby Jesus in it Christmas morning.  Tyson was having fun with it all week and milking it a bit but he was really trying to make the manger as soft as possible.



The second day was our Christmas party, filled with lots of fun stuff. First we played pin the nose on Rudolf, then we made marshmallow snowmen.  We played "Freeze" where the boys danced around to Christmas music until the music stopped, at which point they had to freeze in place.  That was entertaining to say the least.  Our final game was the "snowball toss".  Basically it was the beanbag toss only they tossed marshmallows.  Things were pretty chaotic most of the time but hopefully the boys all had a good time! 

Here are pictures of each of the boys with their snowmen.  They each did a fantastic job!!! 

 As they left they all got their own personalized little stocking filled with candy and their snowman ornaments with their pictures in them.  Their ornaments each turned out so cute! 

Daddy's helper

Ben was installing a smoke detector earlier this month and Karissa wanted to be right there with him.  I thought it was pretty cute.

Gingerbread train

Okay, I am finally posting this.  It has been a couple weeks now since we did this but better late than never, eh?  I actually bought this train last year but I think I forgot or we just never had a chance to do it, something like that. It's a good thing these aren't meant for eating!

Tyson was excited to do this project and he thought it was the coolest thing that it was a train!  Grandma and Grandpa joined us and mom was the frosting "squirter".  Tyson liked to make the train his own, telling mom where to put the frosting so he could add the candy detail.  He used some of the ideas from the picture on the box, but he had quite a few of his own.  He still tells me when he looks at his train, "that sure was fun, mom!"  It sure does make me feel good to know that he likes to do things with mom.  I LOVE the memories we are creating and look forward to when Karissa can join us in our adventures!

  

You created a masterpiece, Buddy, way to go!!!  I sure LOVE all your creations and I look forward to making another one with you next year!!!  

The artist and his masterpiece!

Silly photos

After we made the candy cane ornaments, Tyson wanted to take some silly pictures with mom.  So I taught him how to set the timer on the camera so that we could be in the pictures together.  The outcome...well, pretty silly!   We both were laughing pretty hard through it all and having a great time!  Tyson loves to be silly! Can't help but love that boy!!!

 Not the most flattering, I know!