December fun

So as to not get any further behind on blogging, I decided to post all our December stuff in one post. This is kind of picture heavy...sorry!

We started off the month with a fun morning at the Robertson Reporter for our annual gingerbread house party. Or in this case, Pop Tart houses. :) Mom E was kind enough to prepare the houses and icing...I just had to bring a little candy. Last year Bubs had no interest whatsoever in decorating a gingerbread house, and he pretty much played with trains the whole time. This time he did much better and was more into the decorating. And neither of the kids ate as much candy as you might imagine, which is pretty impressive considering what a big sweet tooth the Bean has. The Bean's roof collapsed and Mom E had to do a little repair work, but other than that, their houses turned out very nicely. The houses were pretty much destroyed and salvaged for parts by the next day, FYI. The Pop Tarts and candy just sitting around was way too tempting!

Fast forward a few days in December to Christmas. We went to Mimi and Grandpaw's house for a few days and had a blast. The Bean got a lot of princess stuff, including a princess "laptop", princess sleeping bag, Beauty and the Beast DVD, and princess dolls. She also got a big doll house and doll house stuff...and she pretty much loved every single present! Bubs got mostly vehicle-related stuff, including a remote-control car, Thomas the Train stuff, a small racetrack, and toy golf clubs. And he loved it all. I got a Cricut, which I am super excited about trying out! RR got mostly money b/c he is harder to shop for. :) We had a birthday party for Jesus on Christmas morning and read the Christmas story from Luke 2. The kids actually sat still and listened!

Listening to Grandpaw read from Luke 2

Bubs stuffing his face with birthday cake...don't know what happened to his pants! As a side note, my brother is notorious for taking the last bite of desserts, or just plain being a dessert hog. So for fun/just to be mean, I grabbed the last half of his piece of cake and scarfed it down. This was followed by a small food fight between my brother and I. SOOOOO glad the kids weren't really paying attention. Didn't get any pics of my face or my brother's bald head smeared with icing...sorry!

Eating birthday cake for Jesus

And let's not forget about the snow! Sadly, the one thing I left at home during our trip to Mimi and Grandpaw's was our coats. Oops. So we really had to get creative to let the kids play in the snow. They have on a hodge podge of clothing/mittens/hats belonging to various people. Bubs caught on very quickly to the idea of throwing snowballs and was pretty good at it! He liked being hit and hitting others with the snowballs pretty equally. And I think he is part Eskimo. It's like he doesn't even feel the cold! He could've stayed out there forever if we would have let him! AC helped build a snow man and made snow angels. We all had a great time!

The glorious snow man (mostly the handiwork of Evan and my brother)!

The glorious snow man being tackled to the ground about 30 seconds after he was finished!

I have on my dad's sweatshirt and jacket, and my mom's shoes...the Bean has on Grandpaw's ski mask, Aunt Marianna's sweatshirt hoodie, and Grandpaw's tube socks for mittens. And I had even bought my kids cute hats and mittens this year!

Last little happening for December...Bubs is potty-trained! He had been showing a lot of interest and asking to use the potty from time to time for the last couple of months, and the week after Christmas he just refused to put on diapers. So I went with it, and he has had very few accidents since then. He's done really well, even when we're out and about. And he was accident-free his first day back at MDO, so that's a good sign! He's truly just trained himself. I've been very proud of him! And just in time, since baby #3 is due in July!