Sunday, December 29, 2013

Christmas #3 - Weiss Family

Christmas with the Weiss family continued on Christmas Day and the day after.  Evan was so excited to get his own Woody doll from Uncle Chip & Aunt Jessie - he even wrote his name on Woody's other foot:
Eric dancing next to the Santa that plays music:
Deedee with the Felt boys:
Evan and Deedee:
Evan & I right before we started opening presents:
Present opening with Matthew:
Claire was so cute - every time she opened a new outfit she wanted to try it out, which means she spent most of present-opening naked:
Here she is looking lie a diva with her new Ariel heels on:
Evan and Matthew playing iPad together nicely:
Deedee and Claire:
It was a good Christmas and now we are home relaxing until the new year.

Saturday, December 28, 2013

Christmas Day

Christmas was so much fun this year.  It started with our Christmas Eve festivities at our friends' house. I dressed Eric up for no reason so I had to get a picture of him:
Sometime late on Christmas Eve night, Santa arrived. I was able to sneak downstairs to get this picture of Santa's visit before the boys woke up:

Evan was very into the gift opening this year and definitely understood what a visit from Santa would mean:
All he had asked Santa for was a bulldozer and he was happy to see this under the tree:
Onto another big ask - Legos:
And now onto opening Eric's gifts because he still wasn't all that interested in them:
Eric did like his Thomas pillow pet:
And Gordon train for the train set:
A picture of the aftermath from above:
But the gifts weren't done just yet.  We headed to NJ on Christmas Day in the afternoon to celebrate with the Weiss side of the family.  More to come soon.

Monday, December 23, 2013

A few more pics from Christmas #1

Here are the last few pictures from Christmas in Elmira.  A decent family shot:

And the family gets bigger:
And even bigger:
And a cute one of Eric:

Sunday, December 22, 2013

Christmas #1

Christmas is so much fun with two little ones.  And this weekend we headed up to Elmira to celebrate with Brian's side of the family.  Brian's aunts and uncles come to celebrate with us as we aren't able to be there on Christmas Eve during their usual celebration.  Here I tried to get some pics of Eric with Lily:
All three of our "kids" . . . just wish Evan could figure out this smiling thing :)
Finally a good one!  If you could see the effort this takes, it's quite comical:
Now to the good part - the presents!
This little boy loves his Hess trucks!
And Eric loves his Lightening McQueen:
Brian with his girl:
Eric sitting on his new Lightening McQueen blanket that Nana made for him
The present madness - so much fun!
Morgan trying to pick up some of the paper - what a cutie!
Eric playing on one of their presents:
 The lovely ugly sweater that Brian decided he should put on towards the end of the night, which his Aunt Shelley:
And why not eat dinner with no pants?
Later on in the night - all snuggled in to watch some tv:
And all three kids eating breakfast in the morning at the counter on their stools:
And what a scene.  I walked into the kitchen to find these two so seriously reading the newspaper.  Such cuties!
Aunt Shelley attempted some family pics on her camera which hopefully I will be able to post soon enough.  Until then, only 2 days left until Christmas!

Monday, December 16, 2013

Our Third Longwood Christmas

One of our favorite new traditions is to head to Longwood Gardens at Christmas to see the holiday displays.  This is our third year running and it did not disappoint.  The boys weren't super cooperative for photos and chasing them around with a stroller and a camera while they dodged in and out of people was a bit exhausting.  So these aren't the best pictures in the world but I'm happy we actually got any.  And, as usual, Eric was a bit more cooperative than his brother in front of the camera:
Evan agreed for just one picture . . . only if we gave him money to throw in the fountain.  Pretty soon we'll be dishing out $100 bills to get us to take his picture:
The center hall display.  Floating in that water making that design were apples.  It was pretty impressive:
 Christmas tree in pink:
One of the cuter pictures of the night.  We asked Eric to smell the roses, so he opened his mouth and took a bite.  Anyone who was looking got a good laugh out of it.  He won't eat much, but roses apparently are on the list:
A beautiful display:
Earlier in the day we had attempted to take the boys to get formal Christmas pictures taken at a studio.  It went so poorly that we walked out without any pictures to even look at.  I'm hopeful that one day they will cooperate but I'm afraid it's not going to be any time soon :(

Tuesday, December 10, 2013

Snow Play

First snow storm of the year was an unexpected one on Sunday.  We were supposed to get 1 inch in the evening and, by 3:00, we had 6 inches!  We decided to get the boys outside to play.  It started out pretty well - both were very happy:
 Playing together:
And Evan really pitched in with the shoveling . . . and actually really helped!  He was working hard:
Eric wanted to get in on the shoveling action too.  Notice, though, that he would not keep his mittens on . . . which became problematic later:
 All three boys shoveling:
And about 5 minutes without mittens, his fingers were bright red and in pain.  Eric and I were inside all of a few minutes later.
And another small storm hit today.  I was home with the boys all day and needed to go out and shovel.  Eric wanted nothing to do with going outside based on Sunday's experience.  So I left him inside while Evan came out to help me shovel.  Funny the things you'll let your second child do that you wouldn't dream of doing with your first.  I would NEVER have left Evan inside while I went out to shovel when he was Eric's age.  In any case, I've had enough snow for the short term.  I think we can take a little break for now!