Christmas 2010

Christmas was so fun this year. I think it will keep getting more fun for the next few years as the boys get older and more into it but this has been the best one since Cason was born. It is kind of a bummer that we never get enough time to go back to Iowa for Christmas but maybe some year we can make it back. We had a lot of fun watching the boys open their presents and playing with stuff but it got a little bit boring since we only left the house to look at Christmas lights in the evening. Kelly suggested making a tradition of going to a movie on Christmas day. Hopefully Bryce will be old enough to sit through most of a movie by next year and we can give it a try.

On Christmas eve we went to church and then came home for dinner and talked with Grandma and Grandpa G. on Skype. Uncle Chris, Uncle Mike, Aunt Barb, Trista, Nick, Natalie, Cole, and Luke were all there so we got to say hi to everyone for a few minutes.

On Christmas day the boys woke up at their normal times and were excited to see their stockings sitting at their spots at the counter. Cason had been asking for a real candy cane for weeks. Thank you so much Jenny for giving us some to put in their stockings!







Bryce loves our car keys and always wants them when we are trying to drive which leads to a fit. So I took Cason to Home Depot and let him pick out some fun keys to put in Bryce's stocking for him. He chose a Nemo key, a monkey key, and a red key that lights up. Then Cason wanted his own keys too so I went back another day to get some keys for his stocking that were from Bryce to him.





Giving his stuffed pig a kiss.



After eating breakfast, a lot of Christmas candy, and talking to Grandma B. on Skype, we moved to the playroom to open presents. Cason had a lot of fun opening presents and kept saying things like "oh, I love it!"





This was the closest Bryce got to opening a present I think. I opened it for him and he peeked in the box. He didn't care at all about opening the presents up. I think he walked around playing with his old toys and reading his old books most of the morning. But once we had some new toys set up, he did have fun playing with them.



Kelly got me a Lightscoop since our house is such a cave. It makes a big difference, especially on a cloudy day like yesterday. It's basically a mirror that snaps on my camera in front of my flash. I usually never use flash because it looks terrible in pictures but this reflects the flash up to the ceiling for a much less harsh look. It's not perfect but it makes the difference in a decent picture vs a really crappy one in a poorly lit house. I could tell a big difference between all the pictures I took in the morning before I opened it and the ones I took in the afternoon.

Here is a picture of Bryce peeking out of the laundry room with the Lightscoop.



And this one was taken about 10 seconds later with no Lightscoop, my camera set on auto, no flash. Neither picture is edited at all.



The kids stayed in pajamas all day long and just played. We also talked to Alissa, Dave, and Tate on Skype for the first time ever which was fun. I think the boys really liked it.





After bath. Think his hair is getting too long?



Cason had the most fun with Bryce's presents. He liked his own too but both kids really liked the baseball bat and t-ball thing.



Cason also really likes the Lego barn Bryce got. I'm not sure if Bryce has even noticed it yet!



Kelly wanted to try smoking a whole turkey for dinner. We pretty much neglected thinking about any side dishes when grocery shopping because we were too fixated on our desserts. So the sides were pretty slim at dinner. I made some awesome mint chocolate brownies, Kelly made pumpkin gingerbread bars, and Kelly and Cason made gingerbread boys.





After dinner we went driving around too look at Christmas lights. Our town had a light contest and posted the winners in the local paper so I made a map of the must sees. They were all in pretty much the same area so it worked out great. Three of the houses even had light shows set to music. They had a sign in the front yard telling us what FM radio station to tune to so we could hear the music that accompanied the lights. Some of the houses were really neat. Cason had fun but Bryce was less than impressed. Probably because he is still rear facing in his car seat so he couldn't see as much. Poor kid!

This morning Kelly decided he needed to run a quick 5K so after he got back, Cason helped him stretch. I love this picture!



Then of course Rycie had to get in on the action.



I got Cason The Sweet Smell of Christmas a month or so ago because it was a favorite of mine when I was a kid and who can resist a scratch and sniff book? Ever since he got it, Cason has been asking to make gingerbread boys. So Kelly and the boys made up the dough yesterday and made the cookies this morning. Cason and Kelly decorated them with frosting this afternoon while Bryce napped.







Cason's new saying is "What's the deal with this thing?" and he kept calling the frosting glue. So he kept saying "What's the deal with this glue?" while he was decorating the cookies.

Prairie Lights

Both of our boys love seeing all the Christmas lights this year. Every night after dinner and/or bath, we have to go take a walk around the block to see the lights close to our house. Everytime we tell Rycie to get his shoes so we can go somewhere, he says "yights! yights!" He thinks we are going to go see lights, day or night. So we decided to take them to a drive through light show that has 4 million lights called Prairie Lights. A lot of the lights are animated and some change colors.

About 5 days before we went, I showed Cason a video of Prairie Lights on youtube. He was so excited, he counted down the days until Kelly came home so we could go. We got there right as they opened last Sunday night. The first part you drive through very slowly and they have lights in the shape of everything Christmas related you could think of. Candy canes, gingerbread people, santas, reindeer, the 12 days of Christmas made out of lights, etc. They even had some non holiday stuff like Dallas Cowboys lights.



Reindeers flying over the cars.



Bears batting a fish back and forth (because it was right by the lake).



Holiday lights we drove under.



After a mile or two of the light drive, there was an area to get out of your car. They had a carousel so we took the boys on their first ever carousel ride. *Insert worst ever picture here.*



That was the best picture we could get. Kelly is not familiar with either camera and it was going too fast (and my hands were too full) to show him how to change to sports mode to try to get a not so blurry shot. I'm not sure if it would have mattered anyway. Cason liked the carousel, Bryce not so much. There was also a dragon spinning ride (think teacups). Cason and I went on that but we picked the dud that didn't spin so it was rather uneventful but Cason liked it anyway.

There was also a walk through area that was filled with lights and displays. It was pretty short but there were a ton of lights so the kids loved it. The trees were all lit up and some of them even changed colors.



There were also lighted snowflakes "falling".



And plenty of displays to look at along the way.







At the end as we left, there was a light tunnel to drive through. Pictures don't do it justice. The light strands were alternating being lit up so it appeared as though they were moving and we were driving at warp speed instead of just 10 mph.



The boys had a great time and loved seeing all the lights. It's still more than a week until Christmas but it has already been my favorite Christmas season since I was a kid. The kids are at such great ages to enjoy everything and get so excited for all of the little stuff.

More Casonisms

Cason says so many funny things all the time. I can't even remember most of them but I wanted to write a few down because they are so cute.

This first one is old but back at Halloween there was a house a few streets down that had candy corn lights in their yard. I told Cason they were candy corns but he kept calling them "hallo corn". It didn't matter how many times I told him, he kept calling them that.

Along the same lines, he now sees peppermints at various places as decorations. The other day he saw them in a yard and he said "Mommy, look spicy mints!" I was like "huh?" I finally figured out what he was talking about. Cute because he thinks that pepper is spicy:)

A few weeks ago we had to stop at Home Depot because the fridge we bought for the garage a week earlier went on sale $100 off and I wanted a refund on the difference. As I pulled into the parking lot, Cason said "Mom, let's go sniff the hot dog guy." I about died laughing because Kelly says that every time we go to Home Depot. Because the guy is always there grilling up hot dogs and brats and it always smells SO good. We never buy one but it's nice to sniff.

Now that it's cooler down here, Kelly and I are wearing our slippers around the house more. Cason always calls them "slipperies". I've corrected him many times but he still insists on calling them slipperies.

I'm sure there are more but I can't think of them right now.

Cason's lights

This is our 5th Christmas in our house and we have never put up Christmas lights outside. Since Cason loves lights so much, we figured we should bite the bullet and put some up this year. We told Cason about a month ago and he was so excited, he asked me almost every day if we could go outside and put lights up. A couple weekends ago my dad came to visit. We went to Home Depot and Lowes that weekend to buy some lights. We decided to go with all blue LED lights and bought enough to go around the front and one side since our house is on a corner. Kelly took advantage of the beautiful weather that afternoon and got a good chunk of lights hung up while my dad and I helped attach clips on the ground. Several Christmas Vacation references were made during these few hours.





After two afternoons up on the roof, Kelly finished up the front and side of the house as we had intended. I thought it looked good. Kelly thought it was "a good start". He decided that it looked unfinished and we should go around the whole house since there is a street behind our house as well. So back to Lowes we went to buy them out of blue LED C9 lights. Kelly just finished up the blue lights a few days ago and they look pretty good. We don't like the lights that lead up to the top peak but if we take the bulbs out, the strand goes out. Apparently a few bulbs can be loose, burnt out, or missing but not that many. We might put electrical tape around those or something so they look nicer when lit.

In this picture, you can also see our tree in the front window. It has blue and white lights on it as well. Cason was SO excited to put the tree up, Kelly and I not so much.





We also wanted to get Cason some lights to enjoy inside that he could turn on and off himself. He is a control freak and likes to be in charge of stuff like that. We initially bought him a string of snowflake lights that turn on and off with the push of a button. I hung them around the mantle for him but they played music. The problem with that is the music was a lot louder at home than at the store. And Cason would turn them on for about 2 seconds and then turn them off immediately. About 100 times a day. He said he didn't want to waste the batteries and that's why he couldn't leave them on. So after hearing the first few notes of the song over and over again, I packed the lights up and returned them to Home Depot just 2 days after buying them.

So then Cason fell in love with some icicle lights that changed colors and had a remote. No music, perfect! So when Grandma and Grandpa came down, Cason insisted on going to Lowes to show Grandma. Grandma bought Cason the icicle lights and all was right in his world. We were going to hang them inside but there was no real way to attach them to anything indoors. They ended up fitting perfectly on the two open sides of our back patio so this way the boys can watch them from indoors. Cason loves being able to turn them on with the remote and he won't let anyone else have that important job. There are 14 different programs that you can switch between for the light show. At first he didn't want to run these much because he didn't want to waste batteries but I finally convinced him that they don't run on batteries. They look much more cool in person but here's an idea of what they look like.





And here is the back of the house from the street. You can see Kelly's blue lights and Cason's icicles. Pay no attention to the one blue light that's burnt out already.



The boys love to go outside after dinner when it's dark to look at the lights. Here is Rycie in Cason's shark hat and mittens. He loves all things animals and will run all over holding his hands up when he's wearing the shark mittens!





Oh and just for fun, here is Cason at church this past Sunday. About twice a year the 2-5 year olds come on stage to sing a song. I know Cason well enough by now to know that he won't sing or do the motions but I still get excited to see him up there and bring my camera. As expected, he didn't sing or do the motions but he did flash us a big smile when he saw Daddy wave at him.

Thanksgiving 2010

For the past two Thanksgivings, Kelly's brother Chris has come down from Iowa to visit. And by visit, I mean he will hang out with us but his real reason for coming is to go to a Cowboys game. Well this year, Kelly talked his parents into coming down too. Nick and Natalie couldn't come this year but Chris' girlfriend Heather drove down with Chris so we got to meet her.

Preparation started on Monday when my helpers helped me grind up Oreos in the food processor to make Oreo balls.



I ended up making WAAAAAAY too many sweets. We weren't really thinking when we planned it out. Kelly's family isn't big on sweets so it ended up being mostly Kelly and I eating them. So we had a LOT to give away. Here is just a representation of the 300+ Oreo balls I made. I also made 300+ peanut butter balls and some delicious pumpkin bars with cream cheese frosting.



We had our big feast on Wednesday night with Kelly's smoked brisket and pulled pork and some sides because on Thursday, we were going to the Cowboys game. This was my first Thanksgiving game to go to because the past two years I was at home with the kids. Kelly's mom graciously volunteered to stay home with the kids this year so I got to go have fun. We opted for party passes (standing room only) this year because they are 1/10th of the price of the seats in the nosebleed section. This was our view the whole game but we didn't care, we had fun anyway.









The first quarter was a joke and we thought we would be heading for home very early. But the Cowboys started playing the second half of the game and made it an interesting game to be at after all. We had a great time with Kelly's family, thanks for coming down Grandma, Grandpa, Uncle Chris, and Heather!