Christmas Break Adventures: Rest of Day 6/Christmas Day

We drove from my parents' house to our house on Christmas day to drop off our things and load up gifts for Kevin's family. Lewis had fallen asleep about 30 minutes from our house in Louisville, so he slept through the whole unloading and reloading part, the 30 minute drive to Kevin's parents' house, and another 15-20 minutes in their driveway. :) Once he woke up, we went inside to see everyone, open gifts, and have a late lunch/early dinner.

 Opening his stocking

 What a cool Chuggington track!

 Posing with his new Lightning McQueen Big Wheel

Which came with no instruction book...Kevin found directions online, but they weren't for that exact model and left out some steps. We had a heck of a time trying to get it together (Lewis wanting to climb on it constantly certainly didn't help). We realized (near the end, of course) that we should have put the decorative stickers on first, so we have to take it all apart and redo it--that will have to wait for another day. :) The good thing is, he seems to love it!

Playing with his new train track with Grandma

We had a very nice visit at his parents' house, and by the end of the day we were exhausted. I'd still like to come up with a better way of doing things so that we're not all over the place that day, but for now this is what we do. We thought about having Lewis open his gifts from us on the morning of the 26th, but we decided to go ahead and push through to open them that evening. If I'd been thinking, we could have/should have just taken our gifts to him with us to my parents' house because Juniper had gifts there from Em/Joe and Lewis didn't have any from us. Anywho...

There were just a couple: 

 Happy to find m&m's in his stocking :)

We got him a couple of t-shirts and his one request, a big green tractor:

Happy boy!

Kevin and I felt horrible Christmas morning as he was opening gifts because he asked about the tractor as he was opening things--we looked at each other like, 'WHY DIDN'T WE BRING IT?!' Oopsy. We had to tell him that there were gifts for him at Gramma/Papaw's, Grandma/Grandpa's, and our house, too, and thankfully he had many other great gifts to play with.

He woke up the next morning at 5:30am, but we put him in our bed and all slept in until after 8:30--hooray! We've all had a cold that just won't quit, but I think we are at the end of it now, thank goodness. He'd picked it up at school last week before break, and I got it a few days after him, followed by Kevin.

Since Christmas, we've just been taking it easy here at home. We were supposed to meet up with some of Kevin's friends from high school on the 26th, but we had to cancel because of our colds. Lewis has been taking looong naps (hooray!), so we were able to take advantage of the nice weather to work outside, cutting up some bush honeysuckle that we removed right before the big(ish) snow a few weeks ago. We've unpacked and organized all of Lewis' new stuff, and we went yesterday to see Frozen, which was cute. Lewis sat through the whole thing! He wouldn't keep the 3-D glasses on, but he did sit still. Some mini m&ms might have helped...

I've (clearly) taken the morning 'off' today to catch up on blogging, and Kevin will be out of commission this afternoon for his favorite sports day of the year--the UL vs. UK basketball game, followed by a UL football bowl game. He and Lewis spent the morning dropping off our recycling and our Christmas tree and taking our cars to the car wash. When we got home from our trip, our tree was super droopy and dead and shedding, even though we left it full of water, so we went ahead and took it down on the 26th.

I'm going to hope that the majority of people in Louisville will probably be home watching the big game around 4pm today, so I'm going to run to Target--tomorrow we're off again to see Emily, Joe, Juni, and Otis in Bloomington/Brown County. Looking forward to more fun now that we've had a few days' rest. :)

Happy holidays to all!

Christmas Break Adventures: Day 5 and First Half of 6

Emily wanted to take a sister side-trip while we were in town, so she and I ran to Muncie on Christmas Eve morning for Concannon's bakery (for donuts, cake, and pie, oh my!), Goodwill, and Target. Target wasn't as bad as I expected, and I'm glad we went away for a bit, just the two of us.

Christmas Eve, my mom's side of the family came over for a party, church, and then more party afterwards. Joe also flew in that day, so my aunt/uncle who live in Indy picked him up on their way over to my parents' house.

Juni and Lewis, dressed up for Christmas Eve

Resting up for the party by watching some 'toons

 Getting ready for church

Lewis did ok...he seemed to like the singing, but he was pretty restless during the other parts of the service so Kevin took him out to the play room a few times.

Christmas Eve 2013 

 Sweet baby Otis, ready for bed!

 He'd been laying on Emily's lap, thus the slobbery spots.

 We had fun setting out cookies, carrots, and a beer for Santa (Juniper came up with that) and setting out the stockings and gifts for Juni and Lew.

Christmas morning, we were awakened by a knock on the door from Juni, saying that it was Christmas and time to get up! 

 

Reading a new book with Otis' new Otis tractor

 

Christmas morning snuggles for Juni :)

After opening gifts, we had a nice breakfast and packed up for the drive home and then to Kevin's parents' house. Part 2 of Christmas day, to be continued...

Christmas Break Adventures: Days 3 and 4

Sunday we had my dad's side of the family over for Christmas dinner, and Monday we headed over to Dietgard's in the afternoon for a cookie-making and gingerbread house-building party.

Kevin took a video of Lewis and Juni, making music together on Sunday morning:

Trying on some sweet sunglasses from Grandma DeeDee (on J). I think Lew was wearing a pair of Uncle Dave's.

Dinner with my dad's side of the family was great--his side of the family has a lot more people than my mom's side, so we had a very full house with lots of little kids running around again.

Lewis opening a cool tow truck

Juni trying on her new cowgirl outfit

She wore it the rest of that day, to bed that night, and I think most of the next day. :)

Monday we just kind of hung around the house in the morning and then headed to Dietgard's in the afternoon for cookie and gingerbread fun! It was fun and chaotic, and I can't wait to do it again. :)

 Dietgard and her impressive multi-tasking skills

Emily and I stepped in to help roll out dough and cut out cookies.

 Hot Pink, anyone?! Lewis is a big fan.

 Sprinkles!

 Gramma and her grandsons

 Playing on the top bunk

 Working a puzzle

Lew and I worked on puzzles while Juniper and Mathilda did gingerbread houses. He was kind of over it by that point, but he made some cute Christmas cookies! The girls' gingerbread houses turned out really cute, too--and the broken scraps were quite tasty. I'd picked up some kits at IKEA and wasn't sure how they would taste, but they were surprisingly good!

 Playing with his cool new truck from the Bittners

And snuggling with sweet Patina

Christmas Break Adventures: Day 2

Saturday started out with an early wake-up from Lewis, so we decided to go for a little pre-breakfast swim. 

 Splashing Gramma

:)

It was also my birthday, so we went out to breakfast, which went a little like this:

.

:)

First our table sang to me which was embarrassing enough. Then, the staff turned put the longest possible version of Happy Birthday that I've ever heard in my life on the loud speaker...it was a good way to start the day. :)

After breakfast, we headed to the Children's Museum. We'd hoped to go to Conner Prairie for a special Christmas event they were having, but it was steadily raining all day. The Children's Museum was fun, but super crowded.

 Lew, Juni, Mathilda, Dietgard/Emery, watching a performance

 

Lew and I on the carousel (it was hard to get a picture while moving...)

 

 Checking out an Indy car

And officially zonked out within ten minutes of being in the car, heading to my parents' house

The rest of that day we just hung out at my parents' house and ate Top Hat pizza. The best!

Christmas Break Adventures: Day 1

We headed up to Indianapolis last Friday to meet up with my parents, Emily, Juniper, Otis, Dietgard, Mathilda, and Emery for a little downtown pre-Christmas adventure. Friday we met at the Eiteljorg Museum to see their Christmas train exhibit and kids' play area. We checked into our hotel afterwards and then headed out to dinner at the Spaghetti Factory (where we used to go as kids around Christmas time). After dinner, we walked around the circle downtown to see the lights, horse-drawn carriages, nativity, and a reindeer!

Here are Lewis and Emery meeting for the first time:

 

Sweet Boys :)

And Juni and Lewis seeing each other after a year apart:

Cousins

 

 Checking out the train display

 

Thick as Thieves :)

It was just too cute--all three grabbed each other's hands and took off like they owned the place. 

The majority of the museum is not kid-friendly (it's an art museum), so the staff/volunteers were following us around very closely. We found a kid-friendly space in their education center downstairs, so we spent the rest of our time there:

 An old carriage

 Trying out some chaps

 Otis in his Carhartt overalls :)

Otis is my 5-month-old nephew (and Juniper's little brother), and I just love him.

Gramma and Otis at dinner

A reindeer!

We were just walking around the circle, and a woman walked over from a horse trailer with this reindeer. She put him in a stall and said we were welcomed to pet him. What timing!

After our walk, Kevin and I headed to a Christmas party at the Butt's house while my mom got Lewis to sleep (thanks, Mom!). He'd had a cough, so he kept waking himself up with the coughing and realized we weren't there. It was a rough night of sleep, but his sleeping was better at my parents' house the next few nights, thank goodness.

Christmas Program at School

Lewis' Christmas program was Thursday evening--it was pretty chaotic (understandably), but also nice and short. The 1s and 2s performed together, Twinkle, Twinkle, Christmas Star (which was a new twist on the old classic) and Jingle Bells. They had little hand motions they were supposed to do for Twinkle, Twinkle, but Lewis kind of just stood there with his finger up his nose the whole time. :) When it came time to jingle a bell, though, he was much more enthusiastic about it.

:)

Clapping for their class :)

Jinglin' and Janglin'

Here are videos that Kevin took:

We were a little ways back from the stage, so this was the best we could do.

After the program, he went up on stage and found the handbells that one of the older classes had used:

 

Ding Ding Ding Diiiing! 

 

Enjoying some cake afterwards

Thanks for coming to see me, Grandma and Grandpa!