Sweet Moments: Christmas Wrapup

These are my final pics from our Christmastime in Kansas. We had a fun night at Fritz's with Seth's parents and I caught this quick snapshot of Aidan with Papi. 

 Another sweet moment was seeing Nora sitting and being read to...this was right before we left. :(

Christmas in Kansas: Cousins!

Love these funny pictures of the four cousins eating popcorn (out of yogurt containers) by the fireplace. They were so stinking cute.

More Christmas In Kansas: Time with friends

We were so blessed to have our dear friends Kara and Cody come up to see us during New Year's weekend. We had planned a trip down to AR, but with Nora fighting off a cold/ear infection and not sleeping well, we decided it probably would be a very miserable trip for all of us. So our friends came up to see us instead! We were so excited because they brought baby Ruby and it was our first time to meet her.

 Aidan loved Ruby. He was so sweet with her it almost made me want another baby...almost. If he would treat Nora this nice all the time I might even be more convinced, but we are still desperately working on that in our house right now.

We had a fun evening playing games and eating yummy food. Wish our time could have lasted longer. We rung in the new year, went to bed and all started 2012 with very little sleep thanks to the little ones in our lives.

Loved getting to hold my bestie's little baby girl. I am so glad that we can share our motherhood journey's now that we are both in that life phase. Kara has been such a dear friend, even when we were in two very different worlds, but it is sure fun to have her friendship turn into a motherhood camaraderie.

More Christmas in Kansas

We got to spend a morning at the Crown Center checking out their exhibit for kids and then at Union Station to see the train exhibit. It was quite a windy day (as you can see with Nora's hair), but a beautiful day for such an outing. I really couldn't believe we were out without coats. In South Carolina that's not an amazing thing, but Kansas?....it was so weird to have such mild weather. So much for packing snow boots. 

More Christmas Memories

Aidan had a great time making a gingerbread house with my mom and Xan. They also made gingerbread men while we were there. I think Aidan especially liked eating the candy as they decorated.

I caught this sweet moment of the kids on camera. Aidan reached down and gave Nora a kiss. Love seeing those two being sweet with one another because it seems to be a battle for them most days.

Here's a pic of the boys playing with the new Hot Wheels set they got for Christmas. I am totally clueless when it comes to boys toys and this thing doesn't even excite me one bit. But, all the boys (even the older ones) had a good time with it
.

And then there is the sweet little princess taking her bath. Oh my word does she love a bath!

Christmas in Kansas 2011: Part III

We spent the day after Christmas celebrating again with my family. It was a wild morning to wake up to the excited and impatient sounds of 4 little ones. What a fun time to watch them all enjoy opening their gifts though! It brings such joy to my face to see the enthusiasm and excitement over little things.

Animal cookies!

Nora kept putting things back in after she took them out

Time of worship before we opened presents

One of my favorite moments of this morning was seeing my two sweet boys playing music together. Seth was leading us in a few worship/Christmas songs and Aidan was playing along on the drum.

Another great memory was the reindeer nose that would light up. Nora (as seen below) would take off running with her nose in the air. I love the action shot I was able to take of her. :)

Hat I made for Sarah

Pots and pan for our new kitchen!

Cousins playing together

Sweet boy taking a break with his Daddy

Christmas in Kansas 2011: Part II

 After spending a few days with my parents, we went over to be with Seth's family for a few days. We had a good time hanging out the first night there. We watched Les Miserables: 24th Anniversary Edition (the concert) and it was incredible. Best 3 hours of music ever! And it totally makes me swoon to hear Jean Valjean and remember my own "Jean Valjean" singing "Bring Him Home" 7 years ago (the very start of our relationship). Good memories. Sigh.

Anyway, the next night we drove to Topeka for Seth's high school almuni night. We got to see lots of old Topeka friends and Seth got to sing with some alum from his madrigal group. The kids had a great time running around and promptly fell asleep in the car for the ride home

Love!

Baby Girl and her Daddy

We had a lovely Christmas Eve, went to a service together and then drove around looking at lights. It was a really nice night and the kids absolutely loved the lights. Aidan was especially sweet and having such cute conversations with us. I wish I could have recorded it all.

Christmas morning we woke up and had a yummy breakfast and then opened some presents. Nora was really really fussy this day in particular and was constantly grabbing at me and fussing. She was working pretty hard on her molars during the trip so that seemed to be the main cause of her irritability.

...and his partner in crime!

My sweet superman...

 We left Christmas night to spend the next few days with my family again. My brother and his family were also there, so the kids had a blast with their cousins....

More to come...

Christmas in Kansas 2011- Part One

We left around lunchtime to catch our flight from Charlotte to Kansas City. It was a long trip. The kids did pretty well. Nora was the biggest challenge of the trip, but I was expecting it, so it wasn't a surprise. She did sleep some and when she wasn't sleeping, she was either screaming or eating...I had tons of snacks prepared so I never felt out of my league. 

Our first day there we went to our very much missed Monday morning playdate with Davis and Isla (and little Ezra). It was really good to see some of our old friends and see how much the kids have grown. It is hard to believe that they are all 3 now and have siblings (Davis joined the sibling group yesterday!)

Best pic we could get of these three

Love the sweetness of this!

In awe of the tree!

Nora loved these sweet little elf dolls 

On Tuesday, we went to visit Seth at work and headed over to Bass Pro Shop to look around and play. Aidan had gone with my mom to Bass Pro on a few different occasions, but I had never been. They had a neat section set up for the kids and Santa was there (we don't really do the Santa thing, but we aren't anti all things Santa either) so we got a pic with the kids.

Aidan was having a blast "driving" the boats

We got an official Bass Pro picture that was better, but I love
the concerned look on Nora's face. She was good at first and
 then started to get upset.

One of my favorite moments was when Aidan said directly to Santa, "Nora doesn't understand." He wanted to make sure that Santa knew that Nora was too little to know about him. It was pretty cute. Also, I loved how he also told one of Seth's coworkers earlier in the morning that he was getting a "big boy bike, a motorcycle, and a tuba for Christmas." :)

The kids and Mimi

Watch out!

The kids had a great time and we ended our outing with a trip to Chick-fil-a (who would have guessed?).