Christmas 2012 - Colorado

Saturday, December 22nd, we headed out to Colorado for Christmas.  We had a super early flight but the kids were troopers and were just so excited to go on an airplane ride!  You can see in this picture that it was still dark out :)

 

 The flight there was great, we had no delays and everything went smoothly.

When we arrived at Denver, my parents were there to greet us at the airport and as soon as we got into the car, the kids were out within minutes.

 

 Once we got there, the kids were quickly checking out all the toys and Uncle Ross even got out the guitar.  They were mesmerized! 

 We spent some time over at Ryan and Rachel's and the kids had so much fun over there because they have so many fun toys to play with!

Cameron was trying to hard to cuddle with Cole...you can tell he looks a little uncomfortable :)  Guess he gets that from his mother :)

 The kids sat together and ate s'mores.  It was adorable!

 Christmas Eve:

We mostly just hung out at my parents house Christmas Eve.  After their naps we headed to church and got the kids all dressed up.  

How adorable is she!?!  This purple skirt will be the best to twirl around in!

They even let me take a picture before we left for church.  This was also before Cole got his hair cut, it's a little ridiculous in this picture.  Looks much better now!

 Headed to church

 When we got home, Ryan and Rachel's family came over and we had a wonderful dinner and opened presents.  

Mimi with Sydney

 Rachel made a birthday tree for Jesus

 Finley could hardly wait to get her hands on those cupcakes!

 We sang Happy Birthday to Jesus and blew out some candles...the kids loved it!

 Cole and Cameron even "cheers'd" with some sparkling cider.....love!!!!

 Nick ran outside with the big kids because later in the evening, it started to snow and was the perfect Christmas Eve night!

 Me and Sydney

 Giddy up Daddy!!!!!

 What are the odds that all four kids had Hanna Anderson jammies?  We had to get a picture of them in their sweet clothes.

Cole, Finley, Cameron, Sydney

 And one with Papa and Mimi

 Christmas Day:

After all the snow we got, we decided to go sledding with the kids.  Since we live in Dallas, we don't have snow clothes for the kids, but we rigged a few of my parents clothes and made the best of it.  They weren't too sure of the snow at first but overall they had fun.

Poor Finley fell off the sled and wasn't too happy with Papa :)

 Cole making snow angel's

The next day we took all the kids down to Denver Childrens museum.  It was the coolest place and so many fun things for the kids to do.  We were there almost 3 hours and didn't even get to everything.

The kids playing in the fire truck

 Cole making something with the tools....this station was a disaster waiting to happen for Finley, too many small pieces for her!

 Only in Colorado would there be a Whole Foods market for the kids to play in! :)  It was so cool though because I know when I was a kid, I wanted to be a checker at a grocery store!

 The bubble station....

 Cole giving us a puppet show

 And Finley playing at the dance station

One of the nights we were there, Nick and I were able to escape up to the mountains.  Blake and Emily were up there and Blake's parents have a gorgeous house near Breckenridge so we crashed with them for a night.  We enjoyed walking around Breckenridge and just relaxing.  We so appreciated Blake's parents letting us stay and really hope we can do it again soon.

As usual, the time went so fast and we wish we could've stayed longer but it would've been too long for our dogs to be alone.  Cole was also a little under the weather while we were there so it was nice to get back to the less-dry air so he could start to feel better.

We had such a great time in Colorado and can't wait to go back, hopefully we can get in one more trip before Finley turns 2 :)

Hope everyone has a great New Year!!

It's almost Christmas

I didn't realize that when you turn 31, your body starts feeling like an old woman :)  Maybe it was just coincidence that on my birthday I started to feel like any day now, I was going to get the flu.  You know, where your skin hurts, body is achy.  Well, I never got the flu and after going to the chiropractor for a couple weeks and still having horrible joint pain, I seriously felt like a little old lady with arthritis, I decided to just go to the doctor and see if they had any ideas.  Turns out, he thinks I came down with a virus (can't even tell you the name of it) but it's similar to when kids get fifths disease and it causes generalized arthritis.  Not much you can do for it except take anti-inflammatory pills but he said I could feel the effects of it for a couple months but if it doesn't get significantly better in another week or so I need to go back in and have blood work done.  Hey, I'm cool with a little discomfort....as long as I know what we're dealing with but if it doesn't get better I'm going to be annoyed (and worried).  

So since my bones feel oh so wonderful lately, I decided to put this bad boy together the other day.  Awesome idea, Annie!

This was Finley's Christmas present from my parents and we were originally going to wait to set it up till we moved into the new house but it's still over a month away so we thought we might as well.

The kids love it...and, I think I did a pretty darn good job putting it together.  Only took 5.5 hours....ugh!!!

 Last Friday night we had our Life Group Christmas party.  It's so fun getting all of us together (sans kids) and celebrating!  Since we don't currently live down the street from Pete and Katie's house anymore, we decided to just stay the night there since Granddad and Gigi were babysitting. 

It was such a fun night!!!  We are so extremely blessed with the best life group, these people will all be life-long friends!

 Love Jen...she was trying to do a "sic em bears"....apparently I thought she was weird :) ha!

 While we were celebrating Christmas with our Life Group, Gigi and Granddad took the kids to Southlake and went on a carriage ride.  Apparently the kids had a great time!

Nick and I stopped by our house while we were up in Frisco last weekend and they had just installed the granite.  Pretty exciting!!!

 This is from our breakfast area looking into the kitchen

 Photo bomb!!!

 We finally had to get onto our builder and sales guy because after the 7ish time of pushing our closing date back, we finally told them that we aren't pushing it back more.  We made the mistake of telling them we weren't in a huge hurry to get the house done and we feel that they've sort of taken advantage of that.  So, the latest is that January 25th will be the closing day.  So....Happy Birthday Cole, you get a new house for your birthday!

Just a few random pictures to leave you with....Granddad put together Cole and Finley's Christmas tree but unfortunately he wasn't here to help them put all the final ornaments on the tree so we sent him this picture to show him the final product.  Those are some cute kids!!!

Oh, don't worry Dad, Cole will be getting a hair cut when we come home next week!! :)  Right now he looks like he belongs at the beach with a surfboard in hand.

 Cole had his Happy Birthday Jesus party at school and they made these fun snowmen.

 And last, Cole had his very first music program at school and sadly I couldn't be there.  Nick and Gigi were able to go and took lots of pictures and video.  This definitely proved to us that Cole is definitely going to be our Broadway star....he's not so much into the team sports right now :)  He pretty much stole the show and sang all the words and followed along the entire time!  We were so proud of him.

Hope everyone has a safe and wonderful Christmas holiday and may your lives be blessed!!!

Polar Express

It's so fun that our kids are now at the age where the understand and appreciate the fun Christmas activities, so this year we took the kids to the Polar Express train ride in Grapevine.  Beau, Stacey and Grayson even joined us!  Gigi, Granddad, Blake and Emily also came along.  I think everyone had a really good time and seeing the look on the kids faces was priceless!

Cole with Santa Bear

We totally lucked out with the weather!  Just a couple hours before our train ride, it finally started to get cold.  It would have been really hard to get into the Christmas spirit if it was 80 degrees like last weekend.

Finley's poncho was the greatest invention ever!  Love it!

Auntie Em and Finley awaiting the train...

Cole, Finley and Grayson



She is hilarious, she wants to be just like the big kids...Miss Independent

It was so fun when you start walking to the train, they had snow machines and it was actually really good fake snow, it was the best atmosphere and the kids loved the snow.



Beau, Grayson and Stacey...and baby Walker is in there, 31ish weeks and counting.  Oh, you can't even tell she's pregnant?!?  Yeah, probably because she barely looks it!

Cole insisted on sitting with Grayson and those boys had so much fun together.  At one point Finley even wanted to be with the boys so it was me, Finley, Cole and Grayson all scrunched together in one seat :)  At least Beau and Stacey will know what it's like to have more than one child now :)

Love the look on his face!

 

Santa came through the train and gave all the kids their bell.  So glad Santa didn't come through at the beginning of the train ride, listening to kids ringing those bells for 30 minutes might have been a bit much :)  But, they loved it and Cole even had to take his bell to the sitter's this morning.

 

We had hot chocolate after the train ride was over and Finley was a nut about the hot chocolate.  This is basically what it looked like watching her drink it....

"Gimmmmeee"

"Slurp"

"Ahhhh....nom nom"  And she made sure to tell everyone how nummy it was!

It was such a fun evening and so glad the kids had so much fun.  We made great memories and so glad we got to do this with such great friends and family.