Christmas and New Years- Toddler Style

As much as I enjoy the holidays, they sometimes seem to be more stressful than anything. This year we had a pretty relaxing holiday. On the 23rd, we got to visit with family from Oklahoma. We went out to eat, which was perfect. The 24th, we spent a short amount of time with Grandma T (who makes people work on Christmas Eve!?), and then headed off to my uncles place for late night of partying. On the 25th, we were up bright and early to go to Grandma and Grandpa Pound's house. We had Christmas breakfast and spent the day just relaxing. Gavin even got to have a sleepover with them, which he loved. 

New Years Eve was just spent relaxing at home with take-out. We watched a movie and conked out around 10:30pm. We really know how to get a party started. Both M and I have taken a lot of vacation (we try to save enough to take off the two weeks of Christmas/New Years), which means that we'll both be back to work tomorrow. I'm looking forward to some change of scenery for the last few days/weeks of my pregnancy! Work always makes things go faster. 

On the 5th or so take, we finally got a semi-decent picture!

Tref family Christmas!

No nap meant chaos during gift time! Made for fast opening- all of the kids wanted to help!

Line up for treats from Daddy/Uncle Mark!

Love these two!

Christmas Day with the Pounds

All man here- both of them (yes, that's a ladies sweater, he wears it proudly)

Baby Pound even got gifts!

Boots with the furrr

Aunt Heidi and Uncle Jake

Aunt Sarah and Uncle Chris

Proudly rocking the ridic sweaters

Santa even visited!

2013 Christmas Concert

Gavin had a Christmas concert tonight at his school. He goes to a church center, so they were able to sing religious songs. His group sang "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star" and "Happy Birthday, Jesus."

I almost melted into a blob just watching a group of twelve, 2 year olds, sing these songs. There were no major meltdowns and everyone did well! They were all so cute.

(Note: I had Gavin's shirt all tucked in nice and he comes out looking a little disheveled. We tried!)

We sat a few rows back so that he wouldn't see us and be tempted to run

Shaking the bells during Twinkle Twinkle

So proud of himself! 

He went to bed with the halo on. Love!

All of his grandparents came to watch!

"My Gramma Cinny"

Here is a video of the end of "Happy Birthday" 

"Happy Birthday, to you..."

We enjoyed some refreshments and then he showed off his classroom to the grandparents before we left. 

What a special night!

Give Thanks

It's hard for me to write down all of the things our family is thankful for. Where do we even start? Our days revolve around family so we'll start there.

Today we spent the day with the Trefethren/Lein group. We have started switching off holidays since it is too much work dragging everyone from house to house and by the time we're home, we don't feel like we've spent enough time with anyone. We drove out to Katie and Scottie's house with the dog in tow and everyone had a great time.

Grandma Cinny always has something new for me to play with!

The kids table. Gavin likes playing "drums" on his plate, so he got stuck with plastic.

Cooking up a storm

Politics, cars, life...

The three amigos

The Lein Clan.

 Gavin's adoptive grandparents. You can never have too many, right?

om nom nom ('a' for effort on the veggies Mark :) )

please-drop-something-please-drop-something...

You smile like that, Katie...it's getting posted

He had more fun re-arranging the crayon box than actually coloring

I've oddly gone from 20-something to old lady really fast. I refuse to shop on Thanksgiving; or even wake up to an alarm on Black Friday, don't get a paper to check the deals, didn't watch a flick of TV today (I just read a stat that families spend 14 hours on Thanksgiving watching TV...what?!) and enjoyed hours of my evening putting together a puzzle...that's about as old lady as they come but I love it! I did get to enjoy a teenie weenie mimosa today though. Win!
While there are always things to complain about (lack of sleep, heartburn that could kill a dragon, etc)...we have way more to be thankful for. We can't wait until next Thanksgiving where we get to spend it with TWO little boys and the Pound family!