Christmas Day

After a few hours sleep, the kids woke up ready to go!

We found Nathan a great train table on Craig's List and he loved it immediately. It was hard to get him to want to open anything else.

One of Emie's favorites was her play gum ball machine. The girl loves balls, so we knew this would be a hit.

Later that day, my parents and sister came over for Christmas dinner and gift exchange. Grandma and Grandpa gave Emie a stroller and crib set for her baby doll which she also loves!

Daddy and Emie

Mommy and Emie

The kids have really started playing well together in the last few weeks. What a wonderful development!

As usual, Kelly's handmade gifts were the highlight. I'll do a separate post of those as they really were special this year. We will be treasuring them for years to come!

Christmas Eve

Our Christmas celebration started with a midnight party with Gus' family. We put the kids down to bed at their normal bedtimes and then woke them up at 11:30 to head over to Gus' brother's house for a midnight feast and gift exchange.

There was quite a spread of food - a whole roast pig, wonton soup, seafood noodles, lumpia (filipino egg rolls), Ofelia's fruit salad and we brought a pecan pie. I think the funniest moment of the evening was when Nathan blurted out "Mommy, that looks like a doggy!" (referring to the roast pig) in the middle of the prayer. There were also tons of gifts. What a generous family! Nathan got quite a kick out of "Tita Ofelia Santa" passing out the gifts.

Despite the late/early hour, the kids had a great time. How could you not enjoy cookies at 2 in the morning?

What are YOU doing 2 days before Christmas?

Ah . . . two days 'till Christmas. Of course I've already purchased and carefully wrapped the perfect gift for each person on our list. Naturally, the meal plans are made and all of the ingredients purchased. Surely you know that I am fully prepared for the holiday ahead and am just spending the day relaxing with my children while I sip hot cocoa in my clean house.

Ha! Or maybe, just maybe, me and the kids ran around like crazy people today purchasing those last few gifts and the necessary groceries.

Okay, the latter is far more true. But we sure had fun!

First Snow

Last Saturday, we woke up to a beautiful first snow. We had a scrumptious breakfast of a spinach, tomato, onion and ham omelet and fruit, left the dishes on the table to be washed later and headed out to take in the fun.

Emie was not so sure about this cold, white stuff at first, but she warmed up quickly.

Then we put them to work!

Now you know the real reason we had kids - free labor!! Mwa ha ha!

Eat More Chikin'!

Wheaton has Chik-fil-a! And it is crazy crowded! The kids and I decided to check it out this past week after Music Together class.

Looks like they liked it! We also enjoyed their play area. Emie even managed to climb all the way up, through the tunnel and down the tube slide all by herself. I was glad I didn't have to do a rescue in that tube slide!

We're goin' on a bear hunt!

We were supposed to go to a music class today, but it was cancelled. I asked Nathan what he wanted to do instead and he said "find a bear!". So we headed off to the Brookfield zoo to find my boy a bear. I'm so glad we did because it was a beautiful 60 degree day and the zoo was nearly empty. The children's play zoo was free today, so we headed there first.

They had all sorts of pretend play areas and a few things for the little ones too. Nathan entertained himself in a tree stump while Emie hit one of the more baby friendly spots.

They have a little greenhouse where the kids can water and even dig a little bit. I'm pretty sure Nathan sprayed every darn leaf in the place with his water bottle and Emie followed behind making this funny little "shoosh" sound and pretending to spray her bottle. Maybe my children can help me develop a green thumb!

And then we found our bear! One of the polar bears was in an especially social mood and we spent nearly an hour face to face with this guy.

Nathan was absolutely fascinated with that bear and insisted his bedtime story be about "Nathan the polar bear". Emie would squeal when he swam by, but was a little too afraid to get near the window.

I love unexpected days like this!

Halloween!

Oy! I'm exhausted! But we had a GREAT time this Halloween. We started out with a trip to my work for a Halloween potluck and some trick or treating. Then we had a little party with the kids' babysitter and the other kids she watches. On Saturday, a big party with our home daycare group and another that she partners with followed by our goddaughter's birthday party with a costume theme. Finally, on Saturday we had a nice morning at church followed by a party with dear friends. Here are are a few pictures of the weekend.

The kids dressed up for church. Emie's dress reminded me of candy corn and made me happy.

Nathan and his daycare buddies. He dressed as Handy Manny and enjoyed fixing things for people all weekend long. I was relieved that he liked his costume because he's been telling everyone for the past several weeks that he was going to be Santa for Halloween.

Emie dressed as a sock monkey, which was Nathan's costume last year.

We fit in some trick or treating too. It was hard to get a good shot of Nathan. He was on a candy mission!

What a cute little tail!

Emie is such a big girl now, isn't she?

And here is our award winning pumpkin! There was a pumpkin decorating contest at the daycare party. We made a McDonald's Hamburger pumpkin and we won! I was hoping the prize was a month of free daycare, but alas it was a movie night basket instead.

A simple apple dip

Kids just love to dip! At least mine do. We've had a lot of apples around our house lately, so I made up a simple apple dip recipe (if you can call it that!) which has become a staple at morning snack time. Just mix plain yogurt (I use Greek for extra protein), peanut butter and a few drops of honey. Definitely healthier than that caramel stuff and a kid pleaser for sure! You can even throw in some ground flax seed for some Omega 3s and fiber.

Our little Emie is, well, little. So we need to bulk her up a bit. If anyone has any good recipes for healthy, high calorie toddler food, I'd appreciate you passing them my way!

Pumpkin patch

We have had unseasonably warm weather here lately. Today was cooler, but still a lovely 65 degree day. Knowing what is coming, I've been taking every opportunity to get us out of the house and enjoy fresh air while we still can. Today we hit a local pumpkin patch.

And we ran . . .

and ran . . .

and ran . . .

and obliged Mommy with a pumpkin pic.

We also tried out our muscles on some pumpkin squats.

Maybe next year Emie!

Catching the running bug

Nathan ran his first ever race this morning. I ran the Morton Arboretum 5K and Nathan ran the 50 yard dash for 2 to 4 year olds.

He was pretty excited that he was #1 (all of the kids were #1 ;))

All morning, he was asking for his turn to run. I got a video of the race, but it was pretty poor as apparently, parents of 2-4 year olds can be a bit aggressive with their cheering. Nathan was very cute zigzagging all over the road, laughing the whole way.

I think he may have caught the running bug. We took a family walk after dinner and he opted to run rather than ride in the stroller.

Celebrating 7 years with segways

Gus and I celebrated our seven year wedding anniversary with a day to ourselves in downtown Chicago. We went out to breakfast, went on a three hour Segway tour of the city, went out to lunch and just walked around the city.

A great view of the skyline from Adler Planetarium

We rode around soldier field, which was a ton of fun as we could play around with our new Segway tricks.

It was so windy at Buckingham Fountain we had to lean pretty far to keep from blowing away from each other!

It was a great way to cover a lot of ground quickly, see the city in a unique way and very fun!
We don't really go out very often without our kids, so it was a really nice chance to spend some 1:1 time.

Apple Picking!

A few weekends ago we drove out to the country (well, not too country, the metra line does go there!) for some apple picking! We even convinced Tito Dong to come with us. He is wonderful with our kiddos and they adore him (and not just because he has been known to arrive at our house bearing McDonald's pancakes!).

Emie enjoyed toddling around the orchard and found some of our best Fuji apples.

Nathan enjoyed chomping into several apples, but wanted me to gnaw the skin off for him. Definitely a little too much fiber for me that day!

They're just better fresh off the tree!

We are pretty sure that Emie gnawed her way through at least 3 apples. Pretty good for only having 5 teeth!

Both kiddos enjoyed playing on all of the tractors they had on display.

We brought home quite the haul of apples and quickly turned them in to applesauce, apple butter and apple crisp. Yum!