Christmas 2011

This year, we opted to stay home and relax on Christmas Eve. We lounged and ate soup :) We put the kids to bed at the normal time and then woke them up at 10:45 to head to Gus' brother's house for the midnight celebration. I accidentally left the memory card at home, so we didn't get any pictures of our giddy children at midnight, but they certainly had fun!

We slept late Christmas morning and then the kids opened the gifts from us and a few relatives who sent things. Nathan is our early bird and was wide awake, even after our late night.

Emie really liked passing out gifts, but wasn't a huge fan of tearing them open.

Nathan was really excited to give us a star he made at school.

We found this great kitchen on the side of the road! It just needed a few new screws and a wipe down and it was ready to go. We got Emie some play food and dishes for her Christmas present.

She has been "cooking" a lot this week already!

I think Nathan's favorite gift was a bat cave given to him by his Tita Grace and Uncle John.

After gifts, we had a big breakfast, took a walk, played with our new toys for a while, took long naps and then headed to Grandpa and Grandma's house for dinner and another gift exchange.

Isaac watched all of the action this year. It is crazy to think he'll be right in there ripping open gifts next year!

Emie loves playdoh, so I know she'll enjoy this playdoh ice cream set.

Mommy and Isaac

We had so much fun spending time with both sides of our family, but we were pretty tired when Monday morning came and it was time to head to work/school/babysitter. I really wish Americans celebrated Boxing Day!

Prepping for Christmas 2011

Advent at the Arceos was a lot of fun this year! Nathan is understanding more and more about the significance of what Christ did for us and Emie is just starting to grasp some of these truths. Having a baby in the house was helpful with this as Nathan was very fascinated that someone so powerful could be helpless like our little Isaac. He also couldn't believe he would sleep in an animal feeding box - yuck! We tried to spend time each day of advent reading about the Christmas story, learning songs and Bible verses and of course, making those oh so beautiful homemade ornaments to adorn our tree.

Here is an attempt at getting a picture of all three in front of the tree after decorating. No smiles and one blurry foot, but better than the other attempts!

The older kids had fun making salt dough ornaments this year. They especially liked the painting and glitter. I absolutely love that when you are two or three you just can't have too much glitter. Nathan asked to put more and I told him I thought his star was already beautiful. He told me "but Mommy, more glitter will make it more beautiful!". Knowing that Jesus would absolutely love these excessively glittered decorations for his birthday, I gladly handed him the bottle and let him have at it.

I always thought I'd detest all of the homemade ornaments when they started pouring into our house, but secretly I really like them. The kids are just so proud to see their work hanging on the tree, that I can't help but like them.

An early visit from the tooth fairy

We've had our first visit from the tooth fairy! Poor Emie took an unfortunate spill at the playground last summer which left one of her front teeth pretty loose. It held on for a while, but she took another unfortunate spill a few weeks ago and it came completely out. So it looks like she'll follow in her Aunt Kelly's footsteps and be toothless for quite a while.

It wasn't too painful for her and she got over it pretty quickly. And we think she is still pretty darn cute!

And she has a crisp new dollar in her piggy bank :)

Busy bags

One of the best things that I did to help prepare for Isaac's arrival was to participate in a busy bag exchange. A friend of mine organized it and was able to gather 30 women to each make 30 of one activity for either toddlers or preschoolers. It was a lot of work at 38 weeks pregnant to make the bags, but soooooo worth it! Our box arrived when Isaac was about 2 or 3 weeks old and we have been loving exploring all of the different activities. They keep the big kids occupied and I don't have to plan out as many things for our learning time. Here are some pictures of the kids doing some of the activities.

Nathan is shaping play dough into numbers and Emie is doing it with shapes.

Emie is matching felt popsicles with the stick with the appropriate color on it. The other side of the sticks have the name of the color written in black, so Nathan can work on his sight words.

Nathan is doing a bug match game. He has to find the appropriate matching bug and they are a few layers, to challenge a bit more. I helped Emie with it and it was good for talking about big/small, the type of bug and colors.

Emie is stuffing pom poms through small holes in a plastic container. Great for keeping her occupied and good for fine motor practice too!

Nathan is working on patterns with pom poms. They start basic and get more complicated.

I know the kids have enjoyed it because Nathan was wondering if Santa might bring him another box of "activities"!

When people ask me for advice on preparing for a second baby, I always recommend putting together activities for your older child. Someone recommended this to me when Emie was born and it was a life saver. While it was a lot of work to put together my 30 bags, it would have been far more time consuming and expensive to do 30 different activities.

Here is the link to where we found all of the busy bag ideas, in case anyone wants to make any of their own.

http://unsolicitedadvice-n-such.blogspot.com/p/busy-bag-swaps.html