Christmas Time

Oh man do we love Christmastime. We do so many different activities that I had to collage all the pictures so I didn't have a 200 separate pics! The kids got exactly what they wanted from Santa this year...after a few suggestions. Meg got an Easy Bake Oven, Walker got a bmx bike and Preslie got a princess kitchen. They were all very happy kids. I even got surprised with an aqua Kitchenaide! Thank you Cory!! It was a great year.

Christmas Eve at Grandpa Mark and Grandma Jane's house. We had some delicious prime rib, played some bingo, sat on Santa's lap and opened lots of presents. It's always such a fun time to get together with everyone.

Opening more presents at Grandma Jill and Grandpa Lumas' house.

Sitting on Santa's lap. The bottom right picture shows how Pres feels about Santa from a distance, the bottom left shows how she feels about him up close. Not a fan yet! The kids always look forward to sitting on Santa's lap on Christmas Eve. How lucky are we?!

Christmas morning. See Walker on the bottom? Ya thats what he did for the next three days straight. Glad he got what he wanted :)

Best Christmas pic I could get of the three. Not too bad

We changed it up this year and decorated Christmas trees instead of gingerbread houses. It was a fun change. But extra messy.

Preslie and Charlie checking each other out in their princess dresses on Christmas Eve

Meg is checking out the new snow on the ground in the picture. I LOVED it so had to put it in.

This might be one of my favorite pictures of all time. Can't wait to show this to PJ when she's big.

More Santa time

Happy Bday Meggers!!

Happy bday to our Meggie! She turned 6 this year. Crazy and fun and sad at the same time. She had a friend party for the first time. She chose to have a princess party so she got to invite 5 friends and have a day of princessness. She also got to have two other birthday parties. Her bday is only two days after her Grandpa Mark's so we had a double party for the two of them. Then on her real bday she had her other grandparents come over to celebrate with her. What a lucky girl!

Cory working on her Bday sign

This is what she woke up to on her bday. We thought she would think it was great. Not so much. She wasn't happy that she had cleaned her room the night before and we messed it up with tinsel. 

Meg's party went so smooth! We made stickers, painted fingernails, put on glitter eyeshadow, watched Princess Sophia, ate princess cupcakes,  and played with the million balloons that were on her bedroom floor. 

Showing off their multi-colored fingernails

Bday Twins (almost) about to enjoy some delicious cake made by Grandma Jane

Present time!

Here is a good shot of the glitter eyeshadow. And I pretty much love this pic of Meg for some reason.

After waiting all day for dad to get home from work she finally got to open her big present from us. Every Disney princess you could imagine in one box.

Happy Bday Meg

Just a few things about Meg to finish off:
She is learning to read right now and is really good at it.
Obsessed with minecraft on the xbox, or watching minecraft videos on youtube.
Is turning into some sort of vegetarian that only eats chicken nuggets. Because it has a crust on it so it's good.
Is sweet and thoughtful
Hates to clean
Loves to create, paint, cut, glue, color, draw...if it's creative or messy she loves it.
Loves to snuggle with her Dad.

oh Pres!!

Oh how I love this little girl. She is definitely one of a kind. Full of life, spunk, sassyness, girlyness, mischief, and so so funny!! We laugh and laugh at this little thing. 

So I've decided to put together a post just about her. 

Pres is 2 1/2 right now

She loves marshmallows, lucky charm marshmallows, hot dogs, candy, and quesadillas

Wants to watch Max and Ruby all day long every day

Refuses to wear anything but a princess dress 99% of the day. (even when it's -16 outside)

When she says I am it comes out "I mam"

She comes up to me a few times a day and taps me and says, "excuse me"

She's a tiny little thing.  She weighs maybe 24 lbs on a good day. 

She makes "cakes" by dipping toilet paper balls into the toilet and piling them on top of the bathtub ledge. 

Here are just a few things she's been up to lately

Found her like this around 10:00 one night

This is when she discovered that she can fit her little body into the preemie clothes my mom gave Meg for her cabbage patch kid. I really like her taste in fashion.

Found someone's abandoned bowl of ice cream

Found her like this at the very top of the staircase

Here she was getting pretty with my mascara.
This wasn't the first time she's crawled onto the bathroom counter and made a mess. She's ruined a few of my makeup brushes painting vaseline onto the cabinet and mirror. 

Found some eyeliner in Grandma's downstairs bathroom. The bathroom floor looked about the same as her belly

She really is supervised at all times...well we're at least in the house with her. We know that if she's been quiet for more than 5 minutes we need to run and find her. Usually she's up to no good. Luv ya Pres!!

Basketball

Walker was on a basketball team for the first time this year. He was on a fun team with lots of cute boys. He had a good time and is a pretty good little basketball player. 

I love this pic. Sitting in a big group waiting to see where the ball is going to end up.

Doing a little bit of guarding. I loved watching him guard. He always got really excited and did a lot of jumping around.

Taking a shot!

NYC!!!

Cory and I got to take a trip to NYC in November with Justin and Darla. We absolutely loved it. We ran and ran and ran for four days and saw as much of the city as possible. We left on a Thursday night around 11:00 from the airport and got to NYC about 6:00 am. Even though it was a sleepless night and a crazy day we didn't really seem to notice our lack of sleep. 

We went to the musical Rock of Ages and LOVED it! It was one of those shows where when the show is about to end you get just a little bit depressed because you don't want it to be over. 

We toured all over NYC. Chinatown, Soho, Central Park, Harlem and Little Italy to name a few. We ate LOTS and lots of food. Hit some delicious bakeries and found our favorite pizza ever. 

We took a cruise on the Hudson River at nighttime and got to see the Statue of Liberty all lit up. We ate some really yummy food and watched lots of people dance around like crazies.  

We went to the Museum of Natural history and to the Met. I'm glad we took the time to check out some museums. The Met is enormous and overwhelming. It would take days and days to take it all in. Cory and I are good for about an hour in a museum and then we are done. 

We loved riding the subway. If you want to pretend like you're a real New Yorker you have to do that. We even saw a real subway rat....from far away thank goodness!

We went down to the 9/11 site and got to see the new buildings under construction, the fountains, the tree that has survived through everything (can't remember the name) and just took it all in. It's pretty eye opening.

We walked 5th ave and checked out all of the ritzy stores. We browsed around FAO Schwartz and felt like little kids. I LOVED that place. We saw the piano and the fortune teller machine "Zoltar" from BIG. I could have spent hours in there inspecting all of the giant candy bars. I felt like a 5 year old and I'm pretty sure Cory thought I acted like one too.  

Standing right outside our hotel in Times Square

We tried to get tickets to the David Letterman show but weren't there on the right days of the week. That was a bummer.

Cory living out the BIG movie

9/11 memorial

Some of the buildings had their Christmas decorations up. Macy's and a few on 5th avenue were my favorite.

Rock of Ages!!

The Empire State Building

Outside the Museum of Natural History

We went down to South Seaport (I'm guessing at the name) hoping to check out the shopping and see the sights. But sadly most everything was shut down from Hurricane Sandy. It was sad to see everything deserted and ruined. 

There were so many cool old buildings to see. I love that kind of stuff. These pics are all of a cathedral near Harlem. I forgot the name of it.

Another pic in front of the museum. 

Statue of liberty from our cruise ship

This is the only picture we took in Central Park. It's amazing how big it is. 

Funny story: Justin was begging and begging Darla to get a pic drawn of herself. Well, he finally got her talked into it. Sad thing is...our artist was not really an artist. As you can see from this picture the drawing looks nothing like me. And the picture he drew right next to that one looked exactly like my twin but with brown hair. Not impressed street artist.  But to top it off, right in front of us while we were getting our "portraits" there was a fight going on with some girls and a few guys. The cops and some handcuffs got brought in eventually. Good memories