The Best of St. Louis

This year we decided we would go to St. Louis the day after Christmas.  We were all anxious to see family and celebrate Christmas with all of them.  While we were there Greg went to a Blues game a Rams game and he was able to see his friend Erik.  I had the opportunity to visit Caroline and her parents for lunch at Red Robin and I took the boys to see Alvin and the Chipmunks: Chipwrecked on New Year's Day.  Elliott and Greg went to see Maria play some tennis while Oliver and I stayed home and napped!  Elliott and Oliver spent some time with Grandpa Ronnie watching the Polar Express and we were all able to drive out to Stephanie and Shaun's new house for a visit.  

Here are a few pics from our trip...

 

Christmas Day

I was expecting both boys to be up super early (like usual), but they both ended up sleeping a little past their regular wake up  time.   Elliott was up first and he couldn't believe that Santa had set up the Geo Trax in the living room!  It was fun watching him check it all out!

We opened presents, had more reindeer pancakes and then we all went to church.  The rest of the day was spent at home playing with all of our new toys and cooking a delicious ham dinner!!

Elliott played with the Geo Trax while he waited for Oliver to get out of bed!

Stocking Time - Cars socks!

Geo Trax Set Eric and Aero from Santa

Geo Trax from Santa

Elmo Slippers

 Oliver received a vacuum because he loves to help me vacuum!

 The boys picked out airplanes for eachother.

 A gift from Nana Pat

 One of Greg's gifts was a wireless keyboard for his iPad.

 Charlie Brown Shirt and Hat!

 Santa left  us a family gift: a Blue Ray player - this was even a surprise to Greg!!

 The boys gave me pajama pants and lotion!

 A gift from Nana Pat

 This is how we displayed our Chirstmas cards this year.

This year we went back to having an artificial tree because of Elliott's allergies.  I really liked how the artificial tree looked and as I was decorating it I remembered my Mom had a lot of Christmas ribbon.  I decided to wrap the gold and red ribbon around the tree.  I like to think of it as a symbol of my Mom wrapping us in her love.  I just noticed in the picture that our angel is crooked and that's because Elliott got onto Greg's shoulders so he could put the angel on...I guess we never straightened it out - makes for a good memory!

Christmas Eve

I'm way behind in blogging, but I'm trying to get caught up with some posts from Christmas!

This was our first year staying at home for Christmas Eve and Christmas Day.  We definitely missed being with our families, but we loved starting our own traditions at our own home.  Christmas Eve was on a Saturday and few days leading up to it Oliver had a horrible stomach virus.  After a middle of the night trip to the ER he was finally feeling better by Christmas Eve.  We spent the day hanging around the house, celebrating the birth of Jesus and spending time with eachother.  

Here are some pics of the boys decorating cookies for Santa!  

Oliver liked pouring the sprinkles!

 Elliott liked eating the frosting!!

Here's Oliver with more sprinkles!

We also made reindeer food with oatmeal and sprinkles.

Our church didn't have a Christmas Eve service, so we tried out another church.  It was very different than what we are used to, but we all enjoyed singing Christmas carols and the candle lighting at the end was neat.  They had a Children's Message that Elliott went up front for, he even spoke up and talked about how he helped his Daddy put up our Christmas lights on our house!  The kids all stood in a line holding a string of lights symbolizing how Jesus is the Light of the World.  This is where Elliott learned that they used to put candles on Christmas trees, but now we used Christmas lights.  After church we came home to unwrap a couple of presents.  My Mom always gave me new pajamas on Christmas Eve and we have continued  that tradition with the boys. 

Elliott received some glow-in-the-dark rocket pajamas!

Oliver was super excited about his Elmo Christmas PJs!

Greg gave me some super cute heart pajamas!  Love them!  Greg received some snowflake pajama pants, but we didn't get a picture.

We made this plate for Santa's cookies.  

The boys put Santa's cookies and hot chocolate right next to the fire place and they left a note for him.

Elliott didn't want to leave Santa too many cookies because he didn't want Santa to eat too many and get stuck in the fireplace!  

The boys sprinkled the reindeer food on the ground outside and we set out some carrots for them, too.

Here is our living room after Santa made his visit.  Santa set up two sets of Geo Trax, and he put a wrapped train set for each of the boys in special Santa Claus wrapping paper.