Christmas 2009

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After seven days without Pete, Andrew and I are both looking forward to his return. He left Dubai this morning and is headed to Cincinnati for three days and then will be home. We've been keeping busy by shoveling the driveway, finishing the Christmas shopping, decorating a gingerbread house, cookie baking, and swimming!

Hey Santa

We hit up the St. Michael fire station over the weekend to see Santa. Andrew enjoyed seeing the trucks!

The kid from Jerry Maguire was there to play as well.

We had about a 20 minute wait so Andrew had lots of time to prepare. We would ask him what he wants for Christmas and he just replied "presents". So we told him to ask Santa for books.

A little coaxing, but then he was fine.

Clearly, Santa was not fine. Probably stressing about the big night ahead. Maybe he was making a mental list...and checking it twice...trying to find out who's naughty or nice.

Santa finally pulled it together and we got a decent picture.

They just kind of sat there like that for a while. Neither of them said anything. Finally, I told Andrew to talk to Santa. He didn't, but Santa got the clue that he could talk to Andrew. He said, "Little boy, do you want surprises for Christmas, ho ho ho?". Andrew shook his head up and down.

Then, Santa tried to have Andrew grasp onto his finger. Much like one would do to a baby.

He use that trick on him last year as well.

Pizza night

We needed a little extra family time tonight so we decided to break out the Trader Joe's pizza dough and make a (semi) homemade pizza.

All the boys had to do was get the dough onto the pan.

It took them about 20 minutes.

They had fun doing it, though.

After we ate, Andrew reenacted a scene from last night. The two of us were looking through one of the many catalogues that we've gotten in the mail. We saw a picture of one of THESE. He was playing with one at a toy store in Little Falls. Andrew said "Oh my gosh, want that. Right now." I said "well, it's almost Christmas time, you'll have to ask Santa for that". He quickly hopped off of my lap, went over to the window and asked Santa.

Thanksgiving, big boy bed, holidazzle parade

The tree is up

Yes, we realize that it's not even Thanksgiving yet, but we decided to get all of the holiday decorations up early this year. Pete will be going on a 10-day stint to Dubai shortly, so we wanted to enjoy them a bit earlier. It only took us about an hour last night, thanks to Andrew and his ability to order us around.

"Mom, I do it, no my turn, right now."

"No, Daddy, no, my turn."

"Doin' Daddy? Doin'? My turn."

"Open on it. My turn. Open on it. Right now."

After the boys got the tree up, I had visions of us all happily placing the trimmings on the tree.

It didn't take long for that vision to come to a screeching halt.

Apparently I didn't want my almost 2-year-old touching the glittery, breakable ornaments.

And my other helper was busy playing with the camera.

Before long, this was the scene.

Poor kid. I made it up to him by bringing him with to Hardware Hank for paint samples tonight. He wore his turkey hat, sunglasses upside down, and carried a button the whole time.