Oh There's No Place Like Home for the Holidays!

So the holiday season, of course, began the day after Thanksgiving. After turning on good, inspiring Christmas music, we decorated our tree and hung stockings! I was happy that I had already finished Kelsey's stocking!

Throughout December, I kept finding Kelsey stuck under the tree. She loved the bells that we hung on the bottom branches.

Joshua really loved the Santa hat that he found in the decoration box.

In December, we decided to try making egg rolls. Let me tell you--they are SO good and not as hard as you might think. To accompany the egg rolls, we made fried rice as well.

Kels makes this face regularly where she squinches up her face and then breathes hard. It's really funny and she likes when you do it back to her. I'm just excited that I got it on camera.

During the holidays, the Brookfield Zoo sets of thousands and thousands of lights along with more than 100 Christmas trees all throughout the zoo. Normally the zoo isn't open in the evenings, but during the December weekends, they opened it up special with all of the beautiful lights, had hot chocolate, Santa and Mrs. Claus, and some light/music displays. It was so festive and so fun! We were happy that we had our zoo passes to get in free but it was SO crazy there!


Also in December, Kelsey figured out how to crawl! We're so proud of her! Before the holiday break, it was more of a half-crawl, but by the time we came back from Ohio, she was so fast!

One of my favorite holiday traditions is to make plates and plates of goodies and go out caroling! I had promised the parents of each of my piano students that we would be stopping by, partly so my non-member families could meet my family. We really enjoyed making chocolate-mint cookies, peppermint brownies, peppermint bark, and raspberry truffles. My friend, Emily, took a picture of the plate and sent it to us.

Steve decided to find out what he would look like with a goatee. I have to say, I liked it but I prefer to have him clean-shaven.

On Dec 22, we headed to Ohio. We went straight to Laura Coons' home and got to spend to very fun days there. It was nice to have one-on-one time with them and we enjoyed getting Carcassonne from them for Christmas!

While we were there, we took a little trip to the Airforce Museum. Steve and the kids had never been there, so it was fun to show off the museum to them.

On Christmas Eve morning, we drove up to Columbus to be with my family. Josh and Kelsey enjoyed being doted on the whole time and we sang Christmas songs on the way to picking up Kevin, Kristen and Allison from the airport that evening. When we got home, we did our traditional Manger Scene. Josh enjoyed being a shepherd.

I didn't take all that many pictures of the actual Christmas events because I came down hard with strep throat, but it seems like every time I turned around, Josh was playing with this xylophone, or asking to play ping pong and foosball. His aunts and uncles (and Steve, of course!) were so good at making him happy!

Kelsey LOVES grandma!

We were so grateful also that mom, dad and family were nice enough to keep track of our kids when we ran errands or just went out. One of the days, mom listened for the kids (who we had put down for the night) while Steve and me, Kevin and Kristen went on a double date. We headed out to Steak 'n Shake for desserts and lots of talking.

Grandpa had his fair share of changing dirty diapers and reading to the kids. Mom and dad were both so nice to send Steve back to bed a couple of mornings while they kept track of the kids. I was really sick most of the time, and Steve took really good care of me! Two weeks prior, when Kelsey and Joshua were throwing up with some kind of flu, I prayed that I wouldn't get sick until a time that Steve could be home with me and take care of the kids. I was very blessed to not have gotten sick until the break when Steve, mom, dad and my siblings could help take care of our babies.

My favorite part of the trip was New Year's Eve! We ate Chinese food, Steve made his Monson Family jello (which he ended up doing twice because everyone liked it so much!), and we played Around-the-World ping pong for an hour and a half.

The participants in ping pong were Dad, Kevin, Kristen, Steve, me, Scott, Eric, Mindy, Janece and Anna. It was so rowdy, so loud and SO fun! I'm proud to say that I won 5 points, though didn't come close to winning.

Also over the break, Kelsey decided that she didn't care for baby food, but LOVED finger foods. I'm okay with that. I much prefer to feeding her that over baby food that she just spits out at me!

On the way home from the trip, the kids seriously just crashed. I think they were overwhelmed by all of the attention and they seriously slept half of the way back to Chicago.

I think they love their daddy. Kelsey has realized that she loves the floor playtime as well! And she loves to play with Joshua!