Early Christmas Morning

We celebrated Christmas early today with just the kids, since we will be traveling over the real Christmas. Andy knew Santa was coming, so last night, we put magic reindeer dust (colorful glitter) out on the lawn so Santa would find our house. We also set out some cookies and carrots for Santa and his reindeer. This morning, the boys actually slept in a little bit (until almost 8!!!) which was wonderful!

Andy was eager when he saw the presents downstairs so we got right to opening them. He actually helped open all of the presents, so we took our time and enjoyed each one :) Both Andy and Jack loved their toys, I got some awesome Snorkel gear from Chris for our upcoming trip, and Chris got a boardgame and clothes from me. All in all, a great start to our Holiday week! We did tell Andy that he'll have more to open in Madison and Delafield when we go to visit - he was excited about that :)

I made pancakes for breakfast, and Jack even got to try some. The rest of our day was spent at home, relaxing and playing with new toys. We're looking forward to celebrating Christmas with family this coming week!!

Visits with Grandma and Grandpa Graham

In the past couple of weeks Andy and Jack's Grandma and Grandpa Graham have come up to visit. Most recently, Grandma came up this week, which was great because Andy was sick and not up for school for a couple of days. He's feeling better now, and both boys will hopefully stay healthy through Christmas and beyond. Here are some pictures from those visits that I hadn't had a chance to post yet!

Silly face...
Cool shades Andy!

On one of his sick days with Grandma (notice the pj top - he wasn't in the mood to get totally dressed!) But he did help clean the kitchen floors :)

Jack's staring us down... Check out those 2 bottom teeth...

Both boys at once - too bad Jack was getting squirmy.

Now there's room for Jack! No big brother shoving him out of the way.

We're counting down the days till Christmas!!!

We'll be celebrating Christmas early with just the kids on Saturday morning! Santa will be making an early special delivery :)

Fun with Uncle Brad and Aunt Karissa

Brad and Karissa decided to come up for a visit this past weekend! They arrived Friday evening and we had dinner in since Jack is usually ready for bed by 7. Andy was pretty tired by the evening since he had skipped nap, but once Brad and Karissa arrived he found his second wind! He was showing off his toys, jumping on the air mattress in the basement, and having a blast with Teddy & Bailey. Once he went to bed, we stayed up and played a couple of board games. In the morning we had french toast and Andy & Jack got to play a little more before they headed home. Thanks for visiting guys!!!

Jack was in his jammies before they arrived. Might as well be comfy!

Andy (and the dogs) were letting loose in the basement. Teddy successfully went through the tunnel. Bailey, not wanting to let Teddy show him up, also tried, but got stuck. Bailey then decided to climb to the top of Andy's play gym (and go down the slide) to show off his agility talents!

We actually got both boys to sit pretty nicely with Brad and Karissa. I couldn't decide which picture I liked better so here are both of them. I like Jack looking straight into the camera in the first picture, but I think Andy looks cute with Karissa in the second :)



Andy LOVES his Aunt Kari. They were red hooded sweatshirt twins on Saturday.

We Miss You Daddy!

Chris had to go for a short trip to Atlanta this week, so the boys and I have been holding down the fort here. We had quite a bit of snow last night to this morning, but other than that the week has been pretty uneventful so far! The boys have been very well behaved. No temper tantrums, they've taken very good naps, they've eaten very well, and slept well at night (so far - maybe I shouldn't speak too soon.) Anyways, we miss you Chris and can't wait to see you!

Andy has been trying to coax Jack into crawling to him. No success yet, but we'll keep trying...Yes, Jack is still a little bit drooly even though his bottom two teeth are pretty much in...
Here is Andy practicing some of his "YOGA!" moves (he yells out YOGA! when he is doing it). He sees me doing various poses and tries to copy me. He actually does it pretty well, and is a very limber little boy.

Jack was bundled up nice and cozy today. Still working off a bit of a cold :(
So many toys to choose from, what to chew on next?

Since Andy was such a good boy today, he got an M&M ice cream sandwich (his new favorite dessert). I think, Jack is looking at it thinking "that looks pretty yummy, Andy..." Andy is saying here, "No Jack, you're too tiny to eat this, it's just for big boys!"

I think that the 12 days before Christmas (we're not quite there yet, I know) I'll try to have the boys wear matching pj's - or at least color coordinated for the season :) Corny, yes, but also cute.

Jack has been getting more "talkative." I liked this picture because, he's not really angry or sad, he's just making some noise to be heard!
And yes, because Chris is gone for a couple of days, Andy is the man of the house. He took on the extra responsibility of shoveling with great pride. After Jack went to bed tonight, we got out there and finished up the driveway (we actually have VERY nice neighbors who snowblowed for us this morning - I appreciated it SO much!)

I can say that Andy does actually help some this year - he pushes the snow in the right direction and usually throws the snow to the side of the driveway. We were outside tonight more out of needing to get a little exercise before bed, than necessity for shoveling.

As we were working, Andy often would run up to me and say "What are you up to Sir Mommy?" I have NO idea why he added the sir to the sentence, but I think he was trying to make this work fun and was pretending I was his boss. He said it enough times that I'm positive that's what he was saying! Andy didn't even want to come inside, when we were done. But, we had already pushed his bedtime out a little bit and he realized he was getting tired.

Have a great rest of the week everyone!

Santa's coming to town

A few weeks ago we all got a chance to visit with Santa. Andy didn't want to sit on Santa's lap, but he was happy to tell Santa what he wanted for Christmas! (a ship for his Star Wars guys) It was kind of an unplanned trip, as you can see we weren't really dressed up for it. But we took advantage of the good moods of the boys and the short line!

A fun St. Nick's Weekend

We had lots of things going on this weekend. We started off with St. Nick's on Friday night. St. Nick rang our doorbell at 6:30, while Chris was just finished getting Andy into his jammies. Andy came running down to see who (or what) was at our door. A bag of presents for Jack and Andy! YEAH! Andy graciously helped Jack open his first, and then Andy went to work on his own. Andy was so excited about his first one (a little M&M guy fan with M&M's in the bottom) that we almost couldn't even convince him to open his second one. Once he finally did open it, he was very happy about the Star Wars guys he got too. After Jack went to bed, Andy and I made some yummy frosted sugar cookies. Andy helped a lot - he used the cookie cutters to cut out lots of the shapes (and eat the left over dough edges) and he frosted a couple of cookies very well - probably eating more frosting than he used though!

Saturday morning started off with a big trip to the grocery store, where Jack sat up in the cart for the first time (unfortunately falling asleep halfway through - I was missing the infant carrier then!). We had all planned on going to the Neenah Christmas Festival after that, but it was WAY too cold and windy for Jack to be out there, especially since he has a little bit of a cold. So, Andy and I repeated last year's tradition as a special Mommy & Andy activity. We rode on the back of a hay wagon being pulled by two horses (Dot and Dee). Andy got pretty chilly, even though I had him bundled up like crazy AND had a blanket over us. He was asking to go find Santa halfway through the ride. But we made it through, I got some hot chocolate at the end, and then we went to the next stop. We saw Santa and Mrs. Claus - Andy just said hi quickly. He was very excited for our next event where we went to meet some real reindeer. Rudolf and Comet were very nice and quite large. Andy said hello and had a nice little talk with them. We also went to go see people carving some ice sculptures which was pretty cool. Andy loved the drills that they were using.

When we got back to the house, Grandma Reinsel and Uncle Dave were arriving at the same time! We spent the afternoon with them and Dave got to meet Jack for the first time. Andy was wearing the airplane sweatshirt that Dave had gotten him and had lots of fun playing with Dave and Grandma. So much fun, that there was no way we were going to get him to nap! Jack doesn't have the luxury of nap skipping , so he took a nice long late afternoon snooze.

On Sunday morning, Grandma and Grandpa came up for a quick visit. We opened up a couple more St. Nick's gifts, played some more, and watched the first half of the Packer's game. Andy had a great time playing toys with grandma and grandpa! He got most of the attention, because Jack napped for quite a bit of the time they were here. Too much excitement for Jack in 1 weekend!

All in all, a busy and very fun weekend. We were so happy to have family come see us - and they got to see our Christmas tree too! St. Nick's weekend was so much fun, we just can't wait until CHRISTMAS!!!

Bath Time Just Got Better!

First of all, as a recap of last weekend, we had a great Thanksgiving in Madison! Andy and Jack played a lot with Grandma Reinsel, we had a delicious turkey dinner, and we got to do some special Madison activities. Andy got to go to a UW Volleyball game with Chris and I where he met Bucky again - he had so much fun! He was very brave and went in one of those big bouncy houses, but got a little freaked out and crawled out pretty quickly. Also, Andy and Jack both went with us to the Madison Zoo. Andy's favorite animals were the seals, but we also really liked the snakes & turtles. We did a little Christmas shopping at REI, where Andy enjoyed crawling into some tents and test driving a sled :) We also loved Riley, Grandma Reinsel's new dog. Bailey was a little less than thrilled with the new addition, but he will grow to love him! Unfortunately, we forgot our digital camera and did not get any pictures - so sad :(

And, to finally get to the title of my blog, today was the first time that the boys went in the same bath! Up until now, Jack has been using his blue baby tub, but he has quickly outgrown it. Because he is sitting up so well, I decided to try him solo in the big tub first. He was so sturdy in there and having so much fun, that I thought Andy could join him. Andy was an AWESOME big brother. So nice to his baby brother, sharing his bath toys and not bumping or splashing him once. In fact, after 20 minutes when Jack was getting cold and I took Jack out to get jammies on, Andy started crying saying "I want my Jack back in here with me!" Some of the pics have a weird yellow hue, but they're still cute...

Andy decided that he wanted to wear his construction worker goggles in the bath so that he could swim...

This was just a cool one of the water drops in front of Jack
Plenty of toys to chew on in the big bathtub!

Handsome guys...

Jack always finds the wet washcloths to chew on - they can't taste very good because I'm sure they're a little bit soapy...

Happy boy who has more space to roam - no more baby tub! You can also kind of see his two bottom teeth in this pic if you look very closely.

Andy with the goggles...
Peek a boo! One without...

Bath time = happy time!

After bath, Andy wanted Jack to lay down in his bed with him. Andy gave Jack a little blanket and covered him up - saying "I love my Jack! It's alright, Andy's here!"

In Matching PJ's

Unfortunately, I'm having technical difficulties and am unable to get our early Graham Family Thanksgiving pictures posted off of the site that my mom uploaded them to. I will definitely get those on the blog as soon as I can - we had a great weekend! Andy, Jack, and Ben got along extremely well! And we were able to visit and play some board games with Brad, Karissa, Marianne, and Ryan which was lots of fun. We had a delicious meal, and the boys had so much fun with everyone.

We were hanging out tonight after Jack and Andy got done with their baths. I got some cute pictures - and in matching PJ's, which doesn't happen too often :)

Jack is sitting up and really reaching for toys and interacting with them. He laughs whenever he gets a toy to play music...

Andy's got a great imagination - in the picture below, he is driving his helicopter (the keyboard is where the controls are (including a laser) and the dragon on the stick is his shifter. He's the pilot and we're all passengers if we sit on the trunk next to him or behind on the bed.

Jack is very comfortable around Bailey, and Bailey is extremely tolerant!

Jack is really grabbing at his feet now. When his socks are off, he usually tries to stick his toes in his mouth - and succeeds. I still have to get a picture of that.

I actually got Andy to smile for a posed picture here. He said "I'm smiling nice!"

Here's a serious one - looking a little bit sleepy
And finally, Jack with Andy on the bench together. Andy wasn't too fond of sharing the keyboard with Jack, but Jack got to push a few buttons under the radar...

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!