Pre-Christmas Mayhem

We have been busy here. I am going to put up a post tonight (later) about our sledding adventures in the foot of snow we had, but I can't do that until Eli goes to bed or he will hear the videos and I won't be able to do anything!

Right now, Eli is playing out in the new "kid's game room." If you have been to my house before, you will recall I had a hobby room out back. I have converted that into a game room. It is now filled to the brim with toys and such. It's not quite done yet, but it's been SO NICE to have a room dedicated to the kids playing.

Eli loves wearing our shoes around and can put his own shoes on now. He sometimes still gets left and right mixed up though...here he is in my Uggs...

Here's my Christmas Angel. She's been making this HILARIOUS face that our friend Michelle Fulk's daughter Bailey dubbed the "monster face". I think that's a good name for it. She throws her head back and grins really big, but it does resemble a monster face! Here she is just sitting in her Christmas dress...

Here's her monster face a few seconds too late. It's usually much more animated! It doesn't look good on camera, sadly, since she throws her head back to do it...

Here are the boys, not happy to have their photo taken on Sunday before church. We all looked cute in our Christmas red.

The next day we went to the Antique Auto museum and Eli and Isadora had a fun time. Even though they had an entire huge room full of model trains (almost all electric) and lots of little people and machines and things too, that you could press buttons on and then watch go, what did Eli want to do?

He wanted to play with the trains on the table for toddlers. I guess that's fitting since he's a toddler, but he has these at home!!

Here's Whit's antique sidecar motorcycle.

Eli is obsessed lately with painting. I (stupidly) set it up for him and now he asks to do it every day!

Whit said this hat wasn't very Christmassy, but I thought it looked adorable anyway. Dora has just in the past week started ripping off her hairbows the minute I put them on. I am so distressed! Angela promised me if I kept them on her all the time (which Whit and Emma can vouch that I do) that she would leave them alone. BUT NO!! She takes them off minutes after (or seconds after) I put them on now!! CURSES! Good thing Gymboree makes cute hats.

Here I am with my baby girl on Christmas eve. We had some friends over (Nielsens and Fulks) but it was too busy for me to think about getting out my camera, darn it. Dora has a new boyfriend--one of the Nielsen triplets kept following her around and playing with her and Dora LOVED him! Haha. If I could only be so lucky as to have her marry a friend's kid!

I went to kiss her the same time she went to kiss me! She is SO Smart!! You can ask her for kisses and she gives them. You can ask her to stand and she stands. She really understands what I say (about 3 phrases.) It's SO Impressive, to me at least. She's only 10 months old!!

Here's Eli on Christmas Eve after his bath. We let him open one present and boy was he excited!

Also, I forgot to say Dora is taking a step at a time now. Just one at a time so far, but she's doing SO WELL! She has such great balance, she will let go now and stand for 10 or 15 seconds at a time just to get me to smile at her!