Archive for the ‘Holiday’ Category

April 8th, 2012 by sara

Happy Easter

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The kids enjoyed waking up today to find baskets of candy at the table and were excited to look around the living room for all the eggs that the Easter Bunny hid in funny spots.

One in the stroller!

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In the Phillie Phanatic’s shirt?!

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Helping each other with the eggs

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Enjoying some treats (before breakfast!)

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Happy Easter!

February 24th, 2012 by sara

Valentine Factory

I saw the idea for these valentines online, and since Jonah (and Nora) have both been obsessed with googly eyes and ‘projects’ lately, I knew it would be the perfect valentines for Jonah to make for his school friends this year.

Making smiley faces

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Gluing on the heads

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Writing on the names

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All done!

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Nora also got dressed up all cute for the day. (Jonah really wanted to get in on the pictures for some reason.)

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“Mama, what these funny kind of pants called?”

“Tights, sweetie. They’re called tights.” :)

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December 27th, 2011 by sara

Christmas Day

The kids really enjoyed Christmas this year.  On the carpet, Santa left Jonah a train that runs by itself on the tracks.  It was the first thing Jonah noticed, and he was thrilled.  That train has hardly stopped chugging for two days now.

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And he brought a bouncy horse for Nora, and it is so funny to watch her get going really fast on it.

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Jonah wanted to dig into his stocking first and loved finding more little treats from Santa – “a candy cane!! a street sweeper!!”

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Nora dug right into her pile of gifts.

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ooohhh… trains on a placemat!

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And the kids were really cute, showing their gifts to each other.

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I asked Nora if she wanted to give Jonah his present from her and she brought it over and said, “Jonah! It’s a Thomas present!!” (before he opened it) :)

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She also cracked us up when she opened this gift and said, “A box of cupcakes… what a great idea!!”

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I made a doll bed for Nora for Christmas (with a little help from Jonah – he drew the original plan and he was pretty excited to try some real sawing and hammering). So we made the bed frame and then I also sewed up a mattress, sheet, quilt, and pillow. I was super proud of how it turned out, so it was great to see how much Nora loved it, too.

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Then Nora wanted to try out the bedding for herself.

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And dragged the bed into her room to practice taking a nap with her babies.

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Jonah was pleased with his own pair of fleecy, mom-made baseball pants. He wants me to make some for Sean, too.

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Then Jonah discovered another box from Santa that had even more train cars and tracks. What fun!

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And Nora was very happy with her set of cookware (and her shopping cart which I don’t have a good picture of yet), so now she can wake up her sleeping babies, put them in a cart, go shopping for food, come home and cook it, feed the babies, and put them down for a nap. Very cute.

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Mmmm… candy canes…

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Merry Christmas to all our family and friends!

December 24th, 2011 by sara

Christmas Eve

Jonah and Nora are beyond excited for the big Santa visit tonight. Jonah finally understands the whole thing enough to really anticipate it this year, and Nora gets caught up in his great excitement. After bath tonight, while we were waiting for Jonah to get in his pajamas and join us for The Night Before Christmas, I asked Nora a few questions about the day…

Then Nora unwrapped the book.

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And Sean read it to the kids.

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Jonah and Nora took turns putting the cookies they decorated on a plate for Santa.

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They placed it gently by the fireplace.

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We all held our breath as Nora carefully carried the cup of milk over.

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The kids both made notes for Santa. Nora wanted to roll hers up and tape it. Here’s Jonah’s.

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MERRY CHRISTMAS!

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December 20th, 2011 by sara

Getting Ready for Christmas

We’ve been pretty busy around here, getting ready for Christmas. Jonah is super excited about all the preparations and decorating. As soon as the box of lights came out, his excitement level went waaaay up. Two weekends ago, we took our walk to the grocery store parking lot nearby to choose a tree to haul home on the red wagon. It was really cold, but at least it didn’t rain on us this year. Nora was very happy to ride in the wagon on the way there.

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Jonah checked out a few trees.

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And then Nora realized that getting a tree meant she didn’t get to ride in the wagon on the way home. Oh no!

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But she did get to help Dad pull it on the final block, and that seemed to help make up for things a bit.

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Sean put the lights on during naptime and Jonah was just about beside himself waiting for Nora to wake up so they could decorate.

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One day when neither kid decided to nap, we used a big cardboard box to cut out a mini Christmas tree. They had a fun time mixing the paint and covering the tree with green.

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And it turns out Nora has a little Jackson Pollock in her…  flinging paint…

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When it was done, I pushed brads through the back and the kids colored different ornaments that they can hang and move around to their heart’s content.

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Jonah has also been full of ideas for drawings and decorations. He’s been making lots of Santas lately. Here’s one where he’s getting ready to come down a chimney and Mrs. Claus is holding a plate of cookies for him.

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He’s even made a few ballfields with Christmas trees and red and green lights decorating the foul lines.

Here’s another Santa picture. He told me that you can tell that Santa and Mrs. Claus are the same age because they’re just as tall as each other. :)

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He’s also made a little gingerbread house, and they both loved driving around in their pajamas one night to look at the huge houses with tons of lights.

Then last night we went to see Santa himself.  Jonah and Nora were super excited.

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We tried to corral Nora’s excitement by putting her on Sean’s shoulders, but even that didn’t last long.

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Santa was very sweet talking to the kids, and Jonah thought it was just the most amazing thing that Santa even knew about Thomas(!) when he heard that Jonah liked trains. Imagine that!

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And then we came home and had some hot chocolate.  Yum.

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Nora is pretty happy with her souvenir elf hat.

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