Mad Ants Fun

Grandma Hutchinson came in to town for the arrival of our new baby. Since baby wasn't here yet, and no sign of her arrival in sight...we just spent 2 weeks of fun with Grandma like a mini vacation! We went to the Mad Ants game with her and with the Gregory family, which was a lot of fun. The kids loved the Mad Ant. He is apparently a new person inside the costume than last year, and he is much more animated and fun with the kiddos. So they loved it. Once again, they all got to give high fives to the basketball players as they ran in from half time, which is always a highlight! Fun times!

Giving high fives to the team
The Mad Ant with Evan & Audrey Gregory,
Gabe, Jaxton, Jaron, & Cooper

Christmas 2010

Christmas Day 2010. A Beautiful snowy day. Here is our Christmas tree with all our wrapped presents underneath. Well, Jaxton woke up and came downstairs to a dreadful sight: The stockings that were hanging on the fireplace were GONE! And Santa had spilled out some of the fireplace rocks and left the screen of the fireplace open. He must have taken the stockings with him and left!! How could he do such a thing!

Well, we looked over at the Christmas tree to see if he left presents, and indeed he had!! He stuffed the stockings and put them under the tree. Jaxton figured that maybe they would have been too heavy and fallen down off the mantle. Very possible! Santa left 2 giant red bags under the tree with nametags attached for Jaxton & Cooper. How exciting!! Well Santa honored the boys' wishes. Jaxton made out good with a new Star Wars spaceship and 4 Star Wars easy reader books! And Cooper made out just as well with his very own M&M candy machine, a chocolate Santa, tons of M&M's for his machine and some quarters to put in as well! Their stockings were stuffed with all sorts of goodies from Santa, like new gloves, more candy, race cars and monster trucks, and much more! Yay for Christmas!!

Next we began our present-opening marathon!!!

Dad & Mom got a new popcorn machine from Becky!! How fun!! Thanks Beck!

Jaxton got a Leap Pad Learning system with several different books and games included. That will keep him occupied for hours on end!

Jaxton got Cooper a Mad Ants Shirt, his favorite basketball team. Oh was Cooper excited or what!! And Cooper got Jaxton a Star Wars T shirt. He was equally overjoyed!!

Jaxton opened a zip track for all his race cars

And Cooper opened up a box full of dinosaurs!

Jax also opened up a box of legos!

The boys got superhero costumes from the Giraldi family and their cousins in Utah. What fun! Jaxton opened up Iron Man & Cooper opened up Wolverine Man!

Just like my old family tradition, we burned much of our wrapping paper in our wood burning fireplace. It made me reminisce about my own childhood Christmases. Cooper was fascinated with the fire and thrilled to help daddy burn wrapping paper. He kept trying to throw balls of paper in the fire. Later when no one was looking he would go to the fire and add more paper. So we had to watch him super close! Silly boy! And yes, his Wolverine Man costume was a bit big, but he didn't care. He just rolled it all the way up to his underpants to keep it from dragging under his feet!

Here is one of Jaxton's favorite toys he got for Christmas: Mini legos. He plays with these for hours at Grandma & Grandpa Routsong's house and was dying to have a set of his own. He was so excited to open them up. In fact, he shook the wrapped box of legos that was under the tree with his name on it and said, "Mom, I think this one is legos!" I said, "Well, we will see," but indeed he was right!!

Merry Merry Christmas 2010

Christmas Eve 2010

After our big family gathering in Lafayette, we came home to spend a fun family Christmas Eve together, just our little family. We started some fun Christmas traditions this year and had a lot of fun just being together. We all got new jammies for Christmas eve to open. Jaxton got Buzz Lightyear, Cooper got Spiderman, and Nate and I got new cozy jammies as well. We all opened up our jammies and got cozy in them first thing!

Mommy's new jammies

Next, the boys got to open one present each, a game for us to play on Christmas Eve. Cooper opened "Candyland", and Jaxton opened "Garanamals Whats on My Head." They were so excited!

We played our new games as a family, which is harder than you think to play a game with a 4 year old and a 2 year old! To follow directions and give everyone a turn is quite the task. Needless to say it took a lot of energy! So after that, we pulled up the nativity story on Nate's laptop and watched a couple different versions of the nativity story. We read the story of Jesus' birth also and talked about the real meaning of Christmas. After that, Nate found "The Night Before Christmas" movie clip on his laptop that followed the poem the boys have memorized. So we watched that and they were so excited because it followed the same words as the book we read. We spent a little more time just being together, and then we sent the boys off to bed to await Santa's arrival.....

Christmas Eve Gathering

Christmas Eve all the Routsong family gathered in Lafayette, IN at Mike & Kim Routsong's house. It was a full house that day, but was so much fun to just be with family and spend time with them all day. Of course the boys loved every minute of being smothered with love from their many cousins and aunts and uncles there. We were actually not planning to go because we figured our baby girl could come at any moment and we didn't want to be down in Lafayette, almost 3 hours away from the doctor and hospital we were to deliver at. But when there was no sign of her possible arrival, we decided to chance the trip. At least we would have a doctor and 2 nurses in the same house with us if anything crazy did happen! Nate's brother Mike is an ER doctor and Nate's mom and sister Beth are both nurses, as well as myself, though I hardly consider it since I haven't done anything nursing since Jaxton was born 4 years ago. Regardless, we were glad we could go be a part of the family. Every single person in Nate's immediate family was there, even Nick and Carissa flew in from Arizona to be there. So that was pretty exciting!

First we had a delicious dinner. Cooper was so proud to sit at the kids table with the little cousins. And Jaxton was equally proud to sit at the table with the big cousins!!

Presents Time: All the cousins drew a name to buy a present for another cousin. Every couple drew a name to buy a present for another couple. So everyone got to open at least a couple gifts together! How fun!

Jaxton got a Color Wonder pad that plays sounds and a huge coloring pad and new crayons and markers and window markers. Perfect for our little artist! He also got a star wars toy! Yay!

Cooper got a basketball! A youth sized real basketball! Oh you can imagine how excited he was! He also got a neat book system with a computerized pen that allows you to play games and read the story with your pen. He loved it!! The boys found the toys upstairs. They were in another world finding a million new things to play with!

Nate with his sister Melissa

Nate with Asher

Jaxton & Lauren

Madison, Katie, Cassidy, & Cooper

Carissa playing basketball with Coop!

Merry Christmas Eve

Christmas Nativity

At preschool this week, we studied the letter L for light. It was a bit of a stretch, but I wanted to incorporate Christmas, so we talked about the Star of Bethlehem and that it shone LIGHT over where Jesus was born. The wise men and the shepherds followed the LIGHT of the star to find Christ. So we were able to create the Christmas story at Preschool and each child got to be one of the characters in the nativity:

Danielle wore a pink shirt with a balloon inside her shirt. She was Mary. Jaxton wore a brown shirt and carried a toy horse to represent the donkey. He was Joseph. Cooper wore a grey shirt and carried a shepherd's staff and stuffed sheep. He was our shepherd. He called his shepherd's staff a "hook" and actually used it more to hook everyone rather than be a shepherd, but that's ok! Kye wore a red shirt and carried a box of play golden coins. He was a wise man. And last we had Kerra who wore a white karate outfit to be our angel. At each stop around our house, we learned about each character in the nativity and chose a friend to dress up as that character. Then we made it to the Christmas tree where Baby Jesus lay, a small baby doll wrapped in a blanket and laying in a basket of hay. We all gathered around the Baby Jesus and I couldn't help but take a picture of that sweet moment.

Santa's Lap

We went to sit on Santa's lap at the mall with playgroup. The boys were so excited. They thought about what they were going to ask for all the way there. This year is extra fun for Christmas because both boys understand the concept of Santa and they are just thrilled with the magic of it all. We have a fireplace in our house this year, so it makes it all the more real. We hung stockings from the mantle and put up our Christmas tree. There has just been magic in the air. I love this time of season. One of the boys' favorite books is "The Night Before Christmas," a tiny board book that their cousins gave to them a couple years ago. Who would have thought it would be the highlighted book of the season in our house. In fact, Jaxton has essentially memorized the entire poem since we read it so often. He can recite it off on demand!! They are so excited for Santa to come to our house this year, and ask continually if it will be tomorrow!

Jaxton asked Santa for Star Wars toys this year. All his cousins love Star Wars, and Grandma Routsong has bucketfuls of Star Wars figures, ships, and legos at her house. When all the Routsong family gets together for holidays, all the cousins are always playing with the Star Wars toys and fighting with lightsabers and playing Star Wars video games. So of course, Jaxton wants in on the fun too. So he has decided he wants Star Wars toys for Christmas, even though he never has actually seen a real Star Wars movie!

All Cooper could think of that he wants for Christmas is candy. That's all he would ever tell me he wanted when I would ask him. Just candy. Well, that's an easy one for Santa!! Cooper is defintely the sugar monster. He could care less about anything and everyone if he has a piece of candy in his hands, or a quarter to buy a piece of candy, for that matter!

Merry Christmas!!

A Snow Day

We had a big snowfall and the boys got all bundled up to go play outside. Cooper could hardly move in his 3 layered coats, snowpants that were a bit tight, hat, mittens, and snowboots. But regardless, they both had a blast. Nate shoveled a giant pile of snow for them to play in and we attempted to make a snowman. The snow was so powdery that it was difficult to make it stick to make a snowman, but we tried. We even got a carrot for his nose and searched the snow for rocks for eyes and mouth. Jaxton enjoyed making snow angels in the snow and was excited to find out how easy it was to make a cool angel in the snow.

Cooper was thrilled to find that we could actually eat snow. He though it tasted quite good and was eating it everywhere he played. I had to stop him when he reached for a pile of snow that was a bit muddy. Silly boy! We had a great time in the snow!