Happy 34th Birthday, J!

J turned 34 this month. We had two celebrations, one with J's parents on Friday and another with my parents when they came in town for the weekend. Here we are getting ready to have J blow out the candles on the awesome chocolate peanut butter cake J's dad made for him.

And here we are with my parents enjoying cupcakes my parents brought from the West Side Market as well as cupcakes J and R picked out at SAS (a local fancy cupcake place we really like).

Unfortunately SAS is "refining" their vegan cupcake recipe so they're not selling vegan cupcakes for the time being, so J is blowing out a candle on a non-vegan cupcake that, obviously, he couldn't eat. Boo. He still enjoyed opening presents--I got him a Harry Potter lego set and a vegan crockpot cookbook and he got a new belt from his parents and some really nice clothes from my parents.

"Wat DAT!?"

Not the best video, but for months now we have been saying we need to get a video of RUS saying his favorite thing in the whole world, "WAT DAT??" He said it at dinner one evening so I grabbed the camera and tried to get him to say it again. He does, but not exactly the way he normally says it. But, close enough. I've been remiss about recording videos of him talking and it's one of my goals since everyone says his talk is so cute. Especially since it took him so long to really get going with it.

January Nap

Taking down the Christmas tree

We took down the tree on New Year's Day. It was quite the traumatic experience. R didn't want to say goodbye to Christmas. :(

The tree looks so empty!

And just for fun, one of my favorite vintage ornaments saved from when J was a little kid. We obviously fold it back up every year when we put it away. I remember these being big when I was little although I don't have any left from back then.

Happy New Year's Eve!!

Grammie and Grampie came over and celebrated New Year's Eve with us. We had our usual appetizers for dinner. After dinner Grammie and I opened a bottle of wine we received at our Christmas Open House and Grampie brought over some beer and we all sat around and colored pictures from R's new big coloring book she got for Christmas.

Disney On Ice

Grammie got R and I tickets to go to Disney on Ice with her up at the Wells Fargo Center in Philadelphia. It was really good. I love figure skating, and I loved seeing the costumes and the skaters were very very good. They did more fancy things than I expected them to, including some scenes where Rapunzel and Flynn Rider swing in the air from her "hair" hanging from the rafters.

R got all decked out of course (although we made her switch out her 'glass slippers' for actual shoes before leaving). It was too dark to try and get any good pictures so I just took this one of Grammie and R in our seats.

Brandywine River Museum

A few days after Christmas J and I took the kids to the Brandywine River Museum to see their annual Christmas model train layout as well as the dollhouse display that is, also, I believe up every Christmas. 

The museum has a gorgeous big picture window looking out over the river. 

One of my favorite things was seeing the various Christmas trees they had decorated using only natural elements.

 Close up of one of the woodland critters decorating a tree.

Unfortunately all my pictures of the train layout are terrible-- it's actually somewhat hard to take clear shots in a dark room of a moving train! 

I loved the dollhouses. Ann Wyeth McCoy, the daughter of the painter Andrew Wyeth, apparently loved dolls and got some every year; when she married her husband built her a child-size (as in, big enough for a child to walk inside) doll house that she spent years furnishing and decorating. Her family eventually donated the dollhouse to the museum and they split up the rooms and displayed it. Absolutely amazing. The detail was incredible.

Christmas Morning 2011

Christmas morning was so much fun this year!! The kids were so excited! 

Santa always fills our stockings and leaves two presents already set up and ready to play with. Here are the kids walking in and seeing the filled stockings on the couch.

R found the clementine at the bottom of her stocking

And here's RUS playing with his new Polar Express remote control train set--it was a HUGE hit!!!

R got some really fun castle blocks. Look at this amazing castle Santa put together for us!

This game was a big hit with both kids. They ask if we can play it daily. I will have to get RUS saying it on video one of these days. He says, "Cat in the Hat I can do THAT?"

 This Thomas blanket from Santa is all kinds of awesome. Look at that SMILE!

Whenever we asked R what her favorite Christmas gift was, she always pointed to her Belle doll. She also got the accompanying Beast doll which has a big beast head and a jacket that you can remove to turn him into the prince. Very clever!

Santa also made a new matching outfit for R and Mary Rose!

Hooray for new pajamas!! Those books RUS is holding aren't new, but they remain big hits (thank you Grandma & Grandpa, who gave those to us several years ago!)

 RUS also got a new puzzle maze and R got some much-needed new leggings.

Here's J opening a present--if I ever figure out how to get videos off of our actual video camera and onto a computer we have some REALLY FUN christmas videos to share, including one of J actually being surprised by a present, and of the kids' reactions when they saw the presents for the first time.

And here's partial Christmas breakfast: cranberry-orange bread and applesauce bread and J made his amazing cinnamon rolls again. YUM.

Christmas Eve 2011

For our Christmas eve post-church meal, we were inspired by my family's tradition of having a traditional German meal--sausages, sauerkraut, potato salad, and smokies. We made some (vegan) modifications, and ours ended up being a mediterranean plate (hummus, olives, pita, baby carrots)--partly inspired by the fact that we always stop at Judy's Oasis in the West Side Market whenever we visit Cleveland and stock up on awesome delicious Middle Eastern goodness--along with some Tofurkey brand Italian sausage (not German, but it's what we had on hand) and smokies. If it seems random, that's because it kind of is. We didn't have much time to plan our grocery shopping after arriving home from Ohio and all we managed to put on our list were the items we needed to cook Christmas dinner, forgetting about Christmas Eve dinner. Next year I'll be more on top of things, I hope!

After dinner, we got ready for our family Christmas exchange. Here are the kids posing in front of the Christmas tree with the family exchange gifts underneath--my family draws names among all the siblings and spouses and then we do a separate drawing among the cousins so everyone ends up with one gift to open. This year none of us siblings were in the same place so we all shipped our gifts and took pictures of the gift opening to share.

Here's RUS opening his exchange gift from his cousin L--who, if you'll recall, shares his birthday. I just love that little detail. Anyway, he received an AWESOME box full of duplo blocks. Jackpot. We pull out the duplos daily, so this set is going to get a LOT of use.

The first gift R opened was a hat and mitten set from Great-Grammy and Great Aunt L. She wore the hat for the rest of the gift exchange and only took it off when we put pajamas on for bed.

RUS also got a hat (an adorable monkey one!) and both kids got the sweetest Nancy Tillman books that are all about being loved along with a stuffed animal from each book. Both the books and the stuffed animals were huge hits.

Here's J holding up our custom ornament from A & M. We love it and the kids were so tickled to see themselves on an ornament. 

 I'm holding up my exchange gift from M: I love the pajamas, and wore them Christmas Eve, most of Christmas Day (up until we had our big dinner) and all of Boxing Day, a day in which I did not once change into clothes.

 J got an absolutely amazing-looking vegan cookbook from a NY-based vegan restaurant. Everything looks scrumptious, but the recipe he has been eyeing? Doughnuts. He can't wait to make them.

Here's RUS opening his gift from Little Frog: a John Deere backhoe loader. It's AWESOME. He loves this thing!! I forgot to get a picture of R opening her gift, but she got a pair of really cool stained glass coloring books--designs that you can color that end up looking like stained glass. They will be fun to hang on our windows! and a Pinkalicious! Scrabble Junior game that will be a lot of fun to play. We had the regular Scrabble Junior game when I was growing up and I remember playing it a lot!

R also got bracelets to bedazzle from her cousin T. Again, totally awesome. She spent half an hour bedazzling one of the bracelets yesterday and loves it.

Whew! After all that gift opening we had to set up our cookie plate for Santa, complete with carrot for the reindeer.

Christmas Morning 2011