Chrismtas Morning

Christmas morning in the apartment....early, quick, and so very sweet!  We woke up (very early) to hear Fielder on the monitor saying "Ho ho ho Merry Christmas!"  I went in to get the kids (Claire had requested to sleep in the room with Fielder that night) and couldn't wait to see their faces when they went into the living room.
Santa's elf had left candy in our elf shoes:

And he had eaten most of his cookie, helped himself to some milk, and even left a little note for Claire!

Santa and his elf had even played with our toys and put up the nativity set.

I tried to slow things down, but they were so excited to see what Santa had brought.  They opened stockings first - pet shops, soap, vitamins, chapstick, and a princess coloring book for Claire.  A Thomas plate, bibs, vitamins, and a sippy cup for Fielder.

Santa had left a candy cane trail from the tree to their presents...Fielder was pretty obsessed with eating them.  So Claire scooped them all up to save for later!


I didn't get pictures because I was taking video, but Santa came through on the kids requests this year!  He brought Claire a Sophia the First doll, hedgehog Critter babies, and the Panda Critter family.  Fielder got a train table with trains and cars!

Bed-headed, sleepy smiles!  (Make a note, next year we need cute Christmas jammies!)

Claire also got a tooth fairy pillow from Mommy and Daddy and a Barbie from Fielder.  And Claire did her shopping again this year - a screwdriver set for Daddy, a dinosaur for Fielder, and a gingerbread ornament for me that she had made at school.  Fielder got some little trucks and a book from Mommy and Daddy.

The whole thing was over and done in 20 minutes!  We had a yummy breakfast (waffles with cherry pie filling and whipped cream.)  Rob and I tried to catch a little nap on the couch while the kids watched Polar Express before heading off to our next stop for Christmas!

Christmas Eve 2013

Christmas Eve was an exciting day in our little "home away from home" - we had my family over for dinner and some games for the kids.
We played pin the nose on the snowman, a hide and seek puzzle, a Christmas craft, toilet paper snowman game, and we decorated cookies for Santa.  (can click on the pictures to see them bigger)


We had the Barnes Christmas Eve tradition of soup for dinner.  We did have to ask for someone to bring an extra chair, but we fit everyone in  :-)


After dinner, the kids read books, played, and did a little dressing up (Princess Santa and The New Elf.)  If I can ever get it to work, I have a cute video of all the kids singing Jingle Bells.


After everyone left and Fielder was in bed, Claire sprinkled some reindeer food in the grass outside, got Santa's cookies ready, and left him a special key.


Claire was leaving the key on the balcony and thought she heard bells so she ran inside!
A quick reading of The Night Before Christmas and we were off to bed!

Hustle & Bustle

As crazy as Christmas time can be, I love all the fun things to do with the kids and especially love to see the excitement on their faces.

Saturday, Mom took Claire and I to a Christmas musical.
It's always fun to have a "girls day."

Next up was our annual visit to see the Real Santa.  Every year I ask myself if this is really worth it, and this year was particularly difficult!  Rob arrived at 8am (an hour before Santa arrives) and the line was longer than we had ever seen before.  He called me and told me there was no way we'd be in the first group to see Santa come down the chimney.  Oh well....we showed up at 9:30 and Rob was at the "2 hours from here" sign.  THANK GOODNESS it didn't really take that long.  I took the kids to play while he kept waiting and we finally made it in.  Claire posed with the Snow Queen and when Santa called their names, she was able to say in the microphone what she would like for Christmas.  (A completely different item than she's been talking about the last few weeks might I add...)  Fielder kind of just sat there stone-faced.  It was better than my expectations really because I predicted another screaming, flailing type picture like last year.

After seeing Santa #1, we headed over to a Christmas party thrown by our realtors - they do it each year as a thank you to their clients.  The funny thing was after all the hassle of seeing Santa, they had a Santa at this party!  And he had NO LINE.  And they had a professional photographer to take FREE pictures.  sigh....

To be honest, I knew this already, but there is just something about having pictures with the same Santa each year all lined up on my fridge.  So I prepped Claire and told her that sometimes since Santa can't be in so many places at the same time, he sends his elves to pretend to be Santa.  As soon as we got there, Claire whispered in my ear "is that an elf?"  

Anyway, it was great because Fielder had a chance to warm up to this Santa and was eventually running up to him to give him high fives and destroy look at the ornaments on the tree.  

Sunday night we took a quick drive to see one of our favorite houses and walk around to see the lights.  It's one of my favorite things to do!  Fielder was speechless...a rare moment.  And Claire's favorite was the grinch on the roof that sprayed snow every 5 minutes.

Ice, Ice Baby

Sunday we had ice and rain so we decided to stay put for the day!  I don't know if it was really that bad out, but it was the perfect day to stay inside.  We started working on our letters to Santa.  And we watched The Grinch a few times (Claire was terrified of the Grinch earlier in the week and now she begs us for it.)  We may or may not have let the kids watch TV for the better part of the afternoon.  And we even decided to let them have a "picnic" which somehow ended up on top of the coffee table. 

Claire and Fielder's letters:

Thanksgiving 2013

I didn't take many pictures from Thanksgiving this year, but we had a nice low-key day.  It was our year to be with Rob's family, but they were going to the farm and after moving and everything, we just didn't have it in us to make the drive to the farm.  While we missed being there, it was nice to spend the morning together, watching the Macy's parade and just taking it easy.  Then we headed over to Mimi and Papa's house.  Fielder fought hard on his nap, but Mimi won the battle.  While he slept, we got their Christmas decorations out and put up the tree.  Then we all had a nice dinner together.  Thanks Mimi for cooking!  Claire thought it was delicious....of course she mostly went for the rolls and cranberry jelly.

The next day we started "decorating" the apartment.  We are VERY Charlie-Brown around here.  The tree is just sad....the lights stopped working in the middle section and all the ornaments have to be way up high or else Fielder destroys them.  But Claire loves our tree and she got to stay up late helping me hang the ornaments.  The kids think it's all great, no matter if the stockings are hung by the chimney with care or just a nail in the wall.  :-)

Tight Quarters

A few weeks ago I got frustrated with Fielder waking up so early and in turn waking Claire up too early so I decided to try Plan B....our closet!  Yes, my daughter sleeps in my closet now.  Partly I moved her because we all had colds and I was afraid their coughing all night would wake the other up, but the colds are long gone and she is still in the closet!  I think she likes it all snug in there - she has a clock, her fan, books, and everything.  I've offered for her to go back in Fielder's room, but I really prefer this.  We'll see what she decides!  I just thought I should document this so I can look back one day and laugh!

More house updates

We didn't quite make the goal of being completely under roof by Thanksgiving due to weather, but they finished up that weekend!

And here they've started the siding (can just barely see it on the lower side of the house) - they've just about finished the siding now.

We had our pre-drywall meeting yesterday.  It's our last official meeting before our final walk-through!  Here is our kitchen/living room:

Crazy.  This house is going up SO FAST.  Now that the outside is just about done, I think it's going to seem a bit slower since we won't get to really see any progress when we do our drivebys.  Not that that will stop us from driving by all the time.
We are still on track for a February closing.  They started drywall today.  Fielder and I watched a crane deliver the drywall sheets through the upstairs window - he said "cool!"