Merry Christmas!

Yesterday afternoon we endured the 4pm Children's Mass at Immaculate Conception with every other Catholic in Clintonville. Phew, what chaos! We were very happy to get home to our Antipasta and Gnocchi dinner. Then it was off to bed for the kids and off to work for Santa's elves who purged all the broken toys from the house and put two giant bins of baby toys into storage. Good thing we made lots of room for new toys because Santa and the grandparents were overly generous.

The morning started dark and early at 6am. This is Michael's monster truck ramp from Santa. He won't stop playing with it.

These robots came from Grandma Carole. They are loud and obnoxious and the boys love them!

Poppy and Nan sent Luke TWO building sets. This is the recycling truck set. It's really cool.

And this is the pirate ship set. Luke's favorite part is the giant octopus.

Michael got Handy Manny and Mickey Mouse Clubhouse car sets from Poppy and Nan.

Luke had been asking for "robot animals" since he saw a commercial on tv. Santa found these baby pandas. They have bottles for feeding them and make eating and sleeping noises. Luke, especially, likes taking care of his panda. I wonder if he'll be quite as excited about taking care of the new baby in April?

Imitating Caillou

This is Caillou. He's Canadian and does a lot of winter activities. Luke learned how to ice skate by watching Caillou. Today Caillou was sledding. The boys were disappointed that there wasn't enough snow in the backyard for them to take their sleds out, so they practiced inside instead. Hurry up, big snow, the boys want to be like Caillou!

The First Snowman

We got just enough snow a few days ago for the first snowman of the season. Luke named him Rocky. He's no longer with us, but I'm sure there'll be another snowman along soon.

Wildlights

We went to Wildlights at the zoo tonight. Matt thought the boys should walk, but by the time we got dinner and got parked, it was almost 7pm, which is usually bedtime for our kids. So, we ended up renting a double stroller and it was very nice to have the kids contained all evening. By the end, Michael was totally zoned out and Luke was pretending to be asleep. Both zonked out completely on the ride home.

Superheroes

Have you met the Caped Crusader and the Man of Steel?

Reading with Nan

Michael's posse

This is from before I left for El Paso when Michael was in full goose-egged forehead mode. Michael has quite the stuffed animal crew and he is usually accompanied by at least two of them. Monkey and Elephant go with us most places around town. He reluctantly leaves the rest behind, but once home, he likes to have the whole gang around.

Some news

I haven't blogged for a while. I took a quick trip to El Paso for my Grandpa S.T.'s funeral. It was a time of remembering with my extended family. I got to see all of my cousins on that side, which is very rare considering one lives in Taiwan and another lives in Beijing. I got back just in time to teach my last class. Nan arrived yesterday in the middle of a major windstorm. Today we had our "big" ultrasound and . . .

IT'S A BOY!!!!!

We've been hearing a lot about My Three Sons.