Sunday, December 26, 2010

Christmas

We were really looking forward to celebrating Christmas at home this year. It's nice to have your child sleep in his own bed, wake up in familiar surroundings and then see that something is different at the Christmas tree. Here is Miles' experience.


Everything is set up for optimum viewing when Miles wakes up.

Here, he is seeing things for the first time. Let me explain the picture a little. In the morning, it is cold in our house so we bought Miles some slippers to wear in the mornings. Everything was going great until Miles needed a new pair of school shoes and we bought him some new sneakers. Now, every morning he insists on putting his shoes on. On Christmas morning, I asked Miles if he wanted his house shoes on. He agreed until he saw I was talking about the slippers. As a compromise, Miles offered his chicken wear the house shoes and he would wear his sneakers.

Don't worry, Scooter got presents too. He got a catnip pillow with big eyes on it. Miles took one look at it and deemed it an owl.


Here we are going through his stocking. The first thing he pulled out was raisins and he wasn't really interested in it after that. Taking everything else out of the stocking was a bit of a chore to be done in between bites of raisins.



The family in our new pajamas.


Miles got balls from the grandparents. He likes to try to carry all of them. Here, he is carrying three, but at one point, he had all four in his hands/arms.


By far, his two favorite presents were the legos and...


A race car track. Thanks again grandparents!

Sunday, December 19, 2010

Miles meets Santa

I forgot to post this earlier. This is Miles' first time meeting Santa. We were waiting in line and Miles kept calling him Satan. Miles also calls the Christmas Tree the "Gimme Tee". His stocking is "tockin".

So, we are thinking of not really talking about Santa to Miles. I don't really want that to be the focus of the holiday and want to instead emphasize the celebration of the birth of Christ. Any thoughts?




Sunday, December 12, 2010

Decorating for Christmas

Here are a few pictures of us decorating for Christmas this year. I was expecting the worst with a toddler, but things have been okay...so far.


It's important to us that Miles learn about the story of the birth of Jesus and that being the reason we celebrate Christmas so we got him a nativity scene made by lego. Miles loves playing with it.


He also loves wearing his monkey hat. The hat has nothing to do with Christmas, but it's cute.


When we pulled out the Christmas tree, it poked Miles so he was afraid of it from the beginning. Here he is playing with a garland while Steve and I decorate the tree.


Miles finally got familiar enough with the tree to touch the ornaments, but not the tree (it still pokes). This has actually made Christmas really nice because I don't have to worry about Miles playing with the tree and having it fall on him. I think next year I will give him the job of keeping the cat away from the tree.

The magic of Christmas as seen from little eyes.

Thanksgiving and handmade fun

So I am really behind in my blogging so I am combining different things (not the snow thing though because it was just too precious). Anyway, I decided to combine Thanksgiving and other crafts. The best part of Thanksgiving this year was that Steve did all the cooking and preparation. I just did some cleaning and set the table. It was awesome.


Here is my awesome table. Everyone had a chocolate bar favor on their plate. Even Miles got a peppermint kiss on his plate.

Here's a close up of the favors. Steve designed and put them together.

Here is Steve posing with the food. We had friends over and split up the food so Steve made the turkey and israeli couscous salad. Other delights gracing our table were mashed potatoes, sauerkraut mashed potatoes, green bean casserole, dressing, rolls, spicy cranberry compote, a couple different appetizers, and pumpkin roulade and gingerbread cupcakes for dessert. It was so tasty


Here is a close up of some birds I made for a garland that I strung around the stockings. I got the pattern from a book called FaLaLaLa Felt. It's a great book.

I made Miles an apron too so he could help me make christmas cookies. If you look at it closely, it's not very christmasy (there are pigs with webs on them). Oh well. Miles is at the age where he makes everything look cute




snow

Right before Thanksgiving, Seattle got a snow storm (unheard of). This may not seem to bad to friends in family in Utah, but this much snow shuts down the city and turns my commute from 20 minutes to 3 hours. At least Steve stayed home with Miles so I didn't have a toddler on the bus. Here are some pictures of Miles enjoying snow.


Miles likes things orderly. Here he is cleaning the tree.

Steve taught Miles how to catch snow on his tongue