Happy Birthday Jesus!

After we finished opening our presents from Santa, we had breakfast with Nana, Papa, Aunt Jackie and Uncle Steve. Then it was time to exchange our gifts. We always pick names. This year I had Dan (he got TONS of movies!) and Steve had me...he did a whole "red" theme...a red crock pot, red wallet, red pashmina (love it!) and even Big Red gum! Thanks Uncle Steve!!!

We got Dad 2 new DVD players and this fab Dunkin' Donuts, candy filled mug! He looks like he likes it!
Nana received this cordless kettle. Dan and I saw it at the Beale Mansion that we went to and immediately thought it would be perfect for Nana, a tea lover! Hopefully she likes it!
Aunt Jackie and Uncle Steve gave their handmade presents to Jack and Nick. They got these great fleece blankets that even have their names embroidered! Luke unfortunately didn't get a great blanket b/c of all the possible static that they bring and we all know that static and his cochlear implant don't mix! Instead they got him a container full of pens, markers and notepads. I think we have a little writer in the mix! Here the boys are posing with their blankets!
We then welcomed my Aunt Joy (my mom's twin sister!) and Uncle Gene...
...and their children, Laura (and finace, Paul)
...and their son, Ed
And of course they came with gifts. My uncle is a great wood worker! Every year for Christmas and for the boys' birthdays, he always makes them an awesome handmade toy! This year was no different. He made the boys these awesome tractors!
They also bought them these cool hand held games! Luke even got one...perfect for our trip to Memphis!
Ever since we had Jack, Dan and I decided that we wanted to make sure that he and all of our future children would know why we celebrate Christmas - the birth of Jesus! And so began the tradition of buying a "Happy Birthday Jesus" birthday cake. This year was no different as we got our cake from Peggy Brown and enjoyed after our dinner!

Santa is too good!!!

Tis the season for late posts! Now that it is officially the new year, I have my long list of resolutions...one being keeping up with this blog. Since today is a "Sunday" feeling day with football on (go Penn State!) and we are all home, hopefully I'll start the year off right!

Santa certainly showered the three boys with lots of presents! Here are the boys first thing on Christmas morning...they slept in to 7:30!!!
Jack's number one gift on his list to Santa this year was a light saber. He did receive one, but this was the first gift he opened up (the camera kind of got thrown by the wayside once the bows, ribbons, and wrapping paper were flying!) ~a Star Wars figurine that matched his light saber! Maybe he should have asked for his two front teeth!
Nick asked Santa for Spike the Dino, a huge remote controlled dino and he certainly did receive a big one! He must have been really good this year! Here is Nick's first present that he opened...Kung Fu Panda! Hopefully we'll break this out during a cold and snowy winter's night!
Here is Nick opening his dinosaur! Jack received one too and they are cool!!!
Luke was thrilled to open his cool drum (so he can play along with the rest of us with our ROCKBAND...woo hoo!!!). Here he is with the best "binky" smile I've ever seen!
Here are the boys opening ROCKBAND! I LOVE Nick's face!
Luke was jumping up and down when he opened this toddler race track!
But even after Luke received all his neat new toys, he still loved his binky and penguin the best!
Daddy, along with the rest of the courntry I think, received a Garmin! I also found this awesome statue of the ASL sign of "I love you!" for him too! I think that was his favorite!
Santa brought me a cool new touch screen phone! It is amazing! I can watch TV, surf the internet, use it as a GPS and it is an AWESOME camera too! What more could a girl as for? Hmm... perhaps some diamond hoops and a necklace? Thanks SANTA! I had a little helper the whole morning too! Thanks Luke!
Our family had such a wonderful Christmas morning! Here's hoping your family had the same! A very late but true, MERRY CHRISTMAS to all of you!

And the band plays on....

My grandma, affectionately known as "Gigi" (or Great Grandma!) to the boys moved into an assisted living place in October. Ever since she left her oh too big three story home, she has a new lease on life. She even joined the apartment's Rhythm Band and their first concert was on Christmas Eve at 2:30 so we all dressed up and headed over there for the matinee! It was great! My parents, Dan, the boys and I all enjoyed it immensely and my dad looked SO proud of his mom! Gigi played her drum beautifully!

Here she is during one of their 7 songs...she is the fab lady in the middle!
Nana was snapping a picture, while the boys and I all sat and enjoyed the fantastic music!
No concert would be complete without a snack and the folks running this show had a cart full of homeade delish Christmas cookies. Here Nick is trying to pick one out....luckily all the little old women loved the boys, so they ate TONS!
Dan and Luke pose....Luke was LOVING the cookies!
Here Gigi was opening one of her presents from us....what do you get an 80 something lady??? You get "artsy" and make something. I got the idea from a co-worker to copy regular pictures and mod podge them onto a regular ole white canvas! It was a HIT! Gigi's friend Jimmy was watching her open her presents. Gigi has now taken on the job of Jimmy caretaker, as he is an elderly man with the mental capacity of a 6 year old. Gigi loves her time with Jimmy and revels in the fact that she is teaching him how to ride the elevator independently and such!
After the show and present opening, we headed to an early dinner at Applebee's. The boys were SO good!!! After dinner we headed back to our house, hung out for a bit and then went to church.
After church we headed home and put out our reindeer food for Santa's reindeer and then headed inside!
And to our surprise what did we find??? We found a note from Santa...he had stopped by already to give us some Christmas books!

Here Nick is showing Luke the letter we got from Santa!
All the boys were so excited to find the great Christmas books under the tree...
What else could we do but read them...
We then got our pajamas on and spent the rest of the night watching Santa's travels on the computer! Then it was off to bed to patiently wait for Santa and his reindeer!

Popcorn and a movie

We decided to have our first "official" movie night with the boys. We rented Fred Claus and popped real popcorn. I always have popcorn parties with my kids at school, but never do bring the air popper home, until now! The boys were so PSYCHED!!! Here they are just staring at the popcorn seeds in the popper...still not exactly sure of what is going to happen, but understanding that they have to WAIT...
And WAIT...
And wait....until the seeds start to "dance" and they POP!!! All three boys were jumping up and down. This was such an awesome talking time for Luke....too!!! He was going around saying "seed pop, seed pop!"
Until finally it was ready to eat!
I hope to have some Christmas pictures posted on here later tonight! Right now I have a houseful here, but I'm hanging downstairs with Dan as he feverishly has put together TONS of toys as Santa was oh to generous this year!!! And, I'm hoping that he puts my RockBand together next!!! Here's hoping that everyone had a wonderful Christmas!!!

O Christmas Tree...

We had a fun trip to the dentist on Saturday morning. It was Luke's first time, but luckily Jack and Nick LOVE going to the dentist, so Luke followed suite! Luke and Nick have 6 months free from the dentist, but Jack's 2 new molars already have cavities in them...Dr. Mello (our AWESOME dentist!) said it is likely due to antibiotic use as a baby....Jack certainly had his share!!! The rest of the day on Saturday we pretty much just HUNG out, a.k.a. running wild in the house. I knew it was time to come up with some sort of fun activity!

In my attempt to "create" wonderful Christmas memories for my three lovely boys, I came across these Christmas tree ornaments....thanks to Brooke Krauss, a teacher friend at work, who had some extras and passed them my way!

So, after dinner and baths, we lined the boys up at the counter and got ready!
Jack was a pro with following the directions...I LOVE the fact that he is such an amazing reader!
Nick was completely independent in his work too....
And of course, our little Luka Buka was following his big brothers' lead!
And voila, our finished products! They have now found a happy place on our tree!

Let's build a train!

Because of the lovely ice that fell all across the midwest on Sunday night into Monday morning last week, the boys and I had a "snow day" but without the pretty white stuff! I used the time to clean out the pantry, laundry room, and some extraneous closets while the boys played...quite well, I might add. Once Luke went down for his nap though, I pulled out this gingerbread train kit I had picked up at Target a few weeks ago.

Here are Jack and Nick posing in their Santa hats with the train after we had put it all together! They were so excited to add all the candy!!!
All of Jack's teachers have always told us of his amazing artistic ability (he must have gotten this from Dan!) and this train was no different! He chose the specific colors and shapes of the candy so meticulously.
Nick is so much more like me when it comes to anything "artsy," as he is excited to start an activity, but then after a few minutes is all done with it!
The boys pose with their finished product!
And here is a close up of our masterpiece! The boys can't wait to eat it....I told them we can on Christmas, but the thought of eating that....UGH! I'm not sure if we should eat this or not...
...maybe we'll leave it for Santa!.

Crazy dream...

Unfortunately, I have no pictures to go with this fairly random post, but since I know that Libby, our old ASL teacher, who moved to the big NYC, reads this blog, I thought she would appreciate this...so last night I had this amazing dream, the only thing was was that no one was speaking in it, rather everyone was using ASL!!!! The even crazier part is that I could actually communicate with everyone using sign. Hopefully that is a message to continue practicing...our new teacher, Mark, uses no voice at all, so needless to say, we are moving MUCH faster and really need to pay attention b/c if we look away for a minute we miss something! Wish us all luck in our continued effort to pick up this second language!