The holidays!

The long-delayed holiday post! Too many pictures... :)

We started off the celebration with Hanukah, using the wonders of technology to light candles via the internet on Skype each night - once with Grandma Gerri, once with Aunt Jen, Jaden, Talia and Arielle, and once with Aunt Alli. It's definitely not the same as being together, but you get the fun of seeing each other and watching the kids open their presents, so it's a close second. If you look closely in the last picture, you can see Jen's family on the ipad.

Next up was the trip to NJ to celebrate Christmas with the Anderson side of the family. We had a wonderful week of delicious food, family time, and lots of playing. Christmas Eve was wonderful (as always) and the kids stayed up long enough to hang out with everyone, eat, open (A LOT OF) presents, and leave cookies and carrots for Santa and the reindeer.

After Christmas, we did lots of fun stuff around the house - including making a gingerbread house. Isaac and Caitlin loved this activity - and it was especially impressive that the house stood up given the fact that they ate into the foundation!

The rest of the week was full of lots of fun -- baking cookies, eating delicious meals, doing messy art projects (like the volcano Aunt Adrienne and Uncle Evan got Isaac), and lots of cuddling. Isaac and Caitlin were both in heaven being spoiled rotten with all the attention and treats. They broke in all their new toys, but nothing matched the excitement of the Polar Express train that lives at Grandma and Grandpa's - although after fixing the tracks 1000 times, I'm sure they were ready to pack it up and send it back with us :)

And we can't forget all the wet willies - Bill had a great time trying to surprise people with Isaac's new skill - except toddlers are not good at sublety and Isaac tipped each victim off right before he tried it, so they had plenty of time to put up a good defense.

Last, but not least, New Year's Eve. We had a fun NYE dinner and toast with Lusa's family. The kids loved the "fizzy-bubbley" apple cider, while the grown-ups had fun with the real stuff. Having learned our lesson on the Fourth of July, we didn't even try to keep the kids up for the ball dropping, instead they went to sleep after the 8:00 fireworks (which we found on youtube from Times Square last year and played on the computer).

Getting into the holiday spirit

As they always do, the holidays came and went in a flash this year. As always, I have too many pictures, so I'll split this up into pre-holiday and holiday pictures.

We managed to get in several trips to the botanical gardens to see the holiday train exhibits. Isaac and Caitlin both love to chase the trains all over the gardens which is a lot more fun when Bill and I took them, and less so when I took them by myself! Let's just say we befriended the security guard...

We diverged from the cut your own tree tradition again and took the easy (Home Depot) route this year. Definitely not as romantic, but a lot easier than schlepping two toddlers all the way to the farm to play with saws. We'll probably go back to it next year though. No complaints about the Home Depot route, Isaac and Bill checked them all out and picked the biggest one they could find. Isaac was in awe as they used the machine to saw off the end and wrap it up so we could take it home. Caitlin and I were not as impressed.

We all had fun listening to holiday music and decorating the tree. This is the first year Isaac could really help and it was a lot of fun to watch his excitement as we set everything up and turned on the lights.

Isaac and Caitlin were great little elves and walked all over the neighborhood with me to drop off the local holiday cards. Most of them seemed to have soggy corners by the time they were delivered because these elves decided they needed to carry the cards in their mouths!

We had a fun holiday dinner with friends that included decorating holiday cookies. True to form, Isaac ate more of the dough and decorations than he actually made, but the few that made it to the oven were delicious.

In our quest to make sure Isaac is exposed to everything, Bill and I spent storytime at Isaac's school introducing his class to Hanukkah. He showed off his choo-choo train menorah, we read a few really cute books, gave each of the kids Hanukkah gelt (chocolate candy), and taught them to play dreidels. I think he enjoyed having us there, and we were really happy to do it. We also became acutely aware of how chatty our little man is. We read him the books the few nights leading up to this, so when we read to his class, he was telling the other kids what was coming next and finishing our sentences before we could turn the page. I think he's going to be a "gunner" like his dad :) These are pictures his teacher took.

Finally, what holiday season would be complete without a trip to NYC to see the tree in Rockefeller Center? It was a very quick trip -- we took the train in in the morning, and the kids were in heaven. We probably could have just taken the train and turned around, and that would have been all they needed! We were a little nervous about the crowds, but everything worked out perfectly. We saw the tree, went on a Lego Store shopping spree (thanks Papa Rich!), met Elmo, and had a nice lunch and then headed back on the train. We have a picture of Isaac with Elmo in NYC a few years ago, and he was hysterical crying in fear. This time he walked right up to Elmo, gave him a handshake, and asked him why he wasn't on Sesame Street :)

Last, but not least, the obligatory Santa picture. Isaac had no fear -- I think he figured Santa already knew he had been (relatively) good because his "Elf on the Shelf" had been reporting back to the North Pole every night for weeks. Isaac sat right down and started chatting Santa up (are you sensing a theme here?) and had to be bribed with cookies to let the next kid have his turn. Caitlin, on the other hand, had no interest in sitting on this strange man's lap. Can't really blame her...