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).