Christmas Cookies and Sea Monkeys

Now that Aiden is at the age where he understands what is going on and probably at the age where he will start remembering some things later on when he grows up, I want to start some holiday traditions. I have never, ever made Christmas cookies before so this year I decided to give it a whirl. I found out, however, that I have a LONG way to go to become a Martha Stewart or a Betty Crocker!!

I thought it would be fun to buy cookie cutters and cut out Christmas shapes and then decorate them with frosting and sprinkles. Ummmm, yeah. Not as easy as I had expected. I had this vision of perfectly shaped cookies. The reality, however, was some odd looking shapes that weren't even recognizable after coming out of the oven. There MUST be something wrong with our oven. :) I admit the cookies didn't look the greatest before going in there but they looked way worse coming out! The cookie dough spread out in the oven distorting my beautiful cookies! :( Soon, however, I realized that Aiden didn't know any better and was just having fun making the cookies despite the way they looked so after two batches of funny shapes we just made round ones. The bad news is that our cookies are kind of sad looking. The good news is that we had fun making them (that's what counts - right?) and they taste good! I frosted them and Aiden put all of the sprinkles on by himself! I guess I just need to look at them through Aiden's eyes because he thinks they are perfect! :)

We also made some peanut butter cookies with hershey kisses. Much better looking since there weren't any cookie cutters involved! Aiden unwrapped all of the Hershey's Kisses himself. He took pride in his job and took it very seriously - so funny! I was NOT allowed to help him - he wanted to do it all by himself! :)

Grandpa George gave Aiden Sea Monkeys for Christmas. Neither Aiden nor I have ever seen these Sea Monkey things before so we are both anxiously anticipating what they are going to look like. At first I thought it was one of those sponge animal that "grow" in water but now I'm realizing that it's an actual creature. Yesterday Bryan purified the water so today Aiden got to add the Sea Monkeys. In five days we start feeding them and they will have hopefully hatched!

All Sorts of Things :)

Aiden is loving winter and all of the snow. I had a couple of snow days (woooo hoooo) so I bundled Aiden up and let him play outside with the neighbors (the girl in the picture below is his "girlfriend" Kaitlyn). He loved it!!

Check out those rosy red cheeks afterward! :)

Gavin has had his hair cut three times already! It grows so fast. Just after getting it cut I decided he was ready for a new hair style - check out his mohawk :)

Bryan took Aiden to his first dentist appointment last week. He wasn't scared a bit and did everything they asked him to do! They even gave him some sunglasses to wear because of the bright light. The dentist said that all of his teeth have come in and they look really great - no cavities! :)

There was a model railroad show in Zeeland that we went to yesterday (thanks Jessica for letting us know about it!). Aiden LOVED it! He loves trains so he was thrilled when he saw an entire room filled with them and was able to watch them go around and around. They had 5-6 trains all going at the same time so there very little wait time to see a train pass right by you! He even got to try his hand at operating a kids train!

After the train exhibit Aunt Aimee, Alyvia, and Grandpa George all came over to celebrate Christmas a little early.

After opening presents we went out for dinner and then headed up to Spring Lake for a 14 house, 200,000 holiday light show synchronized to Christmas music - it was awesome!

Then we headed back to the house, put pj's on the kids and hung out.

I can't believe Gavin is 9 months old already! We had his 9-month check-up last week and he is in the 60th percentile for height but dropped below the 5th percentile for weight - poor little Gavers. His Pediatrician said that since he is such a little guy that if he cries during the night that we need to feed him. Between him and Aiden (who STILL doesn't sleep through the night) there's not a whole lot of sleeping going on around here!

Gavin is now able to pull up on just about anything to get to a standing position. He LOVES his new found freedom of crawling and standing!

I always thought that Bryan and I did a fairly good job at keeping our house clean. That is until Gavin started to crawl. He is our "Mr. Clean Inspector". That kid hones in on the smallest little fuzz, crumb, paper, etc. and crawls as fast as he can to it, picks it up, inspects it, and then proceeds to put it in his mouth. No matter how careful we think we are to keep things picked up, off the floor, and vacuumed that little rascal still seems to find what we have missed. He is also a crawling lint brush. By the end of the day his outfit is covered with dog hair, fuzz, and anything that he has collected in the process of crawling around.

I think that once babies are able to crawl the ability to detect open doors, refrigerators, dish washers, gates, etc. is somehow unlocked within. Gavin can be completely involved in playing with his toys when all of a sudden his baby intuition detects something that is open and in less than 3 seconds he's there to investigate.

Aiden is SOOO excited about Christmas this year! This is the first year a really understands it and asks everyday if it is Christmas yet. It is SO fun to see his excitement!!

Twas a few nights before Christmas when all through the house not a creature was stirring not even a mouse (HA! Not OUR house - there's always LOTS of stirring going on around here - including night time). Our stockings are hung by the chimney (Who am I kidding? No chimney when you are married to a fire fighter!) with care in the hopes that St. Nicholas will soon be here!

Crawling, Christmas, and More

For those of you looking for ways to lose weight, here's Gavin's exercise video. It seems to work for him since the poor little guy is only in the 10th percentile - unlike Aiden who was never below the 90th percentile!

Gavin is officially crawling! He started the first day of my Thanksgiving break! It was funny because he never did any of the usual precursors to crawling - like the army crawl, or rocking back and forth on his haunches, or anything else. One day he decided it was time to crawl and that was that. He just did it.

We set up the Christmas tree the weekend following Thanksgiving. Aiden loved helping us decorate it. It is the first year he was actually able to help us and he did a really good job! I LOVE cuddling with my boys in the evening with all of the lights off in the house except for the Christmas tree lights!

Aiden proudly wearing his Santa hat while Gavin wasn't to thrilled with his...

My Grandma turned 90 years old just after Thanksgiving! She had an open house and Bryan, Aiden, Gavin and I all went to help her celebrate!

Tonight Gavin pulled himself up to a standing position for the first time! Can't believe that my baby is crawling and now standing up all within a week and a half. He is growing up SO fast! It is SO fun to see him reach all of these milestones! Watch towards the end of the video when he even waves goodbye for the first time (although I'm pretty sure it was just coincidence :) )

I'll leave you with some random pics of some super-duper adorable kids! :) The first two are from an usually warm day in November. I knew that would probably be the last day of 2009 that we would be able to play at the park!