We squeezed in a few chilly walks before the weather turned too white.
On one of those walks, I bribed the boys with suckers. All of them. This was Lincoln's first sucker ever. He was cracking me up as he seemed to have a difficult time initially getting his tongue and his sucker in the same place.
He thanked me for his sweet treat with smiles and giggles the rest of the way.
Warm winter weather often means one thing -- a ginormous snow storm is on its way. Sure enough, our neighborhood was blanketed in white in no time. The boys love "playing" in the snow. By "playing," I mean shoveling. That's their interpretation of playing in the snow because Jeff and I are not big snow fans, so that's all we've ever done with them in the snow!
It should be noted that I did aggressively try to put pants on Eli, which he more aggressively refused.
As I was finishing up shoveling our driveway after the storm, Eli insisted we go out and shovel the neighbor's driveway. I couldn't say no to that! While we were over there, Eli looked at me and said, "Mom. Is this the Christmas spirit?" It was so sweet.
Carson spends most of his time in the snow like this:
Lincoln spent his time in the snow bundled up in the stroller offering coos of moral support.
Upon realizing I had so far never taught the boys how to build a snowman, we decided it was time to change that.
Only problem was, the snow was pure powder and crumbled every time we tried to pack it into a ball.
We ended up sweeping a teeny patch of snow into a cone shape, stuck a carrot and some chocolate chips into it, and called it good.
They accepted our mini man with smiles.
At the same time we were struggling to pack together enough snow for a 2-foot snowman, Ben and Haley were packing together enough snow for a life-size igloo. I still don't understand how they pulled this off, but we enjoyed admiring their work.
As far as I know, my dad hasn't made any snow creations this year, but he did whip up a nice prime rib for us on Christmas. Since my mom had just had both of her feet operated on, she was out of commission. My dad was the sole planner and preparer of Christmas dinner. When my mom prodded me and my sister to ask my dad what he was planning on serving, he proudly said, "Prime rib!"
"Oooooh, aaaaaaaahhh," my sister and I replied.
"Ask him what else he's serving with it," my mom urged.
"Potato chips!" my dad beamed.
"Ewwww. Uhhhhhhh," my sister and I moaned.
We stepped in and brought carrots, bread and herb butter to accompany my dad's meat meal which turned out wonderfully!
Linker Lou has been promoted to cart sitter. He's pretty proud of his new position.
He enjoyed the newfound freedom of rummaging through the cart all through the store.
Lincoln cracks me up when he eats. He's showing off my two favorite habits of his: 1) wedging his feet under his tray for the duration of his meal. 2) piling all his scraps onto the top of his cup, then removing scraps from cup, then endlessly repeating.
Silly baby!
Lincoln FINALLY broke in his top four teeth. All at the same time. Ouch! Just as those broke through, his bottom two teeth started emerging. He's getting all of them at the same time, and he's not too happy about it. This picture was taken pre mouth upgrade, in less painful days.
Jeff and I hired our first non-related babysitter of all time so we could sneak away to see Star Wars over Christmas break. I was surprised by how much I liked the movie, but I enjoyed the mini getaway part of it even more.
Lincoln spent the entire month of December like so:
He loved laying under the Christmas tree, kicking his little legs up at it until ornaments would fall down for him to play with.
When he wasn't doing that, he was sliding under the dishwasher for mechanical repairs.
Eli spent Christmas break standing on the kitchen table working on the timed sight word assignments his teacher had give him. Jeff would read him a word and Eli had to sound out all the parts of the word. All while standing on the table, jumping with each syllable.
My best Christmas neighbor gift to date was this year. I gave my neighbors a jar of cookie dough with this tag. It was a hit!
The boys must have caught the New Years' Resolutions bug because they woke up on January 1st all gung-ho to do a workout with me for the first time ever. When asked why he was so eager to workout, Eli replied, "Because I have to be strong to be an electronics worker (computer engineer)."
Here's to a lean, mean 2016!
