Catching up...

I think this is the longest I've gone between posts since I started my blog. I just can't get around to it lately! I never find the time till 9:30 or 10:00 at night and by then I'm just too tired and I feel like I better hurry and get to bed before Gunnar is up. So I guess I'll catch up real quick. Since my last post we put up our Christmas tree and decorated it and the rest of the house. Ashton was soooooo excited and loved every minute of it. He was so cute to watch putting all of the decorations on the tree and explaining to us why he was putting certain ones in certain spots. Gunnar had fun too...and surprisingly he only pulled a couple off and has pretty much left it alone since!

I love this picture of him looking at his reflection in the gold ball! We got our fake tree (and all of the ornaments, etc..) when I was pregnant with Ashton. This year we're going to start an ornament tradition (Lars and I got eachother ornaments one year, then never kept up with it), but I'm determined to keep it up now and get each of the boys a new ornament each year representing something from the past year, and we'll decorate our 3 little pine trees that we also have downstairs with all of those ornaments gradually as we collect them. I was telling Lars that we need to really start some of our own traditions now that we get to celebrate Christmas as a family at our own house especially since Ashton really understands now. We were talking about what we remember most from our own Christmas's growing up. Some of my favorite memories were of always watching "Emmet Otter's Jugband Christmas" (it has such a great Christmas message) with my brothers and sister (and Mom and step-dad) and laughing and laughing at certain parts of it, as well as going to midnight mass (at least when we were a little older) and getting home at 2:00 or so in the morning, then still being so excited to wake up on Christmas morning and looking in our stockings that my Mom had made for us years ago. Then when we would go to my Dad's house we always had pillsbury cinnamon rolls before we opened presents. Anyway my point was that I didn't really remember certain gifts so much as the time spent with my family, and I want Ashton and Gunnar to have certain things that they always look forward to each year. We're also starting a new thing with them (that was a gift from my Mom last year) where we'll have a little manger sitting out with a bunch of straw in a container next to it and each time one of us does something nice for someone else we'll put some straw in the manger in order to make a nice soft bed for the baby Jesus and by Christmas Eve it will be full of the straw and on Christmas morning Ashton (and Gunnar even though he has no clue) will find the baby Jesus laying in the manger. I really want to teach them the real meaning of Christmas...of course I know that for kids a lot of the excitement is the toys, but I want them to know that it's not all about what they get. We took our sub for santa gifts out to the church today and I was trying to explain to Ashton why we had gotten gifts for another family, and why it was a nice thing to do for someone else who might not have enough money to buy their own gifts this year, but I don't know how much I got across to him. He said "I have plenty of money...lots of quarters to buy my own gifts for myself." Oh well I'll keep at it...

I'm sure after the next couple of years he will look forward to buying gifts for other kids.

We got our first snow that stuck to the ground this week. It was only a couple inches, but Ashton put his new snow suit and boots on by 8:00 am and was out playing in it. Of course he was back in the house in about 5 minutes because it was still so cold that early, but he sure looked cute out there! Thanks Mom for bringing his new boots to us on Saturday :)

Which reminds me...we had Lars' work Christmas part Saturday night, so my Mom came down to stay with the boys. Ashton was so excited for her to come play with him... she brought all the ingredients to make cookies with him, so they had fun making ginger snaps

(brown cookies as he calls them).

Anyway after I had gotten dressed and ready to go to the party, Ashton came up to me and said "oh Mommy you look like a princess". I thought...how sweet!

Then Lars told me "he's just saying that because the princess on the Mario Brothers movie he's been watching has a scarf on like you do!

Oh well...I'll take it!

That morning we also got the boys pictures taken as well as family pictures taken. It actually went really well and I went and looked at them yesterday and some turned out really good! I'm so excited to get my disc with them on it. Stay tuned...