the countdown continues...

December 14 - take a bubble bath!

December 16 - make cookies for firefighters and bring them to the firehouse!

Poppy and Ty actually came up with this idea on their own!  Poppy is all about "the season of giving" and Ty is all about firetrucks, so it was a match made in heaven.  They even made and decorated the cookies and were so proud to deliver them.

Poppy was super excited right up until they actually got there, and then she clammed up once she saw the firefighters (and would not even stand next to a firetruck for a picture).  Ty was of course in his glory.  Even Sam was checking out the trucks!

December 17 - eat breakfast inside of a gingerbread house!

Poppy claims to have no recollection of doing this last year, which cracks me up because she always remembers everything.  Anyways, we headed north to the Great Wolf Lodge to have breakfast inside of the gingerbread house they build every year to support a charity.  This thing is so cool!  It is covered in frosting, cookies, candy and chocolate.  The wooden structure that supports it is literally painted in chocolate (that melts when you touch it!).  And this year they had a train that looped around the inside and outside of the gingerbread house, which was a huge hit with both Poppy and Sam...

December 18 - make salt dough ornaments to give as gifts to friends and family!

This was the first time we've done this and it was so much fun!  Poppy had a blast rolling out and cutting the dough with cookie cutters, but painting them was definitely her favorite part.

This one was our favorite.  We used Poppy and Sam's fingerprints to make the lightbulb indentations and Poppy painted them different colors.  I think it turned out adorable!

December 21 - The Polar Express book was waiting for us under the tree!  

We've also had quite a few "drink hot cocoa for a snack" or "read lots of books while snuggled on the couch" as fillers over the past few weeks.  As challenging as it was sometimes to come up with a fun activity for the day, it has been so much fun to see Poppy's face light up as she read her daily note from Steve our elf.  Making memories like these is what the holidays are all about!

More Christmas countdown fun...

December 4 - write a letter to Santa

My favorite parts of her letter - 

"I have been naughty and nice."  At least she's honest!  

"I am going to be a good girl for the rest of my life."  Well, that lasted until the next morning.  

December 5 - drink hot chocolate after dinner!

December 6 - this one was a warning from Steve the Elf about Poppy's behavior, reminding her that Santa is always watching! (no picture)

December 7- make a craft with mommy. (snowman garland)

December 8 - Steve the Elf made a special treat for Poppy and her friend Maisy who came over for lunch...

December 10 - visit Santa at Santaland!

{This was Poppy's first time sitting on Santa's lap!!!}

How adorable are these pictures?!  I almost used the bird one for our Christmas card!

December 11 - make a gingerbread house!

Of course, both Poppy and Sam's favorite part was playing with the candy.

December 12 - family game night!

Hi-Ho Cherry-o and Candyland were played aplenty!

December 13 - Steve the Elf told mommy that Santa left a message for Poppy in her email.  It was a Portable North Pole message.  Poppy was excited and terrified at the same time...

Catch up

I have been pretty much absent from blogging lately, but all for good reason.  We had 2 really fun events that have taken up all of my spare time over the past month.  First, it was my parents 40th wedding anniversary.  My brothers and I decided to have a little surprise dinner and put together a simple photo album as a gift.  Well the photo album turned out to be pretty epic.  It was nearly impossible to do "simple" when going through 40 years of pictures.  And we only had less than 2 weeks to work on it.  So I basically used every spare second going through old pictures and scanning them, and then used iphoto to make a really cool photo book.  And then Marc took all the digital files and turned them into a movie.  And my brother found some old videos and had them make into dvd's.  It all turned out super cool and my parents were surprised to say the least.  The only picture I have of the night was this polaroid from the end of the night...

The next fun, but time consuming event was having a welcome home party for Marc's sister and boyfriend who just returned home from Iraq.  We decided it would be nice to have the house all decorated for Christmas before the party, so we have been scrambling around to get all of that done over the past week.  First it was the big tree hunting trip.  Marc won this year and I agreed to go chop a tree down.  I personally think this whole experience is over-rated and am more than happy to go pick one out from a tree lot, but I will admit that the kids had fun...

Finally, they found the perfect tree!

Timber!

My favorite part of the day was our stop at Ted's for lunch.

For the rest of the week, I diligently strung popcorn and cranberries, while Marc tinkered away in the basement playing with his new train set.  This year he decided that Poppy and Sam must have the Polar Express train set.  And that he would have to build an entire platform thingy for the train (and village) to go on under our tree.  

After many, many, many hours of decorating, I finally present to you - our tree.  I love how every single branch is dripping with ornaments, candy canes or icicles.  Because you can never have too much on a tree, can you?  And don't forget Marc's pride and joy, the train. (it's pretty darn cute how much Poppy and Sam love that train too)

With all of the decorating behind us, we were ready for Jeanna's homecoming yesterday.  We were able to meet her at the armory, which Poppy was very excited to see.  It was really neat (and emotional) to see the buses of troops being escorted by police and motorcycles and then all of the families cheering at their arrival...

(check out Poppy's welcome home sign she worked so hard on)

Aunt Jeanna is so strong!

Home, at last!

So as you can see, we've been quite busy lately.  But now that the parties are over with, we get to relax and enjoy the holiday season.  We've already started our advent calendar, which has been keeping us busy with fun little activities to get ready for Christmas.  I'm trying to take a picture of each activity, so I will be posting those soon...

Holiday Fun

The little elves that run our advent calendar have been keeping us quite busy this week.  They had us baking Christmas cookies, writing a letter to Santa, having game nights...

Saturday they sent us to Santaland at Chestnut Ridge park.  The weather turned out to be perfect, no too cold and the snow held off.  There was just enough snow still on the ground so that Marc and Poppy could take a ride down the hill on their sled.  We definitely look forward to going back later in the year when there is more snow.

Poppy was of course, petrified once she got up close to Santa.  He offered to hold Sam so that she could see that he was alright, but she still wasn't going to get too close to him.  Later on she said that she liked meeting Santa because he had a little gift for her, but her favorite part of Santaland was getting to drink hot chocolate and eat cookies!

Then bright and early Sunday morning, Poppy checked the advent calendar and she found a little note that said we were going to eat breakfast inside of a gingerbread house.  She was a little confused by this - she didn't understand how we would fit inside of a gingerbread house!

We drove up to Canada and went to the Great Wolf Lodge, where they had built a giant gingerbread house as a fundraiser.  For a donation to their charity, you could eat at the single table inside of the gingerbread house!

Here's what the outside of the house looks like.  The house was really made out of cookies, chocolate, pretzels, candy and icing!  Poppy was in awe when she saw it...

And this is once we went inside, Poppy peering out the window, still in awe that she is surrounded by so many cookies and candy...

It was so cool that we had the whole gingerbread house all to ourselves!

Sam was so excited that he fell asleep!  Isn't his little car seat cover the cutest thing?

Poppy was so excited that she barely ate anything for breakfast.  We all had such a great time!  And the Great Wolf Lodge was quite possibly the coolest place ever!  We were able to get a tour and see what the rooms look like and see the waterpark.  Poppy was staring at the waterpark and she sadly said, "I wish I had my bathing suit."  Don't worry Poppy - we will definitely be going back for a fun weekend trip!

'tis the season for super fun stuff!

First of all, check out this awesome shot of Lola giving Sammy a little kiss.  Don't worry, we don't let her lick him all day, but she would if she could.  This dog lives for spit-up and baby drool. (and don't mind Poppy's spaghetti sauce stained face)

And check out Big Boy Sammy (as he likes to be called) sitting up!  He's getting better at it everyday!

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We have a beautiful advent calendar that is a little wooden house and Poppy gets to open a door or window each day.  In years past, we've always filled it with candy and other little treats and trinkets for Poppy, but this year I decided to write down a little note from an elf that tells us a fun thing we get to do that day.  The other day the elf said we can have hot chocolate with all the fixings after dinner.  Poppy was soooo excited - she LOVES hot chocolate.  And then we read 'Twas the Night Before Christmas while drinking our hot chocolate.  I'm going to try to snap pics of the different advent activities we do...

Both Poppy and Sam loved reading this book.  And we've read it at least 100 times since then.

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On Saturday our little advent elf told us to go get a Christmas tree, so we took our annual walk down to the local tree lot, like we have every year since we've lived in our house.  Unfortunately, another part to our annual tradition is that Marc and I argue about where to get our tree every year.  Marc has always hated my beloved tree lot; he thinks the trees are over priced and sorry-looking and he desperately wants to drive out to the country to chop our own tree down at a tree farm.  So after winning the battle for the past five years, I finally agreed that next year we could chop our tree down where he wants.  Sniffle, sniffle.  How can you beat being able to walk to get your tree and bring it back home on a wagon?  Oh, and on the way to get our tree this year, we were walking down the street when a crazy white cadillac came driving down the street, blaring its horn and pulled over to greet Poppy, with a jolly old Santa sitting in the driver seat.  He gave her a GIANT candy cane and she has been carrying it around ever since then, telling everyone that she saw Santa driving down the street.

(in case you can't tell, that's Sam I'm carrying in a black sling)

She really didn't care about the Christmas trees, she was so excited about that candy cane!

Hee, hee.  I just had to include this picture of Poppy helping us get the living room ready for the Christmas tree...

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Then Sunday we were off to one of the coolest things - we went to the Genesee Country Village for their special Yuletide in the Country.  We basically were on a small tour with about 10 other people (my parents went with us) and we were able to go inside colonial homes that had actors acting out the history of Christmas.  It was sooooo neat.  We weren't really supposed to take pictures and there were no flashes allowed, so the few pics Marc did take are a little blurry.  The weather was perfect, cold and snowing...

I was so nervous about Sam getting cold - I had him bundled in about 5 layers, plus a snow suit, plus I wore him in the baby carrier, plus I put a thick blanket over him.  He fell asleep the first minute we were outside and he didn't open his eyes once during the 2 hours we were out there!

In this house, two little girls read 'Twas the Night Before Christmas and Poppy had a huge smile on her face the entire time because she recognized the story.

All of the actors were dressed in costume and had accents.  As we walked through the village, people would walk by singing Christmas carols and ask you to join in.  It was so neat!  Poppy said her favorite part was when the boys and girls danced together...

And then at the last house we visited on our tour, they lit the real candles on their Christmas tree, had a boy playing bag pipes and showed us what their traditional Christmas dinner was like.

After the tour, we were able to stay for a yummy turkey dinner before we got in our freezing cold car and drove an hour to get home.  Poppy couldn't stop talking about all the things she loved about it.  She even remembered a song that one of the carolers was singing in the village.  We all had such a great time, we can't wait to go back again!

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My two cuties reading together.  Poppy loves to read to her baby brother.

So many more fun Christmas things coming up in the next few weeks!  Oh, and Sam's photo shoot went really well - it was very interesting.  For those of you non-Buffalonians, Fisher-Price is based in Buffalo, so they are always looking for kids to photograph for their boxes or ads.  So no, Sam is not a model, but he did smile really good for the photographer!  You know I will definitely keep everyone posted if he makes it onto the box of something!