Monday, January 13, 2014

More December Fun

This post is going to be a mash up of a bunch of Christmas festivities the week of Christmas!

Adalyn loves helping in the kitchen and is really into baking after spending time making cookies with Nana earlier this month. I got ingredients for cute pretzel, hugs and m&m's treats and she was so excited to help. She unwrapped all of the hugs and placed them on the pretzels. She was so excited to take these treats to her sitter's house to share with her friends on her last day of daycare before Christmas!
 I love how serious she is with her Home Depot apron on. Love that high pony! How is my girl this old?
 Adalyn was so excited to have her friends over to exchange presents. (I was too!) Of course it was a chore to get the little siblings to stand still for the picture. 
 These two are the best of friends. I just love how they hold hands and love on each other.
 Cayden opened this adorable monster hat. LOVE it!
 And some fun little cars. He was excited to show one to me!
 Emalyn enjoyed riding the scooter in an unconventional way while carrying her baby doll.
 Adalyn loves her new Cabbage Patch Kid!
We spent Christmas Eve with Jonathan's mom, sister and nephews. Adalyn had fun making an ornament craft with her cousins.
 Aunt Heather loving on the littles.


 Making reindeer food is serious business.

 Adalyn loved the Christmas train!

 Christmas picture of the cousins.
 Of course Cayden didn't want to stand still so after he crawled away we took pictures of the older cousins.

 Cayden likes his new chair. (Although he still likes to steal his sister's pink chair!)
 Adalyn was really excited for her new kitchen from grammy!
We went to Jonathan's extended family Christmas Eve party. We had a great time seeing everyone but we probably stayed a bit too long. The kids were starting to melt down. These pictures are pretty funny! Poor Cayden. He was past pictures.


That brings us to Christmas Eve and Christmas morning at our house which will need it's own post!

Wednesday, January 8, 2014

Breakfast with Santa

Yes, I am aware that it is January and I am just now writing Christmas blog posts. I just have not felt the need to sit and write blog posts. Not sure why other than I can always find 100 other things to do than to sit and upload pictures. But I know I really need to catch up!

The Saturday before Christmas Jonathan's mom invited us to go have breakfast with Santa and then to go see Kalightoscope. We did this last year and thought it would be fun to do again. This time Cayden was able to enjoy it! The breakfast portion is a completely sit-down breakfast with more food than possible to eat! And it's really fancy. (Almost too fancy since Cayden pulled the table runner toward himself and got three different glasses of different liquid poured on himself.) As we were waiting to go into the ball room, Santa walked through the line of kids. Adalyn was so excited to see him and talk to him!

 All of Santa's elves and servers were waiting for guests to come through the door and ran jingle bells and formed a bridge for the kids to run under to enter the room. They really thought of everything to make it a special day for the kids!

 When we were taken to our table, we were assigned the table front and center to Santa's chair! Exciting! This hotel had the most beautiful and over the top decorations and trees!
 The other part of the stage.
 Since Santa was making rounds in the room, we decided to take a few pictures of the kids in his chair.



They had lots of fun things to do during the breakfast other than eat. There were stations all around the room where kids could get hand painted tattoos, face paint, decorate their own cupcakes, dance with the elves and meet the Snow Fairy. Adalyn was at a really great age to think that all of these things were the funnest-thing-ever! (And yes, Adalyn's decorated cupcake is on the table. And yes, she insisted on eating it before we could leave. As if she hadn't had enough sugar.)




I think Adalyn's favorite part was dancing with "Santa's Girls" as she called the elves. The girl elves were so sweet with the little kids.


Then we got in line to go see Santa. Santa was so sweet with the kids and spent a long time with each child. He had sweet little conversations with them. I think Cayden was a big anxious. ha!

 Adalyn was showing off her Frosty tattoo. (She is super into Frosty!!)
Cayden was not a fan. Poor kid.


 Since brother was screaming, we let Adalyn have her own turn.


After we got to talk to Santa we hit the dance floor again. Once we could peel Adalyn off the dance floor we headed to the area of the hotel that was hosting the Kalightoscope. This is the coolest indoor Christmas lights display. They are Chinese lantern type lights created into the shapes of Christmas images. They are so cool! It's hard to capture the lights in pictures. This was the entrance to the room.
 "Hi Frosty!"


 Adalyn wrote her name on the Nice list!
 The Elf workers had lots of energy and were in total character for the kids. I was impressed with all the workers! This elf was dancing for Cayden.
 This little house was cool because you can walk through it to see what the inside of the lanterns look like.


 Adalyn is such a huge Frosty fan that she was pretty excited with this snowman display! She wanted her picture with Frosty. 

 Each room of lanterns had a different elf to greet us.
 This elf was hanging from the ceiling.


 Cayden loved looking at everything. He was telling me all about it here.


From the light display, we went into the Snow Fairy Castle and to the Peppermint Forest to ride the train. (Adalyn loved the train!)
 So pretty...

 Making a wish.



We had a wonderful day of Christmas festivities. The kids loved it and we made lots of special memories. I think we wore them out...
 And yes, I haven't posted about it yet, but this was Cayden's first day with his chair flipped forward. Since he is almost as big/heavy as Adalyn we felt comfortable switching his seat. He loved it! Here's a picture from that morning when he first got in his "new" seat and was a bit more awake:)