Happy Birthday Auntie Nikki!

The Most Wonderful Time of the Year (toddler mania style)

Nate is completely and totally smitten with Elmo, and he has never even seen Sesame Street!
Meet Spike! Milo is pretty sure there is only room for one large creature in the family!
Total Christmas overload Face!
Nate liked stacking his presents up to climb almost as much as opening them!
 A Little Christmas snuggle with daddy!
Eli and his Pop Pop!

Pop Pop singing to Eli!
Wild man Nate on the loose at Aunt Valmere and Uncle Wyn's House the day after Christmas!
Mommy and her boys! 

We had the BEST CHRISTMAS EVER!!! Having small children is such a treat at the holidays because they bring back all of the magic and wonder! Watching Eli's face when he realized that Santa had eaten his cookies was priceless! Nate and Eli marveling over their amazing presents and the pure joy that each one elicited was so special! Most particularly, I loved watching Gromma and Pop Pop and Eli and Nate enjoy each other so much! We even had an adventure (fog and flooding... what's next the plague?) when we drove to Bloomington the day after Christmas to spend some family time with my Aunt Val (Gromma's sister) and Uncle Wyn! We really cherish the time with family!

P.S. Notice in the first two pictures you catch a glimpse of the elusive Gromma! She is practically as rare of a sighting on film as the Yeti!

Early Christmas with Auntie Bec

Daddy and sweet boy Nate
Eli and Auntie Bec have a mutual admiration society! 
Auntie and Nate sure liked to snuggle

We had such a great visit with Sam's little sister "Auntie Bec". It was like having an early Christmas to spend time with her and have her spend time with the boys. They both love their Auntie so much. She is such a trooper to come here in winter because she HATES the cold, that just tells you how much she loves her boys!

Holiday Cheer from Nate

Nate loves to sing with us! Here is some holiday cheer from our resident cherub!

Eli's 3 year old stat's

Eli finally had his big 3 year check up, and it was quite an adventure. We got to check hearing, vision, and blood pressure in addition to all the usual height and weight measurements. He loved it! Totally fascinated by the blood pressure cuff, and headphones for the ear test. Of course Eli is perfect! His weight is hard to pin down right now because our poor little guy has been sick for 4 weeks now! But on the 17th he weighed 39.5 pounds (thats off the charts for weight) and they measured at 40 inches which is not quite accurate (he was looking down), I measured him at home and got 40.5 inches which puts him up and over the 95th percentile! It is crazy what a long, lean guy he has become (despite the 99th percentile weight). 

At three years old, Eli is still that sweet little boy we fell in love with at birth! He has the soul of a poet and a dreamer! He loves to tell us stories, jokes, and make up adventures! His vocabulary and speech is that of a 30 year old and he loves learning! He has a strong stubborn streak and a huge heart (compliments of mommy and daddy). We love this little guy!

Little Monsters

While I was making dinner last night I heard the boys giggling in the living room. Now this can either make your heart smile with the sweetness of brothers playing or your hair turn grey with the n0-good antics they are up too. This time it was a huge heart smile! They were playing little monsters and running around like wild-men! After I recorded their antics I played with them!

Dinosaur Birthday Party Day!!!

Stegosaurus Nate (sporting a stegosaurus scale hat)
Stegosaurus Eli! He was ferocious!!!
Spike the Dinosaur Birthday cake! 
Digging for dinosaur fossils with friends!
Eli loved when all of his friends (and their parents too) sang him "Happy Birthday"

Make a wish baby boy!
YEAH!!!! That is one happy little boy!

Eli had a fantastic birthday party today! He was so happy to play with friends, and discover new fun things about dinosaurs! We had Eli's birthday party at the Nature Center where Eli and I do a "Kneehigh Naturalist" class on Wednesday mornings. We picked a dinosaur theme party as our big boy is a dinosaur lover extraordinaire!!! The teacher miss Erica had a ton of fun things planned: They got to stomp like dino's and learn how big dino feet are (they all had their feet traced on a dino footprint), they got to make their own dino fossils with clay, and they got to pretend to be stegosaurus's with awesome paper plate stegosaurus scales! They even got to do the dinosaur hockey pokey! So much fun! 

We had pizza and fruit salad for lunch and dino cake and ice cream to celebrate with! 

We had 6 three year olds, 3 Twenty-month old, and 1 tiny baby (3 month old) plus all of the parents! We had two extra-special visitors: My Aunt Valmere and Uncle Wyn! Having them celebrate Eli's birthday with us was such a treat! 

Eli LOVED when everyone sang happy birthday to him! He also got his stegosaurus costume first and got to show off his dino moves! Happy Birthday Big Boy!

P.S Little brother Nate loved everything too... when he stopped moving long enough to take part! The longest period of time Nate was in one place was during lunch! Ha!