The 12 Things I Love About Christmas Time

This is such a joyous, yet rushed season. This year we had the day I've always dreamt of. We put the tree up with the boys, decorated the house, listened to Christmas music & watched Christmas movies, S.Jessen went out in the snow for the first time, and Tate got to bake Christmas cookies for the first time (with S.Jessen and myself of course)!

I thought I would take a few moments (or hours) to share the 12 things I love about Christmas time. I had planned to do this on the 13th, but that came and went so here it is better late than never.

1. The Nativity (It wouldn't be Christ-mas without it)

2. The birth of our son, Tater (he'll be 2 on the 20th)

3. The birth of my mom (50 something on the 23rd) and my parents' anniversary (36 yrs on the 18th)

4. The birth of my brother Adam (he'll be 19 on the 27th)

5. Getting the Christmas tree ready and taking pictures in Christmas jammies under it

6. Baking Christmas cookies

7. Playing in the snow

8. Christmas decorations/music/movies

9. Santa pics

10. Christmas trains under the tree

11. Snow globes

12. Togetherness

Tate's bib says, "Are these people really my relatives?"
I hope you all have things you can take a moment and enjoy during this season. I feel truly blessed with all my "things" and enjoy sharing the true meaning of Christmas with our "happy fanily."

Dancing Kolosik grandsons/elves :)

If you have not seen these, you have to! They are hilarious! Thanks, Jen for sharing yours and Brandee, too! This is the order of our boys: Luke, Tate, S.Jessen, and Isaac

(They love watching themselves)

http://www.elfyourself.com/?id=1111889216

You have to see this interview!

Tis the season... I love this and him!

http://www.theinterviewwithgod.com/

Belated Thanksgiving

Daddy, S.Jessen, Mommy, and Tater

We had a wonderful Thanksgiving at my parent's house last week. The boys were pretty great, but Tate is definitely 2! He was into everything from the computer to the dog food. I felt like the most commonly used word for the week was, "no!" I don't remember S.Jessen being like this at 2, but I probably blocked it out because I had a new 3 month old and we were in the midst of moving to our new home. Tate did find the time to be a sweetie, too. He's just so busy!

Tate feeding Annie her food

Tate taking a break to snuggle Adam

No, we did not have ninjas to dinner, but we kept running into these guys on the play porch, aren't they adorable? (Thanks, Granny and Pops for the costumes!) Tater does have one, too, but he was not interested in wearing it at the moment. He'd have to slow down to put it on.

We were also able to celebrate Isaac's 6th birthday. 6 years ago he was born on Thanksgiving morning. It's hard to believe he is already 6 and we are back to Thanksgiving on his birthday again. He is so grown up and really let the little boys do whatever they wanted to him, without retaliation.

Happy Birthday, Isaac!

Roger, Aron, Adam watching Isaac on his big day.

Mom, Ayla, and I did try to brave the Midnight Madness at the Tanger Outlet Mall. We made it to 3 stores. The lines were exhausting and the deals were not good enough to lose any more sleep. Ayla and I went the next night to Coral Ridge and were pleased with our findings. There were some really nice sales.

Before we came home on Saturday, Roger and I were able to bring the boys over to Jayme and Al's to see their 3 girlie girls: Clara, Gwen, and Ada. They are so much fun and so the opposite of our household! S.Jessen has been very opinionated lately about pink and purple being "girl" colors and that he doesn't like girl toys. By the time we left, he was pretty convinced that the ballerina toy they had was pretty Awesome! It was nice to relax and hang out with our families for a couple hours.

Gwen, Clara, Tate, S.Jessen, and Ada

I hope everyone had a lovely Thanksgiving. We are thankful for so much! It sure was nice to come back Saturday, to ease our way back to normalcy before the first real school week at work since before conferences at the beginning of the month!

Early Thanksgiving

On Sunday we spent Thanksgiving at Roger's parent's house. We had a very nice time and the boys were pretty well-behaved for what they could have been for staying up past 10 and no naps for S.Jessen. Of course he said "frickin fish" to Cole and that started a ruckus, but all in all it was a good day. It's always nice getting to be with family :) We had a hard time wanting to come back to work for three days though. It was quite a tease. Here are a few pics of the day that I could get. We tried to get a family pic for our Christmas card, but Tate is very difficult and usually throws a sweet little fit when he sees the camera. I can sometimes hardly believe he is going to be 2 next month and then that behavior happens and I remember...

Lord, please grant us a little, or a lot of sanity over the holidays.

Belated Winner

Here are some pics of S.Jessen's Fun Night at his school. He won third place as Woody from Toy Story. Too funny! He told the lady with the microphone that Woody says, "I've got a snake in my boot," and she kind of pushed him to pretend she was scared. He totally didn't get it and told me the lady pushed him. I saw the whole thing and got it on video, but it's too long to upload. He did do a nice job performing, but it was serious business and he could wave to me, but not look out at me. He was so focused on his marching in a circle with the others for the judges.

It was a fun night for our little family to get out together. They had a lot of just S.Jessen and Tater sized games in S.Jessen's preschool room. He really does love preschool. S.Jessen "Woody" and the other preschoolers/kindergartners-the kid on his left won first prize!
"Woody" and Mommy
Daddy and Po-Tater
The Winners

A Winner

S.Jessen won third place at his school for his Woody costume. He kept calling himself a "winner" all night. I'll put pics up this weekend. It really was a fun time. We are having parent-teacher conferences this week. While they are helpful, they are exhausting!

Bummed

I feel very bummed about what I have to post. We have already seen previews about the Golden Compass and thought for sure it would be just like the Chronicles of Narnia series. I thought we would definitely go see it over Christmas break and then I read this:

You may already know about this, but I just learned about a kids movie coming out in December starring Nicole Kidman. I believe it's called The Golden Compass, and while it will be a watered down version, it is based on a series of children's books about killing God (it is anti-Narnia).
Please follow this link, and then pass it on. From what I understand, the hope is to get a lot of kids to see the movie - which won't seem too bad - and then get the parents to buy the books for their kids for Christmas. The quotes from the author sum it all up. Why on earth anyone, would want children to lose hope and to lose their faith in God is beyond me.

Click on the "snopes" link below and it will give you more info about this movie. There is no need to have children's books that talk about killing God.

http://snopes.com/politics/religion/compass.asp

I went to the link and it talks about how in this guy's third book, there is a boy and girl supposed to be like Adam and Eve and they kill God. These are children's books! They even discuss castration and female circumcision, no kidding! Like I said, I'm pretty bummed. We were looking forward to seeing it.

Fall Favorites

Allright, below is a little bit of a repeat from an earlier email I sent, but there are some additions, so if you have the time, read on.

I am so loving this fall season. Just as much as the leaves are changing, so are our boys.

S.Jessen seems to be getting more mature every day! He is continuing to love preschool and is growing up before our eyes. He has really enjoyed the leaves changing this fall and is very observant. He told me the other day that red and white make pink and that our friend Mark was a good guy. Is he 3 or 30? He is also way too fascinated with "tooting." :)

Tate is starting to be a really big boy, but still enjoys singing "Sunshine" at bedtime. He talks in his sleep nearly every night and his newest word is "whar" as in "whar is my nigh-nigh, my food, my jean-jean (drink)?" It pretty much works for everything! He says the cutest "where's the baby" you've ever heard. His I love you sounds like "how aw you," but when you know what it says, your heart melts. He does throw a good fit though and can go from laid back to intensely angry in a very short period of time.

Both of or boys seem to be growing up too quickly all of a sudden. Tate is trying to dress himself and S.Jessen does everything, but make his own food. We are so blessed that they both still really love to snuggle. They certainly keep us very busy. I miss them so much when I am at work, but know they are having adventures together and that makes me feel better.

I tried getting the boys pics 21 month and 3 1/2 year pics taken together, but the Sears lady was a psycho and so was Tater. I know I've added a lot of pages today, so here are my last favorite fall pics!
S.Jessen made this picture on his light bright for me while I was out and about. He's so proud!
Tate actually stopped for a pose!

Pumpkin Carving

We went and bought pumpkins on Friday and carved one this weekend. Not sure if we'll get the other one carved, but the boys loved the experience of feeling the slimy seeds and goo on the inside. At one point when I told Tate to stick his hand in, he yelled No! S.Jessen got pretty into it and when Tater was napping, he and Daddy carved a pretty cool football!


All done and ready for bed!

Costume time

As our dress up day is quickly approaching, I thought we'd better decide what the boys will be wearing. S.Jessen's school is having a competition for costumes and as much as I wanted him to be "Sully" from Monsters, Inc, he would be a monster and not so appropriate for a Christian School. We decided to go with "Woody" off of Toy Story, once I found a cowboy hat at the party store this past weekend! Tate loved buzzing around as a bee and then being also "Sully" while S.Jessen was "Spidey". These boys are so much fun!

Playing in the Leaves

We had a beautiful Saturday two weekends ago. After I went and got the boys hair cuts we ventured out into the land of leaves! Roger got a new bagger for his rider and it made collecting the leaves a zillion times faster than last year! He raked a few piles for the boys to enjoy though and here are some of those pics! I am also attaching a song S.Jessen learned in preschool about leaves. It's totally appropriate for the season and perfectly wonderful!

This is the song S.Jessen learned at Preschool. It only took 10 tries to video it, but he really did get into performing. Big shock there :)