January

I've been feeling a bit uninspired in the blogging world lately, but here is a sampling of photos from our everyday happenings in January...

Austin was supposed to be getting dressed one morning, but I found that he got a bit distracted.  Can't really be upset at finding this:

Lego mania continues.  They explode in an impressive way, but I love seeing the little creations he comes up with.

I often find this.  Ugh.  (what it doesn't show are the millions of tiny legos scattered in the carpet...and on his bookcase... and under his bed and dresser...)  It's good I love him so much.  :)

Austin has loved playing in the snow!  It's strange to not have any pictures of Zach out there since he's in school all day and it is cold and getting dark by the time he is home.

Everyone decides to repaint their main interior themselves during the busiest time of year, right?  Like starting the week before Christmas.  Cal was a good sport and we repainted all the yellow (wall below) to a beautiful gray (wall above).  I hadn't initially intended to repaint that brown wall on the right, which goes into the kitchen, but I was ambitious and did some touch ups on it with a paint sample in that color and it turned out to not be an exact match.  So it was a polka dotted wall or a repaint!  So it is gray now too.  It has really brightened up the house and is a definite improvement.

The boys were excited to help, although we didn't let them do too much.

I'm a little nuts and did all the edges with an artist's 1/2 inch paintbrush, often with a headlamp because we did a lot of painting at night.

We have had some ridiculously cold weather here this winter!  I opened Zach's blinds one morning to find some amazing frost.  I grabbed my camera but it only lasted for less than a minute before melting.  Spring is so close I can almost taste it, and we are so excited!

Christmas

Christmas was good to us once again.  The boys were really excited which made it so fun.  On Christmas Eve we had our traditional Christmas Eve crepes with my parents for dinner.  Then the boys got to open up their Christmas pjs and were really wild with anticipation.  

When we were decorating the house and tree in early December, it got to be bedtime and we hadn't hung the stockings.  Zach was concerned but I told him we could do it the next day.  The next morning Cal said, "I see you hung the stockings," thinking I had stayed up late to do it.  I was confused and told him that no, I had not hung them.  Then we realized that Zach had gotten up early and done it all himself!  We use some command hooks on our mantle, and I'm impressed he could figure it all out as we were reusing hooks from last year and the refills weren't in them...  They were a bit crooked and uneven and at first I thought my OCD side would be driven crazy by it.  But I loved it and it just made me smile every time I saw them.  

Reading Christmas books before Santa came.

Christmas morning.  They were both excited, but Zach always has awesome reactions!

The aftermath.

Life is good.

The Tree Hunt

We headed to Winter Park like usual to cut down our Christmas tree.  This year, however, we were lucky enough to get to go with both my parents AND Gary and his family.  It was so fun.  We were blessed with a gorgeous day and warm weather.  The kids all had fun tromping around in the snow looking for the perfect trees and sledding.  

My Dad and Miles

When we arrived, the bushes had this incredible frost on them.  I wished that I had taken more pictures of it because by the time we found our tree and I went back, it had melted.

Gary and Iris

 Zach

Dad

The boys on a log.  All were eating snow.  :)

Mom and Iris

The boys in front of our tree before cutting it down.

Brudders.

My parents' beautiful bushy tree.

Sledding!

Hot chocolate break.

Our boys were really wanting more sledding so we went into town (Winter Park) to the big sledding hill.  It was a bit nerve-wracking to watch them with so many sledders barreling down, but we only had tears once, and no injuries, so it was a success! It was hard to get them to leave!

A wonderful tradition!