Christmas 2013

I can’t believe Christmas has come and gone!  It has been a fun (and busy) few weeks!

We are very lucky and get to see both sides of our family at the holidays.  We spent Christmas Eve with Nana, Bumpa and Lizzie and then saw most of the Quinn clan after church at Nana Q’s condo.  Pete was spoiled rotten!!  I think he was exhausted just from opening presents and playing with all his new loot.  We have been really bad at taking pictures the past several months, but here are a few we did get!

Someone had trouble containing his excitement during lunch at Nana and Bump’s before opening presents:

Having trouble containing his excitement before opening presents!

Opening presents with Nana and Bump!
Opening presents with Nana and Bump!

20131224_204648We woke up Christmas Day excited to watch Pete discover that Santa came.  He didn’t disappoint.  It was so fun to watch him realize that the presents in the living room and under the tree were for him!  His little eyes lit up when he saw his new tool bench and he immediately got to work building and playing.  He had to be reminded that there were other presents to open. Every time he opened anything, all he wanted to do was play with it immediately.

Santa came!!
Santa came – and Bailey is exhausted from waiting up all night!

After presents and breakfast, we headed to Bana and Birdie’s for the rest of Christmas Day where Pete was again spoiled rotten – and we again failed to take many pictures, oops.

Presents with Bana!
Presents with Bana!

We had a great couple of days with our families and it’s hard to believe that another Christmas is behind us.  This time of year is always bittersweet for us and while Brienna is never far from our thoughts and hearts, rediscovering the magic of Christmas through Pete has been more amazing than we ever thought possible. As Pat said on Christmas Eve, I hope every Christmas is as awesome as this one 🙂

Baker Pete

December has been a pretty good month so far!  We are eagerly anticipating Christmas, but have had a lot of fun getting everything ready at home. ‘Tis the season of baking and Pete loves to help me bake, so he’s been very happy these last few days!  On Thursday, we made sugar cookies for his teachers.  He rolled out the dough and cut the cookies and when I tried to take his picture, he gave me this look and told me he was “too busy”:

photo 1

He cracks me up.  After watching the cookies bake (he’s actually quite patient), we got to the fun part: decorating.  Some of those cookies were aggressively sprinkled, but they were all him and he was so proud to give them to his teachers on Friday.  He handed them their little gift bags and proclaimed that he made the cookies “myself”.

We made dog biscuits today and he thought that was just the funniest thing. The dough was less than ideal to work with, and kept getting stuck to the rolling pin and rather than get frustrated (like I would have/did) he just laughed and laughed:

His joy is just so pure and innocent.  It’s certainly easier to bake solo, but doing it with him forces me to give up my OCD tendencies and just enjoy the experience of doing something fun together.  And that alone is worth it’s weight in gold 🙂

Merry almost Christmas!