christmas week

Monday, December 23rd was the only school day the boys had that week, and it was a pajama day.


Through lunchtime on Tuesday, Christmas Eve, it was just the boys and me. We took advantage of the nicer, and drier, than usual for December weather and played in the backyard for a while and had a picnic lunch. Picnics really just mean eating outside!


While we were playing, there was an incident in which Zane's giant plastic tee ball bat collided with my face. It was totally an accident, but I'm still a little wary when he wants to play with it now! I ended up with a small cut and a shiner (Uncle John got a kick out of it when we talked to them on FaceTime the next day).


We left out cookies and milk before bed! It's an understatement to say that Zane was giddy.


Santa came to our house!


Caden and Zane both made the nice list, too!


We woke up to a Seattle style white Christmas with fog rather than snow:


The boys were in their matching pjs.


The first order of business was taking Zane's new helicopter for its first flight.


Molly managed to get into her stocking all on her own:


Caden liked the car ramp that Santa brought him.


After playing with all our new toys, we got the boys ready for dinner with friends at their no-kids-live-there house. That always makes me nervous, but the boys did well! Zane did ask where they kept their toys, which he followed up with, "why don't you have any toys?"


That evening, Grandma and Grandpa got into town. We all hung out on Thursday.


"Wanna see this???"


Then on Friday, Zane asked to come to work with me, so we went on an adventure together since it was probably our best opportunity. We rode the bus, walked to my building, picked up oatmeal and a short hot chocolate (that he never has more than 3 or 4 sips of), and met new friends. I kept my door shut, and we actually did really well for a couple hours (with a potty break and a trip to visit more friends). Then Zane started to turn into a wild boy. :) so we left for the day and stopped off to get lunch on our way back to the bus stop. Taking the bus back was equally exciting as it was on the way there, but he wasn't nervously squeezing hand this time.


That afternoon I noticed Caden's 9th tooth was already out a good part of the way - a molar on his top left side. Who knows when that happened! The rest of the week went well, and Caden showed off that he could really run now. He's getting faster every day it seems. We ran up and down the sidewalk when we went out to brunch on Sunday while we were waiting for everyone else to finish up: