Christmas 2013

We continued our tradition of driving up to Vermont for Christmas.  It is so nice to spend the holidays with family!!
Look how happy Jack is to be headed to Vermont.  Little did he know that as excited as we all were, we still had a long and rather painful car-ride ahead of us...

But it was well worth the drive!  The fun started right after we arrived, and the following day the Christmas festivities were kicked off with a ride on a train complete with singing elves and a visit from Santa Claus!

At the train station we had a photo op with Christopher Poppington--a life-sized version of our Elf on the Shelf...

Back at Mimi's house, the boys opened up several presents from Mimi on Christmas Eve since Koa had to go with his dad for actual Christmas.  The boys didn't mind one little bit...

Doesn't my little baby boy look so big?  Sniff, sniff...

Christmas Eve dinner was spectacular, and the boys even got to celebrate with "kid wine" (aka sparkling juice in a wine glass)...

Mimi always has a huge supply of Christmas cookies from which the boys can choose a treat for after dinner (or any other time of the day for that matter--it is Christmastime after all...).

Notice Sam's swollen, blackened and cut eye?  He was on an excursion with his Daddy and cousins early on Christmas Eve day when he slipped and fell right onto a sharp rock.  Ouch!!  The poor guy was not only very lucky he didn't fall an inch further to his north, but he was also very brave.  Paul and I took him to see one of Joey's good friends (a nurse practitioner), who very nicely glued him back together...

Mimi's tree is looking pretty crowded with gifts; I am not sure where Santa is going to fit his...

The boys, (being very silly) modeling their traditional Christmas Eve PJ's from mommy and daddy...

Looks like Santa was able to fit his presents under the tree afterall...

Wahoo!!  Finally Christmas morning!!!

After many fun-filled days in beautiful Vermont we made the trek back home to PA.  Guess what was waiting for us when we walked in the doors?  More presents!  I guess Santa decided to leave some at home for us too!!!

A funny group of pictures I had to include:  the boys decided to make a "trap" to catch bad guys or people or something.  I thought this was very creative of them...

Apparently, whenever someone walked into the line of toys, the trap was triggered and the "bad guy" or whatever else was captured.  Paul and I took turns playing bad buy for a while.  What cute, awesome little guys we have!!