Christmas 2016

I used to do 10 million blog posts each Christmas about all of our different celebrations. Alas, that phase of our life is over. I'm doing good to even get this one post up! Life is crazy with two little boys, my photography, and all our house stuff. So here is the Christmas recap!

This is our official family Christmas photo. We took it on our way out the door to Christmas Eve service at our church.

At church, we had a fellowship hour with treats and cocoa, plus a photo booth. Then we had a great service that Adam's parents attended with us. Afterwards, we loaded up and headed to my parents house for the rest of the evening. We ate dinner, made popsicle stick Christmas tree ornaments, and hung out.

After we got home that night, we all slept together in our newly-finished bedroom! That I still need to blog about. Ren woke me up by stroking my head and saying "Mommy, your hair is so beautiful." Lol. Love that kid.

We were excited for our first Christmas at our new house! Since we weren't doing a Christmas with the Dreher side til several days later, Adam invited his parents to come hang out while we opened presents Christmas morning. The boys were eagerly waiting til Grandma and Papa arrived before they could open gifts.

Sutton has wanted a punching bag forever. He finally got one now that we have a place (our basement) to put it!

This year, Ren understood the concept of opening presents, but his little hands couldn't work as fast as his brain so he kept asking for help tearing the paper off.

The two things he'd asked for for Christmas were a BABY and a microphone. He got a microphone!!

Ren loves Daniel Tiger and was overjoyed to get a talking Daniel stuffed animal.

We had to sit down at the table so that Ren could play with some play-do he'd gotten, and so Adam and Sutton could set up this miraculous fast-growing tree Sutton had gotten.

It was also our first Christmas with Shadow! She didn't really seem to care.

At the top of Sutton's list had been a "nerf gun bow and arrow." That's all we ever heard..."nerf gun bow and arrow." What do you want for Christmas, Sutton? "Nerf gun bow and arrow." He was very excited.

We also had to put together a new Lego Minecraft set.

Ren wanted to be involved.

Two days after Christmas, Adam's brother Matt + his people Shay and Amos came into town so we did the Dreher Christmas. We found out we're expecting a new niece or nephew from Matt and Shay! Hooray! Here's the whole bunch of us.

For New Year's Eve, my parents and us traveled to Colorado to visit my bro + his people Sara, Carson, and Selah since they hadn't made it back to Kansas for Christmas. It was fun to get the cousins together. Here the boys are all watching Sutton play Minecraft.

We went to Ikea, the Denver Aquarium, out to eat, and did a lot of hanging out. We also got to meet up with Adam's nephew Dylan and his girlfriend Julie who live in Denver. Adam, Sutton, and I went on a hike with them.

Selah is the cutest, sweetest baby!

We took a group photo of my clan on NYE before my 4 left. We bought a couch at Ikea on a whim, Adam strapped it to the top of our Jetta, and we left Denver at 8pm on NYE. We drove through the night, celebrated the New Year in-between time zones with two sleeping kids in the backseat. We got home at 5am and collapsed. Whew. Makes me tired just thinking about it.

The last "Christmas" thing we did was last night. Sutton's gift to me was a date for the two of us. It included a Chili's gift card and movie passes. So last night we went out on our date. We ate chips and salsa, cheese fries, and pepperoni pizza at Chili's. Then we stopped at Walgreen's for candy and drinks. Then we went and saw Moana at the theater, which was so good! We got home after his bedtime but it was so fun to hang out just the two of us.

Snow!

About a week before Christmas, we had some snow finally! We didn't have much last winter and haven't really had any this winter. I had to take Ren out in it to play. He looked so cute all suited up!

The only waterproof mittens we had were Sutton's, so they were way too big. So Ren alternated between wearing the too-big mittens, and taking them off and grabbing the snow with his bare hands. He'd get cold and want to put them back on. But when he had them on, he couldn't really grab the snow. It was a vicious cycle.

Below, he was saying "cheeseburger!!!!!" but the sun was so bright he had to close his eyes.

I had the idea to get his sand toys out to use in the snow and that was his most favorite thing. Lots of scooping snow into buckets.

I made him a little snowman and he was so sad when we went back outside a few days later and it was gone. :(

Sutton Lost his First Tooth!

Sutton had had a wiggly tooth for a looooooooong time. He was terrified to do anything more than just wiggle it a little himself. He wouldn't let any of us touch it. Finally, it came out on Thanksgiving night, as he bit into a roll at dinner. Hooray!

His other front tooth is also loose now, so we'll see if we can sing the "All I Want for Christmas is My Two Front Teeth" song this year!!

Halloween | 2016

For Halloween this year, we asked Ren what he wanted to dress up as, and he said Sutton. So we got him a Minecraft t-shirt and made his hair even orange-r for a costume party we went to on Saturday evening.

For Sutton's costume, we were looking through options on Amazon.com, and he saw the sword that this ninja costume came with, and decided that was the coolest thing ever so he had to be a ninja. Again. Based on the cool weapon. Whatever. :) Adam was Pacman for school - the other 5th grade teachers were all ghosts. So I just borrowed one of their ghost costumes so I would match Adam for the party. Here's the only picture of us that night...I had a cold and my kids weren't behaving, so we left early and I wasn't too much fun to be around. :(

Then right before we went trick-or-treating last night, Ren told us that he'd rather be a ninja like Sutton (he's obsessed with his brother), so he ended up wearing Sutton's ninja costume from last year. The second I put it on him, he started rolling around the living room doing somersaults and all kinds of poses because he was so excited to be a ninja.

We went outside to take some photos. I had to take my annual photo with the boys. Every Halloween of Ren's we have took this photo, even when he was in utero.

Here's the comparison:



Then lots of posing happened. Ren was intent on the somersault thing.

Then Papa and Grandma arrived.

But back to more somersaulting.

And the silver ninja with his super cool clanging-sound sword.

Trying to get the semi-decent brother picture.

I had to get some with Sutton's mask off too.

Here's their 3-year comparison:

Sutton decided he was going to drive this around so he could get a wagon-full of candy. ;)



Up until the last minute, we weren't sure where we were going to trick-or-treat. This was our first year at the new house...and our old neighborhood had always been an amazing neighborhood for Halloween. We decided to just go around Bentley, and it was a lot of fun!



Possibly the last year we'll take a stroller with us! Good thing we did though. This little ninja got tired.

The boys were so cute trick-or-treating. They would run up to the houses together and sometimes Sutton would wait and let Ren ring the doorbell. Sometimes Ren would just say "DING DONG" really loud instead of ringing the bell. And instead of "Trick or treat!" Ren always said "Happy Halloween!" They both had so much fun. Ren wanted to be held or ride in the stroller between houses after while, but each time we got to a house, he happily got out and mustered up some energy.