Early Christmas in WA

The night before we left to go to California we had a mini Christmas and opened some of the presents we had up in Washington.  It was fun to watch Alden actually figure out how to open presents.  Alden had never been interested in opening his own presents before so it was entertaining to see him enjoy tearing wrapping paper and pulling at tissue paper.  It was also interesting because Alden never tried to open any of the presents that were sitting under the tree before we told him to.  Here is the cute Alden enjoying his presents!  

Alden loved discovering what was inside all the boxes.

Alden loved the balls from Aunt Magann and Uncle Nathan and Brendon. Here is a little video.

Alden wanted to help Daddy unwrap his presents once he figured out he liked tearing the paper.

We gave Alden a tricycle for Christmas and he loved it.  He thought it was a car and was so excited that he had his own "car" to drive around.  This was what happened when he opened it and Daddy realized it wasn't assembled yet.  (It is a rather long video so if you just watch the first part you will see Alden's basic reaction.) Click here

We had a great mini Christmas by ourselves and it got us really excited to go visit family for Christmas in California.

Alden having fun

Alden loves our new house and all the space that he has to run around.  It is fun to watch him explore and discover new things all the time.  He is growing and learning so fast now and I love watching him and playing with him every day.  Here are some photos from us just hanging out around the house.

Alden loves his "kitty" and loves playing ball with himself and his "kitty."

Alden loved playing around the Christmas tree.  He would take ornaments off the tree and set them around the tree in a semicircle because he couldn't put them back on the tree by himself.

Decorating Cookies

A few weeks before Christmas I decided I wanted to do a fun family activity, so we decided to decorate Christmas cookies and build a Gingerbread house.  I was honestly surprised that Alden didn't make a bigger mess but he never was a messy kid so I guess I shouldn't have been that surprised.  It was also nice that my friend Sarah was able to come over and decorate cookies with us.

Alden's favorite thing about decorating was shaking the sprinkles everywhere.

Alden also just wanted to taste everything we gave him to decorate with.

Alden liked having Sarah there and he wanted her to help opening all the sprinkle bottles.

Drew had a lot of fun building his gingerbread house.  He was very focused on his project.

This was Drew's finished gingerbread house. 

Alden had to study Daddy's gingerbread house very intently to make sure it was stable and acceptable.  

It was great having Sarah over to decorate cookies with us and enjoy the Christmas spirit with us.

Christmas Tree

One of the first things we did in our new house was set up our Christmas tree.  It was fun to put up the tree and hang ornaments and candy canes all together as a family.  It was great having Drew home to help decorate and it was fun having Alden try and help even though he couldn't hang ornaments on the tree by himself.  Alden would run back and forth between the box of ornaments and the tree, handing ornaments to me or Drew.

This was the tree after we finished decorating it.  It was one of the first things in our house since we still hadn't got most of our furniture.

One of Alden's favorite things from decorating the tree was that he got his first candy cane.  We put some candy canes on the tree and Drew sat down to eat one after we finished decorating the tree.  Alden decided he wanted some of it and once he got his first taste of the candy cane he wouldn't let anybody else eat it.  He chowed down on the whole thing and then proceeded to run around in circles because he had so much energy.

Alden loved his candy cane!

Alden had so much fun running around after eating his candy cane.  I have a video of it that I will post as soon as I find it. =)

Leavenworth

The Saturday after Thanksgiving we decided to take a day trip to a Bavarian village we thought wasn't too far away.  (It ended up being about an hour further drive than we thought but we still had fun.)  Leavenworth was all decorated for Christmas and was a very beautiful little village to walk around in.  I loved all the architecture and atmosphere.  It was a lot of fun to walk through all the shops and eat some unique, yummy food.  I am very grateful for a dad who raised me to be appreciative of many different types of foods!  Christmas is one of my favorite times of year and I loved seeing a village all decorated for the holidays especially since I didn't have a place of my own to decorate yet.  It was a fun and exciting day and I am glad we got to share it with family even if the day did not go exactly as planned.  Here are some pictures from our day there, although I wish I had taken a whole lot more.

The boys had fun trying on different hats in one of the shops.  It was very entertaining.

My favorite store there was a huge Christmas store with tons of different decorations and so many fun things to look at!

We stopped for lunch at a more traditional place where I thought the food was really yummy.  I had fun taking photos of my cute little nephew, Brendon, who had fun posing for me.

The boys were both very tired by the end of our outing and were ready for their bottles and then a nap.