Holiday Recap 2013

This will be a relatively quick wrap-up of Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas and NYE...

Halloween
We had a season of fun crafts, school parties and dress up! Grayson wanted to be Batman - I thought for sure he would change his mind since I bought the costume about 5 weeks early and limited his play time with it hoping to preserve his interest. Sure enough - he still only had eyes for Batman! Walker went as The Very Hungry Caterpillar. The cutest costume I feel lucky to have come across. I mean, just look at them! :)

Thanksgiving has become one of my favorite weeks out of the whole year! It has become a tradition where Amanda and Andrew come in for a full week and Andrea and Rogan join us for most of that week. The only week out of the year where we are all together and for an extended period of time. I love it and I love watching all of them with my boys. They are the best Aunts and Uncles! We spent the week just being together, lots of couch time, some outings to good restaurants and a lot of play time on Grayson's "boat" (Mimi's runner area rug), building Lincoln Log houses, forts and army bases for all of Grayson's dozens of army men. 

I adore this photo! I wish we got one of Andrea and Rogan!

Annual golfing in Mimi and Pop's backyard

Fun times with Charmaine!

A lovely meal around all of our stuff. We were using this area as storage between homes :)

A lovely tablescape by Earlene and Andrea :)

Christmas was such a special time. The holidays mean so much more to me now that I'm a Mom. These little guys just make everything so much more meaningful. First, we kicked off Christmas with Grayson's school music show. They sang Jingle Bells, Away in a Manger and Feliz Navidad. They are learning Spanish this year, which is always cute to hear! :)

Superhero Grayson helped put up the tree with his Daddy and his cape. :)

We moved in mid-December but getting Christmas up was a top priority! 

Christmas Eve is always held at my parents' house but this year, my Dad was sick. :( We had a last minute shift to our house and kept it small with just Ma, Charmaine and my mom. I would love to have the entire extended family over at some point but we just weren't ready on such short notice.

I love this picture of Mimi with her boys.

Grayson got to open 2 presents on Christmas Eve before bedtime. I thought it would be a great time to read The Nativity Story and open his first Little People Nativity Scene. He really enjoyed it and helped to set it up. He knew exactly where Baby Jesus and the manger should go (courtesy of school, no doubt). So cute :)

We opened gifts at our house Christmas morning and had Mimi over for a while before we headed to the Reynolds Family Christmas. I had big plans to keep things simple with gift giving for the boys this year. We were going to do the Big 4 gifts that seem to be really popular right now in our church circles: Something they Want, Something they Need, Something to Wear, Something to Read. But somewhere between my decision to do that and Christmas morning, I blacked out and went a tad overboard. Still nothing like I've seen some people online but it was more than I intended. :/ 

We could have just given Walker pacifiers and he would have been happy!

Around this time, I started noticing that people clean out their play rooms to make room for incoming Christmas gifts. I offered a few friends to take some baby toys off their hands. ;) I wrapped them, they're new to us, didn't spend a dime and Walker was happy, happy, happy! Here he's playing with his new (to him) guitar.

Walker also played with Grayson's new pots and pans. You know, for the kitchen we gave away when we moved (sigh)

We gathered at Kara's house (Beau's sister) for Christmas Day fun and food!

Grayson had an idea that he was getting a toy gun for Christmas and asked every single person every 10 seconds when we were opening gifts. :)

Pawpaw helping him open the box. He thinks it's really cool that all Reynolds men carry a knife on them at all times. ;)

Payton and Edi with Aunt Kara (Edi's mom)

Edi is the cutest little red head that you ever will meet!

Cousins

Dadgy helping Grayson open his big bag of gifts from he and Grammy

Payton got her first real rifle

New Years Eve

My girlfriends and I decided to do a family-friendly NYE celebration since finding that many babysitters would be tough on such a big night! It was a blast - we gathered at Lisa and Lenny's house, they had some awesome food, the kids were crazy and Kelly and John brought tons of liquor! Cheers to her brother being a Patron rep! We always talk about getting the kids together for pics and I'm always sad when we don't but we each have two kids: a 3ish year old and a 1ish year old. With there being 10 or 12 of them together at a time. That is a beating of a photo attempt!! :) So this is all we have...

Thank God for play rooms! We actually got some good conversations in ;)

Lisa, Lindsey, Martha, Kelly and me. Just missing Ruby!

That about covers it! Hope everyone had a Spooky Halloween, lots to be thankful for over Thanksgiving, a very Merry Christmas and Cheers to a Happy New Year!