Our Christmas (including my new almost done kitchen)

I seem to be on a pattern of posting things about a month after they actually happen.  But we had a very nice Christmas this year.  We got to celebrate early with my family since everyone except us was going to be in North Carolina to see my sister and her new baby.  Jealous! I sure missed seeing my family on Christmas though.  

But here are the festivities at the Box house...

And some Christmas Eve fun...

That face! Could he be any cuter!

We were able to have most of Tyler's family here either on Christmas or New Year's.  So good to see everyone and we missed seeing Kyle and Jessy and kids.

Our Christmas jammies!

Santa came!

Waiting to come downstairs...

I convinced my kids to ask Santa for 1 or 2 things then let me surprise them with the rest.  It was so fun! Thanks to Amazon and lots of research I got some really cool toys that have been played with more than just the week of Christmas!

If you know Andrew you know cars are about all he wants!

We have been slowly working on my kitchen over the past 6 months we got granite counters in May and in August while my mom and dad took my kids for a few days I stained the cupboards. And for Christmas we got all new appliances.

Now we just need to put in a back splash, put hardware on the cupboards and bead board on the island.  Oh, I am trying to decide what I want to do for open shelving above the dishwasher.  But so far we are loving it!

Here is the back splash we are thinking of.

And a few more pics...

And a reminder of what it used to look like...

MUCH BETTER.  At least I think so.  And that's all that matters.  :)

Halloween

So now that Christmas is practically here, I am finally going to post about Halloween! Nice, I know.  :)

I had some pretty scary kids at my house this Halloween.  Luke and Isaac insist on being scary now.  So I had a creepy vampire, and an undead zombie hanging out around my house.  And one seriously cute little monkey.  

OH, and don't forget Napoleon Dynamite!

Andrew understood a little bit more about how Halloween works, so it was easier to convince him to wear a costume this year.  But even though he liked the whole getting candy idea, most of the houses freaked him out.  Especially the first 3 or 4 we went too.  So that made him very nervous for the rest of them.  He's funny because he is fearless about most things, but loud noises REALLY scare him.  He had more fun passing out candy to the other kids. Isaac only was out for about 30 minute and then he said he was done.  Luke wanted to keep going so I told Isaac he couldn't be mad when Luke had more candy than he did.  And Isaac said, "I don't really care about candy."  !?!?! Who is this kid!?
Overall it was a pretty fun Halloween, even though Halloween makes me really miss our old trick or treat partners, the Shirk family! We used to go trick or treating with them since our old house was on a tiny street with about 6 other houses on it.  Not ideal for trick or treating.  But it was so fun trick or treating with them, that now our standards are too high. :) The chocolate helps us feel a little better though. :)

One of our favorite places

So I'm playing a little catch up today...

Up until today we have actually been enjoying some pretty mild weather.  That ended with several inches of snow.  My kids had a blast sledding today, but we are going to miss going to one of our very favorite places, Farmington Pond.  Its only about 5 minutes from our house and it's beautiful.  There is a little creek that flows into a little pond and my boys could spend hours there.  Climbing all over rocks and throwing rocks into the pond, how does it get any better than that.  

And to make it even more perfect, one of the times we went my cute boys really, really wanted to pose for pictures for me.  I'm not going to complain about that.  It was so cute.  They kept finding spots and saying "This is a perfect picture spot Mom."  And they found some cool spots.  So I got some cute pictures.  Which isn't hard with kids as cute as mine are.  

Andrew is trying to pick up this rock to throw into the pond.  He's pretty strong, but I think he is over estimating his muscles. :)

He could throw rocks into water all day long!

Fishing line kept Isaac occupied for a long time.

The water was a little chilly, but they still wanted to wade in it!

Isaac took this picture.  I was impressed. Its probably the best picture anyone has taken of me!

Seriously handsome kid.  Please stop growing. Right now!

His smile completely melts my heart.

Andrew wasn't a fan of the pictures as much as the other two.
Please Stop Mommy!

No really. Stop!

I did get a few smiles from him though!

My cute, goofy kids. 

How can this not make you happy! He is such a joy to me and his life is a miracle.

So, even though I actually do really like the snow and winter and I love this time of year, I can't wait to go back to one of our favorite places again.  These days were honestly pretty close to perfect.