The Holidays Part II

These pictures are totally out of order, but I'm pretty sure you can all deal with it.  :)

 Mia and Lennon came up with this ice cream pie, so we made it one day for a movie night.  It had a chocolate cookie dough crust, a layer of vanilla ice cream, a layer of frosting, another layer of ice cream, then topped off with peppermint bark chips.

 Uncle Jeremy came for a nice, long, two week visit and we luckily got plenty of sledding time in

 My kids adore their Uncle Jeremy!

 Mateus was Fritz in The Nutcracker, so we went with a group of homeschoolers to see the awesome performance

 Lennon was at school, so it was a fun little mother/daughter date

 Last year we strung cranberries on the tree and loved it, so we did it this year too.

 Gaga, Granmommy and Aunt Hillary all came in for various of Mia's performances.  When Gaga was in town, we went out to a cute little tea house for brunch one morning while Lennon was at school.

 In front of the Wenham Tea House

 Chloe and Naomi are two of Mia's best and longest friends, and they both came on the same night to see her as Sophie in Auntie Claus

 The cast of Auntie Claus went out to get frozen yogurt after their last show

 Mia got an incredible amount of loot from all her doting fans

 We had a movie night with Gaga and Lennon insisted on having me build him a "boat" to view the movie in.  We took a laundry basket and filled it with cozy blankets.  I also put a soft, blue blanket under him as the water.  He was in heaven!

 Lennon was having a hard time getting along with the older kids at a party we were at, and so he decided to lay down.  As you can see, he was pretty tired, as he fell asleep right in the middle of the party.

 Making reindeer food for Christmas Eve

 We went to Old Sturbridge Village, a living history museum set in the 1860's, for an event they call Christmas by Candlelight.  We had wanted to do this for a long time and it was super fun.  

 This is a silly little video Mia made of herself

 One of the projects at Christmas by Candlelight was to make these little Cornucopia tree ornaments

 Lennon and Zebree with the reindeer food.  Zebree came with us to look at Christmas lights on Christmas Eve.  Our tradition is to put out the reindeer food, drive around and look at lights while drinking home made hot chocolate and then come home for some take out Chinese food.  This year we did things a little bit differently because Holly had given us an awesome gift card, so we ate out at a Southwest restaurant called Masa.  

 Mia delicately sprinkling reindeer food

 Our favorite, crazily decorated house

 The kids and I made gluten free molasses cookies this year for Santa.  Lennon didn't ask any questions about why we were making them gluten free, and later that night I got some cookies!  

 No fire place?  No problem!

 Lennon has been wanting his own baseball cap for a very long time.  He was thrilled to open this one from Gaga

 Mia and Rebecca in their brand new matching pajamas, robes and slippers.  Thanks, Gaga!  

 Holly came up around mid morning and we exchanged gifts with her.  The kids love their adopted Aunt Holly.  She gave Lennon an old, no longer used laptop which he was pretty stoked about.

 Christmas breakfast: Super Berry Coffee Cake, bacon, sausage, coffee and orange juice.  Perfect!

Lennon has built quite a few towers at this point with his Contraptions kit.

The Holidays Part 1

It's been a long time and I'm not making any promises, but I'm going to try to get back on track here and at least start posting a little something every couple of weeks.  I'm going to attempt to lump the holiday season into two posts, but bare with me, there will be lots of pictures with probably minimal words.  Here we go...

After a most wonderful week long trip to Nashville to be with The Francis Family, we unpacked our bags and headed out to pick out and cut down our Christmas Tree.  Our downstairs neighbor, Holly, has been adopted into our family, so she came along with us.

 Shelby and Lennon on the hay ride enjoying some hot apple cider.  It was COLD that day!

 Mia and Holly were sharing some super yummy and fresh kettle corn.

 Silly Daddy/Daughter time

 Lennon standing proudly by the tree he and Mia decided on.

 The men doing the hard work

The next weekend, we surprised the kids with a trip to New Hampshire.  We took them to the best Polar Express I've ever heard of.  The only way to get tickets it to enter a lottery or buy a weekend package at a local bed and breakfast near North Conway, where the train departs.  We got a weekend at a precious little B&B in Bartlett called The Bartlett Inn.  We had a cozy little cottage with a wood stove.  We spent the weekend going for hikes in the snow, cuddling up watching movies in our room, and playing in the hot tub - while it snowed on us!

 The kids call The Mount Washington Resort, "The Red Castle."  We stop by here whenever we're in the area.  This is also the hotel that services the condos where Mia's friend, Chloe, goes skiing in the winter.

 The kids with their letters to Santa in our cottage

 Mia took this picture on our hike and I thought it was a really cool shot

 This was called Diana's Bath, but it was freezing over when we got here.  We all agreed no one wanted to take a bath in that cold water!  

 The kids were SOOO excited to get to finally ride this Polar Express!  We had heard great things about it for years.

 When the train finally reached "The North Pole"  we were greeted by tons of elves.  Each family had an elf dedicated to leading them up the path to the theatre where we were read the book "The Polar Express" and met by Santa himself!

This is where it all starts! 

 The gates to The North Pole Village

The kids brought their letters with them and deposited them into the North Pole Post Office box themselves!

 On our way back to the train, the kids posed for one more photo with our elf, Hops.

 The frozen lake we hiked to on our last day in town

 We thought this little broken piece of ice looked just like a bat

 Mia really loved this pretty little sprout surviving the beginning of a long winter season

 After our hike we headed over to another little inn that had stables and sleigh rides.  They had huge, warm blankets to snuggle up with during the ride

 This is our favorite little waterfall in NH.  We can always stop by because it's right off the highway.  We've come here in just about every season and it's always fun to see how different it looks in the different seasons.

Shelby took this shot of the kids and me looking up at the mostly frozen waterfall.  Below is a picture we took while there last summer.

Silver Cascade is beautiful in any season.