Christmas Morning

After a late night at the Slawin's, Ryan and I came home, put the kids to bed and got everything set up for Christmas morning....I mean, we helped Santa get ready.  ;)

We put the presents under the tree and hung the stockings.  

Side note: I am waiting to buy matching stockings until we are done having kids.  

That way I can buy them all at one time.  Until then, these will do.  They get the job done. 

Joe was the first up on Christmas morning at around 6:30AM.  I thought for sure Owen would be up bright and early too, but after staying up super late the night before he decided to sleep in until after 8:00AM.  That is unheard of for him!  I was so anxious for him

to get up because this was the first year he truly understood Santa.  I could hardly wait

for him to come down and see all the presents.  Of course the one morning I wanted him

to get up early was the morning he slept extra late.  

Once he woke up though, he was so excited.  He slowly came down the stairs and said 

"Oh, presents"  The paused and calmly said "That is fun."  He ran directly to the stockings

and started checking out what was inside.  Then he and Joe quickly moved to

the presents.  It didn't take them long to rip through everything.  

The light up globe stocking stuffers turned out to be a big hit. 

And Santa definitely delivered on Owen's wish for race cars.

 

 

Overall I'd say Santa was pretty good to these two little guys.

And Santa knows how to take care of Mrs. Clause too.

I truly am the luckiest girl in the world.  I have an amazing, sweet, thoughtful husband

and two of the sweetest kids on earth.  What a great start to one of my favorite holidays.

Christmas Eve at the Slawin's

Christmas Eve was spent with Ryan's aunts, uncles and cousins at Kevin and Kay's house.

They are such great people and we always have such an awesome time.

Ryan's aunts love buying gifts for the little kids, so Owen, Joe, Ruby and Max 

always have their work cut out for them.  This year was no exception. 

The kids could hardly stay put on their chairs while waiting to open their gifts.

 

 

Truth be told, the cousin and adult grab bags are almost equally exciting as the kids gifts.

 

It was another memorable Slawin Christmas and we feel truly lucky to be part

of such a great family.

The Beginning Of the Christmas Posts

After sorting through my hundreds of pictures from the past few days (no that is not an

exaggeration), I've come to two conclusions.  First, we had such a great time and are so thankful to have so many great people in our lives.  And second, I take far too many pictures.  I'm sure there will be a day when I love nothing more than looking at them all

again though, so I figure it's well worth it.

For the purpose of making things a little easier I'm going to break things up a bit.

We'll start with the night before Christmas Eve.  We had Tim, Val, Ruby and Max over to

celebrate a mini Kalita Christmas since we were going to be driving to WI on Christmas Day.

  

Tim made Ryan and I the most awesome cheese boards!  

He's become quite the wood worker and it is truly impressive!  I love them!

Mimic

Joe is becoming a lot more talkative these days.  

His current words of choice:
Mama, Dada, Nigh-Night, Ba-bye, and Santa (tis the season).  ;)

 He will also blow kisses.  It's super cute because the way he does it, his front lip lifts up
and he's left blowing you kisses with his two front teeth sticking out.  

What's fun is not only does he repeat these words when we ask him too, but he uses

them with purpose even when we don't prompt him.  For example when we leave places, 

he will randomly start waving and saying "ba-bye."  And whenever he sees Ryan come

home from work, or hears him in the car on the bluetooth, he pipes up with "dada."

He will actually repeat most simple words that you ask him.  Even if he doesn't say it perfectly, he will give it a try and it comes out sounding pretty good.  He also tries to repeat
words we say that aren't as familiar and mimic us in other ways.  I'll be talking and hear him
chime in trying to say something similar to what I am saying.  Then today I was holding him
while I blew out a candle.  As soon as I blew it out, he started blowing too. 

 It's really fun watching him so interested in what we're doing, 

and trying so hard to communicate.

I did my best at getting it all on video, but cooperation from a 1 year old is not always easy. 

Joe's First Haircut

Today we went to get Joe's haircut for the first time.

He was rocking a serious baby mullet, so we figured it was about time.

We took him to the girl that does my hair because she did such a great job with Owen and I

trust that she knows what she's doing and won't butcher his hair right before the holidays.

Joe did pretty well.  He was super wiggly, but there were no tears which is always good.

 There were lots of hugs and snuggles which kept him still for small periods of time.

And our final trump card was pulling out "lovey" which definitely calmed him down and

allowed Edith to finish the final touches.

 

I always get nervous for the first haircut, but Joe you look super handsome 

and I couldn't be any happier with how it turned out. 

Bye-bye baby mullet.  We'll keep partying, just with a more stylish hairdo.  :)