Christmas

We are adding another great Christmas to the books! 

On Christmas Eve morning we opened the last day on the advent calendar, Santa was coming tonight!

 The boys and I made some fudge for Santa...

 In the afternoon they went over to Grandma and Grandpas for a while to spread the excitement around a bit.  While there they made an awesome gingerbread house and trees. 

 While they were away Santa's elves were busy working on their main Christmas gift...

 We all went back to Rich and Judy's to hang out for a bit and celebrate Stu's Birthday with some pizza and brownies.  

While there Rich broke out a new toy for all the boys, a remote control helicopter. 

 We had fun watching as they figure out how it worked...

 Then it got stuck on the roof...

 It was retrieved just in time for dinner!  

Before we knew it, it was time to head for home to get to bed so Santa could come!

The boys sprinkled the reindeer food on the lawn.

 We made some hot chocolate and picked some fudge pieces for Santa and they were off to bed! 

Santa came...

(really not as sad a take as it looks as the big stuff was outside!)

 Glow....

 The tree was stuffed with presents!

 The boys were up off and on all night.  Cody said the first time he checked the clock to see what time it was it said 2:30ish.  They waited until 6:30 on the dot to come wake us up!  

Tyler opened the blind right away to find the trampoline waiting for them outside.

Then they opened their stockings...

 before the rest of their Santa gifts....

 The took a break to jump on the trampoline.  It was freezing out and they only last a few seconds. 

 They happily dove into the rest of their gifts. 

Cody finally has his own pillow pet, he was thrilled! 

 We enjoyed the yule log and Christmas music the whole morning. 

The boys enjoyed the morning playing with all their new loot!

Around noon we headed over to Rich and Judy's for presents and dinner.  

Hoping everyone had as wonderful a Christmas as we did!

Old Town Christmas

We headed downtown to see what kind of Christmas cheer we could find.  We started with the capital, checking out the tree and the giant Menorah.

 Then we headed over to Old Town to see the lights.  

Standing in front of the Christmas tree.

 We went to see the Theatre of Lights show and had to wait a bit for it to start. 

 They had lights all over the buildings and the tree that would dance to the music.  It was very cool to see before the show. 

 The balcony all lit up...

 Mark Twain gave a little Sacramento history and then read

"Twas the Night Before Christmas"

 On an opposite building the story was acted out with Santa, the tree and all the lights. 

If you can get down there, we highly recommend it. 

A lot of the shops are open and everyone has that Christmas cheer!

Ice Skating and Ginerbread Houses...

Today we went to an event for our charter school at the ice skating rink.  They have an annual gingerbread house showing and competition that we participated in.  

Our "blank canvas"

 The boys worked hard decorating their houses...

 Our finished village, complete with sugar snow.

 Here's our village on display, we entered the competition...

 We won a prize!  The snow globe in the front that is printed with the Winterland Gingerbread logo and we can put a picture into it to remember the day. 

 The boys had a lot of fun skating. 

 They both started out using the buckets to figure out their balance.

 They took lots of breaks to play in the snow...

 We were kicked off the ice for a short break so the Zamboni could do it's job. 

 Then we were back on the ice.  

They turned on their snow machines for a few minutes, the boys thought that was pretty cool.

 It didn't take long for Cody to drop the buckets and skate on his own.  He had a few falls, but nothing major and kept getting back up. 

 Tyler took longer to be convinced he could skate without the buckets, so he and I took some times going around the ice. 

 He eventually let go as well and was doing great! 

I think we're all warmed up to hit the outdoor rink in the next couple of weeks.