The Christmas Season...

I love Christmas.  I love the reason we celebrate and the fact that Noah (mostly) gets that it's Jesus's birthday.  I love a lot of the more superficial stuff too...I love that it's the season of cookies, peppermint bark, mocha mint coffee, gift buying and wrapping (that's right - I LOVE to wrap presents!) and so much more.  I've had to let go of most of the expectations I used to have for myself around the holidays.  I just had to so that I could enjoy more than stress over it.  I finished most Christmas cards.  I baked some.  I prioritized family time and gifts for kids (including neices and nephews).  Chloe's birthday falling in between Thanksgiving and Christmas definitely added some chaos to the season, but now that it's over, I can only say that it was a really fun time for our family.  And now that it's over, I can catch up on the blog!
Here's a glimpse into our holiday season...

Noah got to help me make Christmas cookies this year - SO fun for both of us!

We had a lot of hand-me-down Christmas dresses - and yes, I loved dressing Chloe up.  She mostly hates dresses though.  Since she's still refusing to walk more than a couple of steps at a time (more on that later), she constantly gets stuck in her dress as she crawls.  Then she makes these faces at us - "How dare you put me in a DRESS?!  Are you hazing me?  It's just cruel Mommy and Daddy, just cruel!"  So the dresses typically came off as soon as we got home from church.

The Santa hat on the other hand...she liked:)

So did Noah.  This is his new "smile" face.  Seriously?  Yes, it's cute...and yes, I know it sort of looks like he's trying to poop.

Confession:  I love putting dresses on Chloe so she can wear cute tights with them.  Seriously people - how cute is this??

And this dress is not torture, it's short enough that she can crawl without getting caught in the skirt. 

We made the move to one nap a day (mostly) for Chloe.  On Sundays the nap is late because of church, and on this particular day she was so tired she fell asleep in the car on the way home.  Noah would never have done this.  I know, this is par for the course for some of you...but not for me.  She was so tired, she stayed asleep as I took her out of the car, unzipped her coat, changed her diaper...

and transferred her to the pac n' play.  She did rub her nose, but she stayed asleep the entire time.   And took a good nap, especially considering that she skipped her lunch (another foreign concept with Noah). 

Last year Noah loved playing out in the snow.  This year we haven't had much, but even when it hasn't snowed its been so COLD...that Noah hasn't wanted to play outside for more than 5 minutes at a time.  He NEVER asks to go outside anymore.  :(

My handsome men.  I love dressing the kids up on Sundays.  Matt obviously wasn't dressed yet.  And he did give me a hard time for taking yet another picture of him with an undershirt on with the kids.  Not my fault that he wears them all the time and only puts on his outer layer after the camera is away.