Back after a small break!

Well I haven't written anything for the past few weeks. I've kind of had the blogger blahs lately. Butttt, I never officially wrapped up Christmas did I.

I have about zero enthusiasm to post this considering December feels like a decade ago, but my future self will be annoyed with my current self if I don't.

Generally it was a wonderful holiday - the boys were as you would expect on Christmas morning (video of Ashton showing Alex their loot) and of course got (mostly) everything they wanted. Alex got a lawnmower. In fact all Alex asked for was lawn equipment "to help Daddy". In his letter to Santa he requested "a lawnmower, a rake, a wheelbarrow, a flower pot, a watering can and a teddy bear." Ashton's list included two Lego sets, the Blaze Racetrack, a striped monster machine (?) and a stuffed animal likeless of Pete that he could actually touch and play with.

Last year we took our letters to the library to mail them because they have a special box that goes to the North Pole and a couple weeks later you a personal reply from Santa (actually from a nice old lady in Natick, but the boys don't know that). I missed the deadline this year and was more or less panicking when I thought, Um, I can write and mail letters too! Duh.

Which is exactly what I did.

Here's me reading Alex's letter to him. And then, what was maybe the cutest thing, they both suddenly took their letters and rushed over to show Pete that Santa had written to them.

Let's see what else. We made Christmas cookies at our neighbor Alina's house, Ashton had a surprise solo in his school concert (which of course, my phone was at capacity and I couldn't record), the boys met Santa as I think I already posted...so, yeah, it was a December full of merry making!

I have literally 3 pictures from Christmas morning. First, a sweet picture of Ashton helping Alex (no hidden agenda there, no sirree!):

Remember how I told you I had swapped the boys' pajama bottoms by accident and Ashton was wearing Alex's and vice versa. A clear illustration:

Lastly, my favorite coffee mug.

Here's the footage of Alex opening his lawnmower. Incredible, isn't it? Get your popcorn.

After we said goodbye to GG and Uncle Erik, we packed up and headed to Grandma and Grandpa's in NY. There we had another gift tornado and then dinner and spent a nice couple days hanging out before heading home.

And that, my friends, was Christmas 2016!

Brae Burn is officially closed for their 3 week shut down, Jason's off and things are definitely happening around the house! Our guest room is getting spruced up, crown molding and board and batten is going in everywhere, our door guy comes Thursday to start replacing all the old crappy dated downstairs doors that either stick or don't close, my new piano room rug should be on my doorstep tomorrow...woo!

I'm heading up to Vermont to meet my new little nephew this weekend, of course Ashton has decided to throw me for a loop and not feel great/stay home from school, and don't even get me going on all the drama about our neighborhood being redistricted from Ben-Hem to Lilja...never a dull moment :D

Into January

You guys, I don't even know where to begin. It's very overwhelming to have a few weeks go by with no blog post, especially when so much happens that you need to cover! And especially when the minute you get back from the holidays, you *BAM!* get hit with summer! Like I have been consumed this week with finding a house on Block Island for the last week in July, scheduling who will be there with us and when, booking ferries and all the associated paperwork and check mailing. THEN, we decided to join Longfellow for the summer to use the pool, which led me to realize that all the summer camp registrations are open there as well (AND Alex can go this year, he will be 3) so we've been all calendar-crazy with those weeks. LASTLY, we go to Disney in a month, and I have just decided to see about planning that, but it turns out people prepare for their trips for years and it's such a massive undertaking to make sure we hit the rides and reservations and restaurants and all the things in the right time frame and I have to have a master schedule with the fast passes and AHHHHHHH IT'S SO MUCH!! TICKETS COST $632 AND THAT'S JUST THE TICKETS!!!

So you see, I've been a tad on the frazzled side and have already completely moved on from Christmas. I'm also now obsessed with furnishing our front room and in addition, literally in the middle of the night, it comes to me that in order to make the house feel newer I need to swap out all our old crappy downstairs doors that have original hardware and don't even close properly. I'm not sure Jason shares my urgency here but this needed to happen yesterday as far as I'm concerned. Instead of blogging, I have been researching doors, getting a guy to come do the work (the frames and jambs or whatever need to be redone as well), picking knobs out and searching for baby grand pianos.

I'm quite busy. Oh plus I have to work. Heh heh.

I'll post Christmas in short pieces, which should be easy because I took zero pictures. I mean, very few. In the past I document like crazy so I can post it here and this year I did not feel like doing that.

I'll start with a funny story and that is that I bought the boys matching pajamas. I washed them and on Christmas Eve morning of course Pete had left them for the boys to wear. I helped them get dressed and ready:

All through the next morning I kept saying to myself gosh Ashton's pj's really shrunk. Well if you look at their bottom halves, you'll maybe see Ashton is wearing size 3 pants and Alex is wearing size 5 pants. Whoops. Alex's were far too long and Ashton's were far too short. Oh well :D They didn't notice.

Also funny is that last year's Santa picture didn't look much different from this year's.

2015

2016

Alex hasn't really gotten in tight yet with Santa, just like zillions of other toddlers out there. Luckily he had no issues on Christmas morning when he saw all the presents ;)