Can't forget our Christmas picture with Santa!

This year Sophia talked a LOT about Santa! Every night she has me sing, Sleigh Bells Ring, Jingle Bells and Rudolf the Red Nosed Reindeer on repeat before we go to bed so she was allll about Christmas this year however, not so much about Santa in the flesh. She liked him from about 5 feet away and waved and would appear to be excited to be next in line to sit on his lap however when our turn came the tears immediately turned on so this is the best we got! Preston wasn't a big fan either which is surprising because he's our easy going boy!! Both kids ended up looking completely freaked but NO TEARS so we count it a success!

Christmas Day!

We were exhausted from our Christmas Eve festivities but so excited to see if Santa had come for a visit. Sophia woke up at 7am however Preston, so pooped from the day before slept until 11:30am!!! For the past week he's been "sleeping in" until 9:30 or 10am but 11:30 was definitely a record so we checked out all the loot from Santa with Sophia first. She LOVED her Woody doll and her new pink trike! BT put together the new cottage from Grandma and Grandpa for the backyard so Sophia played in it every moment she could! We opened all our stockings and once Preston woke up we headed to Nana and Nonno's for brunch. They made a FEAST of course with snowman and Christmas tree pancakes and omelets and crab cakes and mimosas YUM!!! We had another present opening extravaganza and Sophia of course enjoyed passing out all the presents. We then headed to Grandma and Grandpa's house for a yummy Christmas dinner! Phew...it was a LONG day which ended with a long drive home in the rain but all worth it. This was a great Christmas!

Cookies for Santa and carrots for his reindeer!

This year we were so excited to leave Santa his cookies and carrots for his reindeer for the first time. Sophia was very excited about Santa coming down the chimney so she poured the milk and placed the cookies right next to the chimney so Santa didn't have to go far. She fully understood Christmas this year so we had a blast explaining everything in detail and watching her eyes light up with every new story! Her face was priceless on Christmas morning when she discovered that Santa had eaten the treats and his reindeer had snacked on the carrots(Santa even left the empty milk cup tipped over which Sophia immediately noticed of course).

Christmas Morning: Sophia was so concerned that Santa tipped the cup over. I just love her expression(with her new Woody doll from Santa in hand!)

Christmas Eve

We love hosting Christmas Eve and love even more that both our families come together on this day to celebrate! All the chaos and planning and preparing food and wrapping presents makes the day the most chaotic and yet most fun day of the year! The Paola family traditionally has lots of homemade Italian food so we like to incorporate that into the evenings festivities. Papa Paola makes his famous stuffed clams and this year I made goat cheese and turkey sausage lasagna which was quite DE-licious! Brian made chicken piccata and mama Paola made lots of homemade desserts. The kids tore through the presents with sooooo much excitement that we couldn't keep track of who got what! We are so thankful for all our many blessings and this day we are reminded of how fortunate we are.

Christmas train!

December has been such a crazy month and I've really been slacking on the blog. This year we decided to check out the Santa's shopper train with the Gordon's. It takes off from Filmore and it happened to be raining the day we choose to go which actually made it more of an adventure! Sophia LOVED the train and Santa made a surprise appearance which caught her off guard so she didn't have time to be scared!! The girls loved the running around a the flea market that we stopped at along the way and Sophia especially loved playing with the toy train set they had set up. Preston was a happy, content baby boy:) Can't wait for next year!

Preston's Winter One-derland

We celebrated Preston's first birthday on December 11th. We wanted it close enough to Christmas to have a tree but not too close as to run into everyone's holiday plans. This weekend turned out to be the perfect weekend! It was literally sandwiched between multiple rainy weekends! Last minute we realized we could have the party outside which ended up being a blessing with the arts and crafts table and the rice crispy decorating table being SOOOO messy!! Presto was in a great mood and decided to take an extra long snooze so we had to wake him up for his cake. He was pretty disinterested in eating the cake but enjoyed playing with it! Thank you Presto for making your party so fun us and for making your first year of life so enjoyable for the whole family! Side note: Sophia was in hog heaven during the party and most of the time could be found hiding out eating candy and treats and anything sweet she could get her hands on!!