Decorating for Christmas

We've been getting the house ready for Christmas! First, we went to Eckert's to get our tree. It was a cold day so we decided to choose from the pre-cut ones rather than go out and cut our own. Thomas and Ed with our tree

Driving the old tractor

Eckert's has expanded their restaurant and store. Before lunch, we walked through the store. One of the employees offered TJ this little cart. He loved it, but he was a bit of a menace, pushing it around and into people/things!

Back at home I pulled out the nativity scene. Thomas commandeered all of the people and animals for himself ("horsey!" "baby!")

Looks a little lonely without the animals and people, doesn't it?

Ed channeled his inner Clark Griswold on the house decorations this year. He was out for 3 hours--from 8 until 11 pm on a Friday night--putting up lights. It looks great though (not that these pictures do it justice) and I'm thrilled to have a "gingerbread" garage since it's too hard to put lights like that on our house. The weather even cooperated and gave us some snow.

Can't you just picture him stapling his sleeve to the garage like Clark did?

Front of the house

Gingerbread garage, plus green lights on the new fence

We took this picture while decorating. He looks about 4 years old, doesn't he?

Moo! Baa! Roar!

Thomas is a one-man zoo/farm. We're still working on increasing his actual vocabulary of words, but he's great at the animal noises.

Fake sleeping

Lately Thomas is really into fake sleeping. He'll pull a pillow onto the floor, grab a blanket, and lay down. Then he'll squeeze his eyes shut and make fake snoring noises. I tried to catch it on video, which didn't work great, but the end of the video is still pretty funny.

Tickling video

We have a lot of fun tickling Thomas with the head scratcher...

Late fall yardwork

In St. Louis, we can do long-procastinated yardwork in December because winter comes late and snow comes rarely. (And yes, I hope that "jinxes" us...I'd love a good foot of snow or so...)

This weekend, while I was Christmas shopping, Ed and Thomas did some raking and other yardwork.

Helping with the leaves

Playing with daddy

TJ calls his mittens "mitties" and is constantly pulling them off with his teeth.

He has such a cute hat face!

Forts and ketchup...

...thankfully not together!

Thomas loves to make a fort with a blanket draped over two chairs. He'll sit under it and then do flips over the chair rungs.

Ketchup is a new favorite. If he won't eat something, a little ketchup to dip it in can help. If you're looking at the picture and feeling bad that the fork is headed to T's mouth without anything on it, don't. Ketchup tastes pretty good all by itself, too...

Holiday Card Photo Rejects