Christmas Carols

By the time January rolls around, everyone is sick of hearing the same holiday songs over and over and over again. So acknowledging that, I apologize for putting up videos of TJ singing Rudolph and Jingle Bells. I didn't put up the entire Rudolph song. He kept getting distracted, both by the rest of us adding in the extras ("ho ho ho!" "Like Monopoly!" "like a lightbulb"), and just by the general goings-on in the house. It's less cute to hear us prompting him, so I cut it off before he starts to fade. Jingle Bells, on the other hand, there's not stopping that!
He appears to be less tone deaf than me, so that's a good thing. You'll appreciate his exuberance and expressiveness as he sings. And yes, he sang both of these songs over and over and over and over and over... You get the picture.

Swenson Christmas 2011

Just a warning...Christmas = lots of pictures! 

We started out the holiday week in Milwaukee and then finished it in North Carolina, with plenty of travel adventures throughout. 

First, the Milwaukee Christmas with the Swensons:

Santa took time out from a very busy Christmas Eve schedule to visit the house. He and Thomas talked about if he'd been a good boy. TJ was much more comfortable with Santa this year than last!

The boys and Santa

Santa asked Grandma if she had been good as well!

 We spent Christmas Eve with my grandma and my aunt and uncle.

 Our best family picture from the holiday. Maybe next year we'll strive to all be looking at the camera!

 The boys in their Christmas outfits. When I saw Josiah's outfit in the store, especially the hat, I couldn't resist! He has the perfect shaped head for it! :)

Ed continued his dad's tradition of reading "'Twas the Night Before Christmas" to the boys. TJ stayed up late, and we took them to the 11 pm Christmas Eve service at church. Thomas was wired. He may have had a few cookies all day long. Let's just say it's good that we knew the people sitting behind us! At one point, Thomas was "hugging" me and Jenn around our necks, essentially holding us in headlocks. It looked loving, sort of, but we were stuck. And the lit candles we all held at the end while singing Silent Night? He liked those a little too much. He did finally crash on the way home.

Okay, so the hat may be a little over the top, but it's so darn cute!!!

This picture was taken after the fact because we didn't get around to taking one of all the "kids" Christmas morning. thomas had just woken up from a nap and it was right before Jenn and Pat were leaving, so we're not all at our best!

The boys opening their stockings (made by mom) Christmas morning. Thomas was a bit overwhelmed by everything and after doing a few laps of the family room, headed back to his bed for a bit. After he collected himself, he came out, opened his stocking, and promptly took Brewster (a train from the Chuggington tv show) downstairs to the train track. We didn't see him again for another 45 minutes. Quietest Christmas morning with a 2.5 year old ever!

Wearing the stockings!

Jojo got this great gift from Jenn and Pat--it's basically a mobile exersaucer that folds up like a camp chair. Considering we don't currently have our exersaucer, nor room for it in our house, it will get alot of use--portable + collapsable is good! 

Ed and Pat continued their tradition of making presents. They both outdid themselves this year. Pat made Ed a wooden 12-pack carrying case, decorated with Bell's Beer labels. Ed made Pat (using my sewing machine!) a Wisconsin-themed brova brova (man skirt to the general public).

TJ in his Packer helmet!

Doesn't the table look pretty?

Christmas afternoon the Rhyans came over to (watch the Packer game, of course!) and celebrate the holiday. My aunt Karen started a tradition years ago of buying poppers for each plate. You can see them in the table setting picture in the next picture up. The poppers have tissue paper crowns and, this year, magic tricks in them. We had fun trying to perform the magic tricks, as well as follow the directions that clearly had been changed into English by some inept translation program, as they made no sense!

Josiah riding on Buppa's shoulders

Mom and I took the boys to a Christmas display at a downtown Milwaukee bank.

Thomas kept returning to visit "Bambi."

Hello, Mr. Giraffe!

This scene was full of moving animals and parts--a very busy Santa's village!

Did you get to the end? That was a lot of pictures! Ruble Christmas to come, hopefully this weekend.
Blogger was giving me problems tonight--I couldn't rearrange the pictures as easily as I wanted, and some of the text came through as underlined. I have no idea why, but very frustrating!

To get you in the holiday spirit...

I've been playing the Trans-Siberian Orchestra holiday CD all afternoon. Ed just caught this scene on a cell phone video, so the quality isn't great, but I couldn't resist sharing it anyway. 

The boy has moves! What kind of moves, I'm not sure, but he seemed to feel (and I agree) that this was dancing music. 

A week of random pics

Clearing my camera out before Christmas...

Ed built Thomas a box house in the basement. Here I'm looking in the "back door" as TJ relaxes in the house.

 The house from the front. The front door is the tunnel.

 My boys in their camo dino shirts.

 The gingerbread house got thrown out this morning...note all the empty holes on the frosting and the lack of shingles on the roof!

 TJ is a huge fan of the headlamp with his new box house.

 Me and Jojo

 Jojo has a newfound love for hanging upside down.

 Thomas has recently started taking pictures with my camera when he can get his hands on it. Here are two of his best. :)

My cousin Andrea lives about an hour from us. She and her son Vince were in Kalamazoo and stopped by to see us. Vince is a couple months younger than Thomas. They had fun playing Thomas the Train together and crawling through the tunnel. Vince is a little shy and smaller than Thomas, so TJ kept calling him "yittle fella." By the end of the night, they seemed on the way to being good playmates and TJ started calling him Vince instead. We hope to play again soon!

Rollin'

Here's one of Jojo's rolls caught on video. How nice is it to have your own personal cheerleader as well?! And, for those who often notice that Thomas has on a shirt and not pants, we've changed it up a bit here--pants but no shirt! (Courtesy of a massive spill at dinner that rendered the bib useless.)

TJ does like to "help" Josiah roll over, which as usual for him, is not always a gentle maneuver. You'll see an example at the end of the video. 

Gingerbread houses

Kathy came to visit recently and we satisfied our craftiness by making gingerbread houses. The official line is that we were doing it for Thomas, but...(to be fair, he had a ball!). We used to make these all the time when I was a kid--bowls and bowls of candy, a lot of frosting, and milk carton houses galore. Because of our smaller circumstances this year (and only 1 kid making a house), I went the kit route. Which would have been great, except that I didn't pull the box out early enough to see that the house needed to be assembled in advance so it could harden and be stable enough for little hands to add candy. Oops! One quick phone call later, Kathy arrived with candy reinforcements (yay!), graham crackers and milk cartons. She took home two full Nalgene bottles--one of skim milk and one of eggnog. We were left with a full glass of heavy whipping cream, so we'll be having Kilimanjaro as a special dessert treat this weekend--yum! Without further ado, here are the houses.

 Finished houses

 Just getting started, and below, TJ at work.

 Kathy's finished house, complete with aesthetic touches (no surprise, from an interior designer!).

TJ's finished house (I helped a little). Note the following details:

1. There's a doorknob made out of a red hot. This is T's second favorite part of the whole house, and he keeps pointing it out.

2. The two indicated gumdrops are shinier than the rest. That's because they were in TJ's mouth before going on the roof.

3. He loaded the walkway with candy. It isn't all stuck into frosting, so it's easier for him to pick off and eat.

4. Hard to see, but this is only half a peep snowman. The other half was eaten. As was a majority of the candy available for making the houses. He just.couldn't.stop. No matter what we said. 

5. Also hard to see, but this is a truck drawn out of frosting, at T's request. This is his favorite part. 

By the way, TJ doesn't like anything mint or peppermint flavored. He calls it "spicy" and promptly rejects it. He did, however, eat a red hot without complaint. Yeah, I don't understand either. 

The house has been relocated to one of two places: either in the microwave or on top of the fridge. Anywhere else, and TJ uses a stool to access it and picks candy off. The gingerbread house does not currently look like the one you see here--it's missing many candy bits. 

4 months!

Our little Jojo is 4 months old! He's full of smiles, especially if you smile at him; he is happiest when he's receiving undivided attention, or at least grabbing your finger, he has started to roll over (as of this past weekend), and he's building these delightful little chubba chub rolls. 

Look mom! I'm 4 months old!

 All smiles

 Easily bigger than his bear

 This is the position we see Jojo in most often these days--any time we lay him on his back, he rolls halfway, and often all the way, over. He started out rolling stomach to back first, but now won't do that one and will only roll back to stomach (which I think is the harder one). And look at that delicious chubbiness! Even with these extra rolls, he's still thinner than Thomas was, which is why I think he rolled sooner. Thomas just couldn't move all that weight around!

We tried rice cereal last night. It was a big fat fail. He doesn't have the swallowing concept down yet; it all came right back out. We'll wait a few weeks and then try again.