Christmas Celebrations # 2 & 3

We usually celebrate Christmas with Erik's family on Christmas Eve and my family on Christmas Day. However, families are growing so in order to accommodate everyone we decided to have Erik's family celebration on Sunday instead. It worked out really well because we were able to spend the night and make it an extra long event which Kade loved! We were even able to play out in the snow for a little bit where we saw tracks from rabbits, snakes, bears and a Sasquatch! Okay, only the first critter is true :-)

Unfortunately that meant we weren't able to travel to Kansas City to celebrate with my brother's family. In hindsight that turned out to be a good thing! Apparently Iowan's don't believe in clearing roads after big snowstorms because they were still terrible 3 days later and my parents were in a minor accident on their way home! No injuries, just a good scare and a dent in the car. We were still able to celebrate Christmas Day with my parents and do a Skype session with my brother and Vivienne (Evelyn had to work).

I don't think 4 days have ever flew by so fast!! I'm pretty sure Kade loved every minute of them! He got SO MANY awesome gifts and Santa didn't disappoint either :-) I know this because our neighbors have a light up plastic Santa in their yard and as we were passing it on our way home Kade said, "Hi Santa!! Thank you for the presents!"


First things first, Kade and "Aunt Air win" whipping up a delicious batch of adult punch :-)  We gave Kade a kid friendly version and he pretended to like it but every time he took a sip his face wrinkled up and he smacked his lips.  Needless to say, his glass never needed a refill!

And the second most important part of the day...frosting!!!  For the last month, everytime someone asked Kade what he wanted for Christmas his response was always, "pancakes, bacon and frosting" :-)


The finished product.  Have you ever seen better placement of sprinkles?! 



I'm pretty sure Kade's favorite person in the whole wide world is Erin, so she's in a lot of the Christmas pictures as Kade never left her side :-)

He kept the guys in the family busy after he opened this present!  Lots of tackling, running and throwing!!


A picture of my all-time favorite present...my little handy man, trimming the tree, with a bow on his head.


Kade and his cousin, Violet


Time to get to work on the next round of presents!

By Christmas morning, at my parent's house, Kade was an old pro at opening gifts!  He would say, "I can open it!  Here, let me show you what I got you" :-)

Careful with that knife, Grandpa!  Kade kept a close eye on his new tractor and offered lots of advice on how to get it out of the box.

I love this picture because this is how he posed with all of his presents.  He would hold them in front of his face and say "CHEESE".  At least with this gift you can see some of his big grin :-)

Part 2

Last weekend we made our annual trip to the Sharing Tree.  This year, since Kade is so into sports, he gave a basketball and a kickball.  I thought for sure he wouldn't want to give them up and we'd have a fight as we left the toys under the tree, but it was the exact opposite!  Erik had a talk with him about how some kids don't get toys and that's why we give to the Sharing Tree.  Kade LOVED putting them under the tree and is still talking about it! 

On our way to the tree!  That car was a complete waste of $5, by the way.  Normally we wouldn't bother but he really wanted to ride in it and there were a ton of people at the mall so we figured if he was riding (rather than walking) we could get there faster.  He was way too tall for it, his feet were way too big and he wanted out about 30 seconds after he got in.  Now we know!

Present #1 unceremoniously being tossed over the gate!


Present #2 got the same treatment.


Kade and Erik checking out all the goodies!

I love this picture because I have almost the exact same one, taken almost 2 years ago to the day...

Also, this past weekend, Kade reached another milestone...he moved to a big boy bed!!!  Erik's been wanting to move him for awhile now but I've been delaying.  Kade never tried to crawl out of the crib so I figured, "what's the rush?  Let's just wait til he brings it up!"  Well, he brought it up on Saturday.  He took a nap in one of our basement beds and he did so well I finally relented.  We've got 3 nights, and a couple naps, under our belt and he still has yet to crawl out of bed!  I think it's safe to say he was ready!  I'm not going to lie, I shed a tear or 2 as the crib was being taken down :-(  

I can't believe Kade is big enough to "help" take down the crib!  It seems like just last month Erik was putting it up for our little man!!

Here are the pictures I took on 8/20/2010, of a 10 day old Kade in his brand new crib...

And here is a 2 year, 4 month and 6 days old Kade climbing into his brand new bed!

Kade picked out the "Ba-queen" sheets :-) 

Part 1

There are a lot of pictures to go along with this week's post so I decided to split it into 2 parts.  I forgot to mention last week that Kade had his 1st of 3 Christmas celebrations already!  Lady A and her family came for a visit and hooked Kade up with LOTS of goodies!!  Since I can't show all of the pictures we took at the actual visit, I'll show you some before and afters :-)

The Kade Man posing next to a tree that's just his size.  There are two of them, on either side of my hutch, and each tree has exactly one ornament on them!  He loves to show them to everyone who comes for a visit.


Decorating our actual tree.  He wasn't very good at spreading the ornaments around so there are A LOT of ornaments in that one spot on the tree :-)


My favorite cheesy grin.  He has since stopped posing for pictures, that little stinker!  Now, he puts his head down, covers his eyes and runs away everytime I try to snap a picture!

Kade and Michael playing with Kade's new kitchen from Lady A.  He LOVES it, I think he's going to be in charge of making meal real soon!

This is the best picture I could get of him in the cutest shirt ever!!  Lady A gave it to him, along with a bunch of other super cute clothes.  He's not at all excited about clothes, but I sure am :-)

In his new Gopher outfit from Lady A's brother and his wife.  Like I said, covers his eyes.  Notice how he's in a corner?  He ran himself into it while I snapped pictures, he was trapped!!  I tell him everyday, "never run (or dribble) yourself into a corner" :-)

"Hey good lookin'!"  He LOVES to look at himself in the mirror.  Can't say that I blame him, he's a handsome devil!!

With the Christmas season upon us, sometimes it seems like you could use your very own "tool man" to put together toys, cut down the Christmas tree or maybe even fix a broken engine (Kade's all-time favorite make-believe game). Lucky for me, I have a live-in handy man who prefers to go pants less on most days! Oh, and it's not Erik--contrary to what Kade would have you believe :-)

This past week all 3 of us battled the stomach flu. Of course, it barely slowed Kade down but it knocked me and Erik out for a whole day! Unfortunately, I missed out on a day of baking Christmas cookies, but luckily I felt good enough to play the next day. We had big plans to spend the day at Owen and Ellie's and an evening meeting Santa and his reindeer!

I'm told Kade made up for my absence at the baking extravaganza. He was a big help by putting a half a bottle of sprinkles on approximately 2 cookies. He was also able to incorporate a Ford tractor and wagon into rolling cookies in powdered sugar! I guess tractors really are multi-functional machines!

Meeting Santa was not quite as successful. We knew it probably wouldn't go so well as Kade regularly tells us, "I'm a shy guy". However, we hoped that after seeing Owen, Ellie and Rylee on Santa's lap he might be a little more open to it. He wasn't. The tears literally shot out of his eyes, like a cartoon, and the screams could be heard a mile away! Of course, the second we left, he got a big smile on his face and informed us numerous times that he saw Santa Claus :-)

Here's some pictures of the fun filled weekend. Completely out of order and caption-less because the Blogger App is worthless! It drives me nuts :-)

Kade and I were home today catching up on laundry and other chores after last week's festivities. He also helped me do some decorating for Christmas. I did a post in July about Kade calling Santa, "the bad guy", but I think he's starting to understand just how awesome Santa really is.

After receiving Louie, our very own Elf On The Shelf, and seeing pictures of Santa with presents in his hands, Kade's putting 2-and-2 together very quickly. I think we need to work a little harder on explaining the true meaning of Christmas though because a couple times he called Santa, "God".

And, quite possibly the quote of the year:
As I'm carrying Kade to a time-out after hitting me he grabbed my pony tail, gave it a yank and said, "Get going horsey!"

If you go back to a post I did in 2010 called, "Thanksgiving Weekend", these are the same two kiddos from one of the pictures in that post!  How is that possible?!

"Warwen" (aka Lauren) was a trooper.  Kade pulled her in every possible direction to play and she obliged with a smile on her face the whole time.  That's stamina!!

"The Great Grandkids" on my mom's side of the family.

And, because I like to age myself...Zach and Lauren were only 3 & 2 years old when they were the "little people" in our wedding.  Lauren was the same age that Kade is now!  Now, they are both MUCH taller than me :-(

A rare picture of the 3 of us together :-)

2 little cuties

Kade-O loves his cousin Vivienne.  She loves Kade's truck.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Today we are hosting some family and Kade is providing a lot of the entertainment. A few people came yesterday and stayed the night so he was pretty wound up with excitement. And when he gets wound up, he gets hot and sweaty. And when he gets sweaty he wants to remove articles of clothing. So last night's entertainment turned a bit risqué! Luckily we convinced him to keep the diaper on! :-)

Now that the holidays are upon us I've been talking to Kade about Christmas. The meaning of it and also about decorating the tree, making cookies and gifts. So far, after asking him what he wants, he's said: pancakes, bacon, flowers and birthday cake. Sounds to me like he just wants breakfast in bed to celebrate Jesus' birthday! Sounds perfect to me!!

Some cute pictures of a future model?? He's a looker! In one of the pics is him wearing the Indian headband they made this year at daycare. They were pretty "flashy" this time! Even his cousin, Vivienne got into the spirit :-)