A happy first birthday!

Today we celebrated my niece Ari Taylor's first birthday. I really enjoyed her sweet little smile all day. She's such a cutie! I have no pictures, but I'm actually grateful that I was able to enjoy the moments without worrying about capturing the memories on camera (there were lots of picture-takers, so I'm counting on their pictures!).
Ari is so sweet and smiley! I loved watching her reach for people, yell for the dog magnet over & over (even though it had disappeared!), learn to sign AND say "lights," and show her pretty mouth full of teeth.
She is such a blessing to so many of us. It was fun to watch about 15 people completely enamored by her cuteness while she opened presents and ate her yummy cake.
Happy Birthday sweet girl!! We love you!

Christmas Day

Christmas day was really a great day. I found myself (accidentally) having the opportunity to spend a good amount of one-on-one time with each of my kids in the midst of a large (20 people?) family gathering. Of course, I really enjoyed it!!

After we opened presents and enjoyed a HUGE yummy breakfast at my parent's house, we all headed to the beach for a beautiful day. We played our traditional beach football game while Allie took her nap with Grammy Claire:

After the game, half of the crew headed home to fix another HUGE yummy meal (dinner), and the rest of us stayed and enjoyed more beach time. Zachary & I spent an hour making a super cool sandcastle. I stopped for a few minutes while we were building to just enjoy the moment with him. The beach was gorgeous and I was hanging with my little buddy. I was blessed!!

My special time with Allie was just after we all ate and everyone else was still sitting and chatting. She wanted to go & ride her new scooter. So she & I went out on the sidewalk for awhile and I walked beside her while she scooted her cute little self up & down the street. She lead the way and even told me when we should turn around and head back. Again...I was blessed!

Merry Christmas!

Here are a few pictures from Christmas. More to come -

Christmas, round 1

We celebrated Christmas a little early with Mimi & Grandad. We all had a lot of fun. I've decided I like splitting up the Christmas gifts for the kids. When we do all of them in 1 sitting, they are so overwhelmed. Splitting them up allows the kids to enjoy their gifts in smaller chunks, which seems better for them (and the gift-givers).
Since they flew here, Mimi had all their gifts in a box and just "wrapped" them in bags.

Santa

Here's how we do Santa:
Disclaimer: This is our weird way of doing it. We definitely don't feel that it is the only nor the best way for all families. We also definitely 100% support all our friends & family members in their "Santa" fun.

We've told both kids that Santa is pretend, like Mickey Mouse. We do go & see Santa and they can tell Santa what they want for Christmas. However, they know that Mommy & Daddy are actually the ones who get the presents for them.
We've also explained that some kids don't know that Santa is pretend, so we have to keep that a secret. For Zachary, he likes knowing that he gets to be a part of a grown-up secret, so he has done a great job keeping it to himself. Allie thinks Mickey Mouse is real, so the whole "pretending" thing is not a big deal to her just yet.
The reason we decided to take this route with Santa is really about 1 thing. When Zachary directly asked us questions about Santa, we both felt like we were lying to him. Part of the excitement for kids comes from their parents' excitement...and neither of us really go into it. I guess because we just didn't feel very passionately about building it up in Zachary's mind.
We've also had some friends share with us that some of their kids had God & Santa in the same category of their limited understanding and we definitely do not want that.
I will say, one disadvantage that WE definitely have is this "Elf on a Shelf" miracle idea that all our friends are using to keep their children well-behaved throughout December! Wow, what a great idea!
So far, our method for Santa fun has panned out fairly well. The kids get excited to see him each year at Todd's company Christmas party (we actually know the Santa), so they get to enjoy the festive nature of his character. And Todd & I feel a lot more comfortable in our conversations with the kids.
All that to say - here's some pictures from our Santa visit:

Both of them were much more comfortable this year, talking to Santa and sitting with him. It was really cute!