A very merry Christmas

Merry Christmas!  We've really been enjoying Advent around here this year and are so happy to be in the Christmas season now.  I feel like December was ridiculously busy at work, with at least ten loan closings between Thanksgiving and last Friday, when I proceeded to pick up another four on behalf of my colleague who's out on leave for a few weeks, plus one of my own.  It's a lot for "part-time" (even though it mostly works out...).  But despite the hectic nature of the season, I think we did a nice job of getting out to Christmas activities, like the city parade and the ND Club brunch, and doing fun things at home like decorating the house, singing carols, doing the Advent wreath each week, reading Christmas stories, and watching the new DVDs that St. Nicholas brought on his feast day: the new Signing Time Christmas special and the Brother Francis Christmas story.  You always wonder what the kids will key in on.  In our case this year, Malcolm was particularly focused on the soldiers.  "How come they wanted to kill baby Jesus??"  Not the part you usually focus on, but I guess it grabbed their interest!  They also liked the detail of Zechariah not being able to speak until John the Baptist was born.  For his part, Joseph was very attentive to some of the new signs.  When Christmas trees popped up on the altar last week at Mass he tried to sign "Christmas tree" - so cool.  He also got the sign for "Mary" and "candy cane." 

For Christmas morning, we had one false start at first.  The boys snuck into the living room before we were up and had quietly started tearing open presents, including one for Joseph, before we caught them.  We said, "Didn't you know that you were supposed to get us before you opened anything?" and Michael said, "I did know, but I decided we should just go ahead."  Admirably direct, I suppose.  We took a couple of minute to reset while I rewapped Joseph's present, then started again with everyone, and had a wonderful morning.  We Skyped with some family members and managed to make it out the door on time.

Mom and the boys

Malcolm holding Dad's present for him

Walkie-talkies!

Malcolm likes watching the old Disney three little pigs cartoon so he was excited about the book

New movie about St. Augustine that I have wanted to watch for a long time - cool!

Say cheese, Joseph!  He loved his Thomas books.

Benjamin Bunny story for Malcolm

Reading new books with Dad

Nice present from Michael I to Michael II

Malcolm loved his new Cubs outfit from Uncle Ryan

At church everyone was pretty well-behaved, but when I tried to get a family picture before we left, Malcolm threw himself down at the altar rail and did the dead-weight routine, refusing to look.  I suppose that's in character for him so the picture is accurate!  Later in the day, though, Malcolm took at least a hundred pictures on his own new kids' digital camera, including some lovely blurry shots of the roof, the carpet, his shoe, and Joseph's hat.  He also took his first selfie.  He had a grand old time.  We got a kick out of it and are very happy he likes the new present :)  We enjoyed some play time in the backyard (LOVE this Texas weather) and had a family dinner of ham, carrots and potatoes, and rolls, which surprisingly, everyone ate.  A few more stories and the exhausted kiddos were down for the count.  Merry Christmas!!

A Christmas classic

We don't actually have a Christmas tradition of Santa Claus pictures, but I think this one is an instant classic of the genre, at least for our family:

We went to the Notre Dame Club's Christmas brunch last week, our first Club event in some time, and it was a lot of fun.  They had a photographer there so we actually got some really nice pictures from the event, which was an added treat.  Excellent food and nice to connect with some old and new Irish friends.

Joseph wanted pretty much everything in sequence: eggs, pancakes, potatoes, fruit, and anything else we had

Malcolm carefully decorates his own ornament

Malcolm and Joseph spinning around

Happy New Year

Well, obviously we missed most of the fourth quarter for posting, but I'll get at least one or two backlogged posts up after this one since we did have a lot of pictures.  It's just been busy, busy, busy around here keeping up with the boys and full schedules at work.  It was nice last week to take a few days to celebrate Christmas.

Like last year I spread out Christmas decorating over a few nights to let the boys help, and also to make sure we had things to do in the absence of our evening walks.  So in the second week of Advent, the Nativity set went up one night, the tree the next, and the ornaments the next.  We moved the tree from the living room into the corner of the media room, where we spend most of our time anyway and where I *thought* the boys would not run into it quite as often.  So much for that theory, though - as I sit here now, there are no ornaments and no garland on the lower half of the tree because it has been simply too irresistible for little fingers.  At least baby Jesus is still in one piece in the Nativity.

Christmas morning was cold and rainy but Mass was very special (we have come a long way since Easter, behavior-wise), the boys loved opening their presents after church and a mac-and-cheese lunch, and we had a wonderful day that even contained a little snow in the afternoon!  Merry Christmas, and welcome to 2013!

Smile!

Christmas morning 2012

Michael LOVES Curious George in Spanish

Malcolm is really into hats lately.  Also bibs.

New favorite present: talking cash register

Malcolm refusing to pose in his new Notre Dame duds

White Christmas!

More Spain pictures

Here is a link to the rest of the pictures we have from our Spain trip.  It really was a wonderful experience.  Aside from a few hiccups, such as unexpected major blisters on both my feet from the first day, and the unplanned closure of the Royal Palace, we could not have asked for a better trip.  It really helped that we didn't have to worry about the boys at all, and were even able to Skype on Wifi on a couple of nights.  Otherwise, having five date nights in a row, an unprecedented occurrence since little Michael arrived, was just fantastic.  We travel really well together and I felt proud of us for successfully navigating the airports, trains, buses, taxis, and metro (although, given we each lived in D.C. for years, one would hope we'd have no problems with the metro!), along with so many hotels and restaurants.  It was simply fun.  Topped off by a great night out at Ruth's Chris when we came back to Orlando (thanks to AB for babysitting!), it really was the best kind of vacation.  Feeling very thankful for such a safe and relaxing vacation.

Christmas in Florida

The rest of Christmas break was very nice.  The boys had a great time with their grandparents and Aunt Amanda, and we enjoyed the warm weather.  Spain is pretty much exactly like Texas, weather-wise, so it was a bit chilly and Florida was nice and warm.  (Of course, I say that, but Mike and Amanda prefer colder weather!)

Christmas Mass at Holy Family

Food negotiations were ongoing

More fun with swings

Michael loves the playgrounds with sand

Chilling with Aunt Amanda

I have no idea what Malcolm is doing here

Downtown Disney with Pooh and Tigger

A merry, sleep-deprived Christmas

When we ran the numbers for this year's Christmas trip, it looked like driving to Chicago came out well over $1200 ahead of flying: figure saving the cost of three plane tickets, baggage fees, and a week of car rental, plus the less-quantifiable but still significant benefits of avoiding multiple shuttles, car rental facilities/parking lots, security lines, and O'Hare, and having our own strollers, car seats, etc.  So, even though it was going to take two days to drive, we geared up for our first major family road trip.  It went pretty well, considering!  We made it to St. Edward, MO on the first day, having stopped about four times to stretch legs, eat, and change diapers/get gas.  Neither boy was thrilled with being in the car so long, but Michael liked his new toys and we managed to save breaking out the DVD player until late afternoon.  Fortunately, the driving was smooth all day.  That night was rough, though, because Michael flipped out about sleeping in the pack-n-play at the hotel -- major meltdown.  It was not very restful trying to sleep with him!

Day 2 was more challenging.  We were lucky there wasn't much traffic on the roads, even driving through St. Louis, and we stopped for a nice lunch at Cracker Barrel.  Michael sat in the kid-sized rocking chair, arranged some checkers carefully around the outside of a checker board, and tried to make snowballs outside.  We should have made it to Chicago by 4:30, even with snow, but for at least 100 miles in southern Illinois, there appeared to be no snow plows.  You'd think these might be important to have, but apparently not.  We were delayed at least two hours because of having to crawl through the snow single-file at 40 miles an hour for what felt like forever.  We finally made it to Bolingbrook and enjoyed a few hours of time with Grandpa.  ("Tah-pah" is what Michael calls him ... we could not figure out what in the world he was doing, as he kept touching his forehead and saying this half the trip, until finally we realized, when he saw Mr. Lawler and did the same thing, that he was trying to do the sign for grandpa.  Sweet :)  Mike and I loved Mr. Lawler's chili and ice cream with fudge for dessert, and Michael just had fun spinning in circles and running back and forth between the couches.  Free at last!

....Which brings us to Night 2, Christmas Eve, in which we got no sleep again.  Poor Michael, who eats pretty much everything we do with no problems, reacted badly to the chili.  We were up with him a few hours in the middle of the night as all that came back up.  (Yuck.)  He was so tired he didn't wake up early like normal, and Mike's alarm didn't go off for some reason, so getting to Mass was a hectic affair!  We were late but everything went really nicely (even though I personally was even *more* late because Malcolm needed another diaper change as soon as we arrived) -- a beautiful, quiet Mass that I was very grateful for.  Back at home we opened Christmas presents and had a wonderful time.  Dan and Kelly announced that they were engaged!  Everyone was surprised to hear the news, and more surprised that they had managed to keep it quiet all morning long!  :)  We are very happy for them.

Later in the day we headed to South Bend for more Lawler family time.  It was great to see everyone and meet some of the newest second cousins.  All of the great-grandchildren on this side are girls except for Michael and Malcolm, and four of the little girls were born this year, so there were lots of babies around!  Michael again had a great time with his cousins, although he was still having a lot of tummy problems.  So Night 3 turned out to also be tough because he was really hot and feeling sick all night.  (Notice I haven't said anything about Malcolm sleep issues?  He sleeps like a champ ... I don't even count waking up with him multiple times a night to eat because I pretty much sleep through those myself :)  I kept waking up to check on him when he would cry a little :(  Nothing was open, so we had to wait until after Mass today to get him some Tylenol.  (This morning we went to Mass at Ss. Peter and Paul in Naperville, which we really like; this morning I appreciated a great reflection on the Holy Family relating to today's readings.)  Fortunately, after three challenging nights, Michael seems to be back to himself .... which is why I should get some sleep!!  Good night, and Merry Christmas!

ETA: So much for that.  Malcolm and I are now sick.  Ugh.

Early Christmas

Before we got on the road on Thursday, we had an early Christmas with the boys and Elizabeth. She had taken the boys over to her house for breakfast in the morning while we loaded up the car, and she brought them back after lunch (Michael ate quite well over there!). My parents sent a lot of little things for Michael and Malcolm, some of which they had said would be good for the road trip, and we had a little exchange with Elizabeth, too. It was very sweet and everyone enjoyed it.  Michael liked each present so much it was hard to get him to open any subsequent ones.  We were very thankful.

 

LB on Christmas Eve in Orlando!

Just a little sample of what Little Buddy did the entire time he was at his grandparents' house :o)

Animal Kingdom

Here are some pictures from our trip to Animal Kingdom with Amanda, Aunt Cyndy, Grandma Garza, Chris, and Stefani. We had a wonderful day and I think the baby enjoyed all the animals he got to see. However, after standing up to see an elephant, he did fall asleep right in the middle of the safari ride!