Quick Christmas Rewind

I wasn't very good about taking pictures through all our holiday gatherings this year, but we enjoyed every moment and everybody we got to see!

After Santa's arrival...

Colter seeing the presents for the first time Christmas morning...

This train from Grammy and Pop-pop is a big hit!

And a train for Elliott too!

Showing Grammy a special bowl Santa brought...

Bowling looks a lot like throwing these days!

Coloring in a new book...

We spent the entire day in our pajamas, playing and relaxing.

Let's call this series "Divide and Conquer Family Portraits." Also known as, "I Need to Figure Out the Self-Timer But Now Is Not the Time."

We ended our Christmas week at the farm, visiting and relaxing.

It was a wonderful holiday, start to finish, and we really enjoyed getting to share it with so much family. So thank you all for making it so wonderful and have a very happy New Year!

Chugga Chugga

Finally, finally, we set up Colter's train from his great-grandpop. He was thrilled by it, and only derailed it twice.

Even Elliott enjoyed watching the set-up process.

Want to see it an action? We got a little bit of video to share with you.

Thanks for the train, Grandpop!

Choo Choo!

A couple weekends ago, Keith, Colter, and Keith's dad checked out a local model train display. Our neighbor helps with it each year, and shared a few pictures of them checking out all the trains.

We're looking forward to setting up Colter's train from his great-grandpop under the tree this year. We are planning on just having it out for a few days so that he can see and enjoy it, and hopefully he is old enough to understand he needs to take care of it.

Smiles

Now there's my happy baby!

Cookies & Snow

It's not that we aren't doing anything around here, it's just that we aren't doing anything out of the ordinary, and therefore, not very interesting. We had thoughts of going to see Santa or going to a local "Christmas on the Farm" Saturday, but the impending snow and cold temperatures made it easy to stay home. And Colter slept until almost 10:00 that morning (I can honestly say that is a once-in-his-lifetime thing to date), so we were all moving pretty slow. So Saturday became a cookie baking day, and a just hanging out day.

Oh, and a cookie eating day.

Sunday was equally relaxing (excluding Keith doing a bunch of shoveling) and we took some time to play outside in the snow while Elliott slept in his swing. We managed to take a few pictures, and then we set the camera back inside and just had fun.

There was enough of a crust on the snow that Colter could slide down sans sled.

Me, not so much.

We could also give him a good push and he would glide right down our only slightly inclined yard.

And crash into a snow pile and lay like a turtle on his back.

Colter had a really tough time walking in the crusty snow, traipsing out to the middle of the yard only to turn around and wail, "How do I get back?" We cracked up a little bit before we went and rescued him.