Zero

What do you do with 2 young kids when it is ZERO degrees out? Well, we definitely did not venture out of the house today!

But we did make a double batch of oatmeal muffins and peanut butter chocolate chip cookies. Ben and I are still trying to teach Ella how to pull her weight in the kitchen. She has perfected the art of licking the beaters and she does enjoy patting the brown sugar out of the measuring cup. And that's about it for right now. The other 80% of the time she is up to pure mischief when she is up on that stool!! But we survived only one small catastrophe this morning - the sifter full of flour ended up on the floor. And only one of us broke down in tears!

Then we moved onto tent building.

Everything seems like so much more fun when you do it in a tent!

Cheese faces!!

1/2 Birthday Celebration!

At Ben's preschool, they celebrate 1/2 birthdays for the kids who were born in the summer. Since Ben's 3 1/2 birthday fell during Christmas break, he celebrated a little late! He was very excited about his big day, mostly because he got to take in a birthday treat. He really had his heart set on taking in a ginormous tower cake, but settled for Mickey Mouse cupcakes instead!

He wore his favorite Mickey Mouse t-shirt and got to wear a Happy Birthday crown at school all morning. He also gets to be "In the Spotlight" on the bulletin board for the next few days and got to show and tell his classmates about the pictures that he brought in.

He is pictured above with his teachers. He adores both of them and I am so glad that he has such loving teachers for his first experience with school!

Ella also enjoyed celebrating Ben's 1/2 birthday. And after all, it is her 1/2 birthday, too!

Pinkalicious!

At the end of December, Carl and I took Ben on a trip to Chicago. 2010 was a pretty crazy year for us, and Ben survived many big changes for a 3 year old! I enjoy my alone time with Ella while Ben is at preschool 2 mornings a week, so we were very excited about being able to take a couple of days and make them all about Ben!

One of his favorite books right now is Pinkalicious. This book is about a little girl who eats so many pink cupcakes that she turns pink. Being allowed to eat this many cupcakes is Ben's dream! It has been made into a musical and playing at a theater close to my sister, so that was the big event of our weekend in Chicago.


Aunt Kimmie and Ben in front of the Apollo Theater in Lincoln Park.

We arrived early and Ben was able to walk around on stage and familiarize himself with the program (he called it his ticket).

The perfect ending to a show about cupcakes was a trip to Sweet Mandy B's bakery! In preparation for the trip, we got online and looked at pictures of their cupcakes. Both kids would sit on my lap and as I clicked on each new picture, they would both say "ooooooh". Ben chose a pink cupcake with sprinkles, of course!! And Ella was pretty happy with her cupcake souvenir. We couldn't leave her out after showing her all of those pictures!

Ben was very excited about the skyscrapers. He began asking about them in Joliet and from there asked about every 2 minutes. The last 30 minutes of our journey dragged on quite a bit! He was also fascinated with the building my sister lives in. She is on the 3rd floor and he had a hard time with the concept that the whole building wasn't hers. A couple of times he walked out her front door and we found him wondering up and down the stairs trying to get to the other parts of "her house".

While we were there, we also went to the Lincoln Park Zoo to check out their zoo lights. The lights were pretty impressive, but Ben's favorite part was seeing the animals. He still likes the aquariums the best!

We thought that Ben would love his time alone with Daddy and Mommy, but I think that he really did miss Ella. Several times he would make the comment, "We should really show this to Ella sometime!". I was encouraged by these comments, thinking that maybe the time apart would make the siblings appreciate each other more and miraculously improve their sharing and fighting at home. And it did . . . . . for about 15 minutes. They were so excited to see each other, but it was a short honeymoon period before things returned to normal!

Christmas Eve

This year, we managed to pack 6 Christmas celebrations into 3 days. It was a little crazy, but we are lucky to have so many family members to celebrate with! It also made a huge difference not making the trip up from Florida this year. It was wonderful for everyone to be able to sleep in their own beds at the end of a busy day!

We started the festivities at Lake Bloomington with the Myers side of the family on Christmas Eve morning. French toast on the grill, bacon, and Uncle Denny's omelette's are a pretty nice way to kick off the holidays! It is our tradition to read the story of Jesus' birth before we open presents. This job is usually delegated to the youngest person (who can read). As soon as Maddie began reading, Ella rushed in to take over. She is slightly obsessed with books right now! I'm sure that Maddie will happily pass on her role to Ella in a couple of years!

Cousins

We headed over to Carl's grandparents' for the Drake Christmas later that afternoon. Ella and Penelope are pictured above. Ella is all about Penelope right now, especially if she suspects that Penelope has a pacifier nearby. . . . .

A highlight of the Drake Christmas is the caroling at the end of the night. I think that we had record attendance this year - around 40 people from Grandpa and Grandma Drake's family!

Ben had big plans to leave milk and cookies for Santa and carrots for the reindeer, but both kids passed out in the backseat before we even made it to the interstate. I took care of that job for Ben, and he was still excited to see only crumbs left on the plate and an empty glass of milk next to the fireplace when he woke up in the morning!

Christmas

This year was the first time in 29 years that I did not wake up at my parents' house on Christmas morning. It was a little bittersweet, but we are ready to start some traditions of our own now that we are settled and the kids are getting older. Ben and I did a lot of baking this year. I am taking advantage of his love for helping me cook - I am sure it will not last too many more years! We decided that making cinnamon rolls for Christmas morning was a tradition that we definitely needed to start.

We also had a lot of fun driving around looking at Christmas lights. I pumped the kids up for the big event all day and we ate pizza at our favorite pizza place before picking up Ben's first Starbucks. He was pretty excited about his hot chocolate and Ella enjoyed her vanilla milk. From there, we headed to The Chateau, which is a hotel here in town that resembles a castle. Ben is convinced that Mickey lives there, and they did have nice Christmas decorations, a fireplace, and a fountain inside. After that, we drove around neighborhoods ooohing and aaahing over all of the lights. On the way home, I was on a Christmas high thinking about the "magical" evening we had just experienced. And then reality set in. Ben had a meltdown as we pulled into our house because we did not have many lights on our house. We got the kids upstairs and ready for bed, and then Ella puked all over herself, Carl, and her chair as he was giving her a bottle before bed (lesson about the hazards of drinking too much milk definitely learned!). What wonderful memories!

Ben was excited about his stocking and presents from Santa. All he wanted this year was candy canes, and Santa did not disappoint. He left a small candy cane on each of Ben's presents!

My side of the family came over for Christmas breakfast. Ben sat and guarded the rolls while we finished getting everything ready!

Great-Grandma Myers and Aunt Carol

Nana, Aunt Carol, Grandpa

During brunch, we went around the table and shared favorite memories of Grandpa Nelson and Grandpa Myers. Feeling left out (and needing a little attention!), Ben started making up some pretty funny make believe stories.

We headed over to the Beagles Christmas later in the afternoon. Santa made a special appearance this year. It was pretty cool that he was able to pass out the gifts that Grandma Beagles had picked out for her great-grandkids before she passed away.

We attempted on 2 different days to get a picture of the Drake cousins in their matching jammies. We proved that getting a good picture of 10 kids 7 years and under is impossible!

Drake Christmas

We opened gifts with Carl's immediate family the day after Christmas. We stayed at his parents' house the night before and stayed up way to late playing games with his siblings after the kids went to bed. But we did have lots of fun!

Surely, a highlight of Rita's weekend was watching all of her grandchildren file in to fill 2 rows in church Sunday morning! I believe she was glowing!

Ben was pretty excited about his new control tower and heli pad for his new Thomas the Train table. Although his is more of a Thomas the Plane table!

By this point, Ella was pretty much over gift opening, but she did make sure that her baby was well taken care of!

Nelson Christmas

Sunday afternoon, we headed to Gridley to open gifts with the Nelson family. Ella entertained us with some Christmas carols!

Most definitely one of the cutest things she has done! She was playing and singing her little heart out!

Aunt Kimmie and Great-Grandma Nelson had fun showing Ben old family photos. Grandma has Alzheimers and has no short term memory, but looking at old pictures is fun for her and helps jog her memory about times further in her past.

It was pretty sweet to see her and Ben all cuddled up together. This year we are more appreciative of the time that our kids get to spend with our grandparents.

Ella with her Great-Grandma Nelson and Great-Grandma Myers

Opening gifts never gets old for Ben! Ella slept for most of the gift opening at the Nelson's, but since we open gifts one at a time, she was able to join in the fun 10 hours later!!!

Aunt Kimmie and Andrew showing off Carl's handiwork!