Winter!

Winter is here! Complete with the extra 10 minutes it takes to get out the door, the dozens of mittens we left the house with but will never see again, the craziness of being a band director with 3 concerts in two weeks, and that wonderful "hockey bag" smell that fills our house each winter season. :)

No, really. All the good stuff is here, too. At this very moment I'm sitting on the couch, listening to Josh Groban sing Christmas carols, feeling the heat of our fireplace, and looking at our beautiful Christmas tree. Bob is at hockey, and the boys are sleeping upstairs. Ah, quiet. ("Silent Night", sings Josh as I type this...) I wouldn't change a thing.

Here are some recent pics to keep you up to date with these little boys who are not so little anymore.

We did an informal photo shoot of our happy guys, the day of our first snowfall. They were so excited! :) 

It's not often that we catch Jakey in a full smile like this! What a grin :)

He's really turning on the charm, here.

Robbie is NOT hard to catch in a smile... but still, what a great moment caught on camera!

Note to self: when allowing boys to play with Christmas decorations for the "photo shoot", it may be important to prepare oneself for several weeks of little guys demanding to play with said decorations. Worth it, though. So cute!

They say a picture says 1000 words. This one, though, looks much more innocent than it was, so I'll elaborate a bit...Very long story very short: Our dear friends the Larsons invited us out with them to a Christmas tree farm to choose our trees this year. It was later than we planned. It was colder than we'd planned. We got lost and went to the wrong tree farm. We made the best of it and got oversized Charlie Brown trees anyway. One of them fell off the van on our way home. 5 miles later, the other one fell off. The men said lots of words that we had to edit for the 3 tired, starving children under the age of 2. But let me tell you: these trees have CHARACTER! :)  And we have a story we'll never forget.

The city of Mound has a tree-lighting event every year. We bundled up our boys on a very cold evening, threw them in the wagon, and walked the 3 blocks to the event (gotta love our small town!)

The boys weren't feeling up to sitting on Santa's lap, so we had to settle for this! Not bad for a first pic with Santa, though.

Robbie, all bundled up and enjoying the Christmas lights.

Jakey, all bundled up and... well, I don't know. Telling us where we can go for bringing him out in this cold?!?! :)