Christmas Morning

Santa was generous this year. 

Nate - Lego Mindstorms robot

Nile - BB gun

Novak - Batman robot

"Best Christmas present ever!"

Santa did a good job this morning. Nate has already pronounced this the best Christmas ever. 

Kindle Fires for the two big boys, and a Batman train for Novak. 

Sorry for the blurry pics!  It was still dark out when I was trying to catch these moments!  

But what Novak wanted to do most this morning was to watch a show in his new chair from Becky and Josh. 

Merry Christmas to loved ones near and far...

Merry Christmas Solo

Merry Christmas to you!

Merry Christmas Cubed!

Christmas Tree Decorating - 2012

I can't believe I got them all to stand together for a picture.

Donut Heaven

For Christmas my sister got me a donut maker. (in truth, it's probably more a gift for the boys). Since she also gave us a chocolate donut mix, we decided to give the new toy a whirl Tuesday morning.

The donut maker.  Isn't it beautiful? :)

The finished product.  Professional, no?

Nate enjoyed the donuts.

Typical Nile (he ate three anyway)

Crafting for Grandma Deen

After I went down to visit my grandma this past weekend, I asked Nile if he would like to make a card to send to her.

Much to my surprise, he was excited to!

He cut out all the pieces, glued them together, and decorated the tree.

I hope she loves it!

Good enough...

There was a time when this would have really bothered me.

Okay, so it bothered me a little even today.

But I was so happy that Nile wanted to help me get our Christmas cards ready that I forced myself to let him do it, with only a little coaching. I had to step in when he was putting the stamps on the wrong corner. Only had to pull one off completely though!

A success, if you ask me!

Baking Day

I'm done. I swear. With the holiday baking, that is. This year my sister, mom, and I combined to bake or make 9 different types of cookies and candy. Then earlier this week, Nile and I baked Swedish cookies.

This is not good for my waistline or my attempts to lose the baby weight.

But ever since reading about these sour cream sugar cookies on the "A Mommy's Blessings" blog, I have been really wanting to make them. And, like the frosting on the cake, er cookie, when I won the Cappuccino Brownies giveaway on that blog post, it was like fate yelling at me to make these cookies...thanks to Holly for the recipe! Here's a link to her blog - feel free to check it out!

So on Friday, Nile and I whipped up the dough, and put it in the fridge to chill. There was way too much going on yesterday, so I decided Sunday was going to be Sugar Cookie Day! This morning, after putting Novak down for his morning nap, we started in.

I have also been wanting to try this "cookie paint" after reading about it in Family Fun magazine. It's basically dyed egg yolks that you paint on the cookies before baking. We started with that, then Nile got bored. Since we had these unused egg whites, he decorated his cookes with an egg white wash and colored sugars.

Nate, focused on painting a special cookie for his kindergarten teacher, Mrs. Chaney.

Hmmm. Nile, licking his fingers? Really? What a surprise.

Now, you have to remember that a 5 and 3 year old did this cookie decorating, so I think they look pretty awesome! Here are the finished cookies, waiting to be put on plates and "donated" to the boys' friends. (Remember the waistline? I'm not keeping all of these around!)

And the verdict on the recipe? Yum! This is a keeper for future years!

Letter to Santa

Nate decided he needed to write a letter to Santa this morning.

I may not have mentioned my ambivalence toward the whole "Santa thing." I grew up not believing in Santa - I just figured it out at an early age and my parents didn't try to convince me otherwise (Thank you, Mom and Dad! Really!). I have never felt comfortable talking to the boys about Santa - because it just feels silly. So I haven't pushed Santa on the boys - and I'm just letting it develop naturally (or however they pick it up from others.)

This year, Nate has really bought in to Santa. And I'm okay with it. Mostly. I keep wondering how my little boy who questions everything just accepts this as a blind truth. But I'm willing to let him have this part of childhood. I mean, I wanted to believe in unicorns when I was his age.

So, back to the Santa letter. I let him write it himself - he has made such strides in writing since starting kindergarten - this summer the only thing he would write was his name (and grudgingly).

So I got out a piece of paper, and let him get started. He picked the blue paper, so unfortunately it doesn't photograph well. :(

Lately he has been changing what he wants from Santa at least daily - it varies from a new Pillow Pet, to a new stuffed frog, to a new fuzzy animal (see a pattern here? He is obsessed with stuffed animals). For months he has been talking about wanting a big fuzzy snake, but hasn't mentioned it in reference to Santa. (We have a big fuzzy snake in the storage compartment of my car...) But I didn't prompt him at all when he wrote this letter.

Der Satu

I wud like a big snake

Nate

Mistletoe

Last night at dinner, we were listening to Christmas music and one of the songs referenced "kissing under the mistletoe." (for the life of me, I can't remember which song it was...)

Nate asked us what that meant, so I explained to him that traditionally, people will hang up mistletoe in their homes, and if you find yourself under the mistletoe with a girl, you're supposed to kiss her. The look of shock on his face was priceless!

"No, no, no. Mom, boys don't kiss girls until they're like, 15 or something!"

Christmas Morning

Christmas morning dawned, well, relatively late for the Ryerson family. Although I was prepared for an early morning wakeup call, (mentally and physically - I actually woke up at 5:30 and laid there half awake for an hour and a half waiting for Nate to come in) both boys slept until 7.

We actually heard Nate get up and go to the bathroom - but he didn't come to get us. I wasn't sure what he was doing, and I thought maybe we had been hearing things. Then Nile started to cry. Tom got up to check on him and I followed behind. Then I see Nate's head poke out of his doorway. After telling him it was okay to come out - he came to me, gave me a big hug, and the first words out of his mouth were: "Merry Christmas, Mommy!" Not "What did Santa bring?" or "Can we open presents?" - I about melted!

It turned out Nile was hungry. When Nile is hungry, watch out! He becomes a cranky whiny kid-monster. Really. He didn't want to have anything to do with presents.

So, while Nate checked out the huge talking Optimus Prime Transformer that he found under the tree, Tom and Nile cooked breakfast.




Then we ate a nice peaceful breakfast, which was great - I love it when we can take our time on Christmas morning and really enjoy it. After breakfast we opened presents. I could share a hundred pictures of the boys opening all their gifts, but I just picked a few highlights.

The boys got Fatheads for their walls. If you don't know what a Fathead is, it's basically a life-size (or larger) sticker that you can put on the wall. They are removable and movable - Nate got Batman and Nile got some huge sports balls (baskeball, soccer ball, etc).


Nile got a Leapfrog game.


Nate got two new Mr. Men books - Mr. Christmas and Mr. Snow - and had to read them right away.


The gift that has gotten the most use by Nile so far is his $2 Play-Doh stocking stuffer.


After our morning Christmas at home, we headed up to the northern Chicago suburbs for Christmas with Tom's side of the family. We stayed overnight in a hotel, which the boys loved, opened more presents (another Transformer for Nate!) and drove home in a blizzard the day after Christmas. We had a great time, the boys were on their best behavior, and it made this Christmas a really wonderful one.

Nate and Wii Golf

My parents got a Wii for Christmas.

It's amazing how intuitively kids "get" technology. I'm sure he will be teaching me how to play next.

Christmas Eve

As is becoming our tradition, we celebrated Christmas with the Fairbanks family on Christmas Eve.

The boys enjoyed cooking cornbread with Grandma.


Then they patiently waited for Becky and Josh to come over before opening presents. Nate and Nile helped read tags and hand out gifts.


One of Nile's favorite gifts is the "GloWriter" from Becky.


Nate got Twister - but we haven't played it yet. Nile got the "Cootie" game - honestly I have no idea how to play it. I have a feeling both of these will produce interesting blog posts.


Nile also finally got his own tools - so now Nate won't be mad when Nile wants to play with his!


Nate got tons of Lego toys - and has played with them every day since.


The biggest gift of the evening was the Wii for my mom and dad. I'll post a video of that on another blog post.

Gingerbread House

Today the boys and I continued our annual tradition of decorating a gingerbread house for Christmas. (I guess I haven't shared our photos from prior years.) This was Nile's first time helping out. It was a little different this year because I had to make the frosting and find the candy to decorate, since we didn't have a full kit. (Believe it or not this is a Halloween gingerbread house kit!) We had a lot of fun. And I think we only chased down about 100 of these little "bb" sized candies as they rolled over the floor.



In all fairness, I took photos of both boys' sides. Here is Nile's roof:


And here is Nate's roof:

Three Days Until Christmas!

I know I've been negligent on blogging. I have cute videos and
pictures from Nate's Christmas program to share. I promise to work on
this later today if I get a quiet hour!

Nate has been counting down the days to Christmas using this calendar.
He was excited to see this morning that we were down to three days left.

2009 Preschool Christmas Program

The annual preschool Christmas program at First Lutheran was a lot of fun, as usual. Due to a nasty bout of stomach flu, neither Tom or Nile was able to go. But luckily, Nate had already had the bug (see here) and I had yet to get it.

The program was full of the usual elements: singing, dancing, and crying. I think I've managed to have them all on this video - it's rather long but I think it was the one that best captured Nate's fine dancing skills. The crying is someone's younger brother who apparently didn't enjoy the preschooler's rendition of "Jingle Bells" as much as we parents did. (and no, it wasn't Nile - he was at home, sick, remember?)



After the program the kids all got a special gift from their teachers. Nate was beside himself with excitement over the small stuffed penguin. He promptly named it "Pen" and said it could be the "aunt" to Pete, his larger penguin at home. Later he decided that it really was Pete's son.



And then, after patiently waiting (in the photo above you see that he is sitting by Santa's chair. He didn't move from that spot until Santa asked him to come up), it was his turn to talk to the man.

He told "Santa" that he wants a Transformer for Christmas. Apparently Santa didn't know what a Transformer is (come on Santa, this is 2009!) so Nate had to explain that a Transformer is a robot.

I am still amazed that the kid who has to have me explain the details of everything (note) accepts Santa. Flying reindeer, presents for every child in the whole world, magic elves: this is all accepted without question. Oh, well.

Christmas Cheer

Feeling a bit like we were really late getting our decorations up this year (what is it this year with everyone being done Thanksgiving weekend???), this last weekend we decided to decorate the house for the holidays.

On Friday the boys and I got started, with the stockings, some smaller decorations, the nativity, and this little tree in the office.

Nile helped with the lights.


The boys with the finished "little tree."


Then on Saturday, Tom got out the tree and Nate helped us decorate it. Nile for some reason just wanted to walk around with his guitar, so he was our "supervisor" for the morning.


Nate was so full of the holiday spirit he wanted to record a special message for everyone.

Run, run, as fast as you can...

One of the boys' favorite books is "The Gingerbread Man" - I read it almost daily to Nile. For a few weeks he's been asking to make his own Gingerbread Man. So, we bought some premade gingerbread dough (even I know when to let Pillsbury take over) and borrowed some cookie cutters from my mom. Today, since we had to stay home for the morning (cousin Emily came for a visit), we decided to do it!

Step 1: Roll out dough and select your shape.


Step 2: Bounce excitedly as your brother gets to cut out a cookie. Ask ten times if it's your turn yet. Switch places with your brother. Repeat 10 times.


Step 3. Watch mom put cookies in oven. Ask her 15 times if they are done yet.
Step 4. Watch mom take the cookies out of the oven. Ask her 10 times if they are cool yet.
Step 5. Ask mom again when they will be ready to decorate. Get frustrated when mom tells you we don't have the ingredients to make royal icing.
Step 6. Send mom to the corner store (i.e. gas station) for powdered sugar.
Step 7. Watch mom make icing. Ask her 5 times why the egg yolks don't go into the icing.

Step 8. Finally! Decorate the cookies!


Step 9. Ask mom 50 times when you can eat the cookies. Sigh when she says not until after naptime.


Step 10. Eat a cookie and pronounce it the "greatest cookie ever."

I suppose I'd have to agree. They do look pretty festive, don't they?