Opening Gifts

Before it gets too much past Christmas, I need to post some pictures of Brooks opening his Christmas gifts. I think the opening of the gifts was almost more fun for him than playing with the gifts he got!  But I think that is pretty typical for his age!  We had our little Christmas Friday night with just Blake, Brooks and I.  I put the Christmas presents out Friday morning, and Brooks wanted to open them right away.  I told him we had to wait for daddy to come home tonight.  He kept asking, 'This?! This?!' all morning pointing at the gifts.  I kept telling him we had to wait for daddy to come home tonight.  When daddy came home for lunch, I told Brooks that "daddy was home!" just like usual, and Brooks got all excited and pointed at the gifts saying, 'this?! this?!'  He didn't understand the 'tonight' part of daddy coming home!  After Blake got off work, we went to Chances R to eat.  We had a gift certificate for there that needed to be used, and we figured what better time to use it than Christmas!  Brooks did really good at the restaurant (it's really hit or miss with him when we go out!)  the food took a little while to come out, but luckily the waitress was nice enough to bring him a whole plate of cucumber slices, and that kept him very happy until his chicken fingers came!  After we ate, we drove thru Starbucks for a couple of peppermint mochas for Blake and I, then home to open gifts.  It really was a fun night as a family!  Here are some pics of Brooks opening his presents.

 Thomas train set!

 It didn't take Brooks long to look at each gift, he was ready to open the next one!  He also loved saying the colors of each wrapping paper.  Blue and Green were his favorite ones!

 His new train set.  Yes, it takes up most of our living room, but he loves it!

Since we had just opened gifts at our house a couple nights before, Brooks was all prepared and ready to open more come Christmas day at Grandma and Grandpa's.  We spent the day at my parent's house and I think the kids had a hard time waiting until after lunch to open gifts, but once we started, it was chaos! But fun :)

 After the kids were done opening, it was the adults' turn.  Brooks didn't want to play with his toys, he wanted to help everyone else open!

 And then the wrapping paper became the main attraction!

 Lane and Katy taught Brooks "ring around the rosey".  It was so cute to watch!

 "We all fall down" was the funnest part!

Sugar Cookies

A favorite tradition of mine at Christmas time is making sugar cookies.  I have made several batches this year, and Brooks has gotten to help put sprinkles on a couple of the batches.  He wasn't too sure about it the first time we tried, but he seemed to have some fun.  Then this week when I brought cookies over to my mom's for all the kids to help decorate, he was soooo excited! He kept saying, 'cookie' 'cookie' 'cookie' over and over again!
These are the pictures of the first time we tried cookie decorating.  He stuck his fingers into the cookie the first try, and wasn't too impressed with frosting all over his hands!

 Then he discovered it was quite fun to dump sprinkles everywhere!

 We had a few instances of sticking the shaker in the frosting....

 and dumping way too many....

 But we had fun!

When we went to my mom's a few days later to do the same thing, he did so much better.  I also found that the Walmart brand sprinkles have the smallest holes for the sprinkles and didn't dump quite so many as others!

 Brooks wanted just about every color of sprinkle on each cookie.  He'd tell me, 'geen!' then 'bue!", then 'ed!," then 'ball!!'  It made for some very colorful cookies!  But he had fun picking out the colors and seeing the finished product!

Katy had fun too, but she was more interested in eating the cookies!

 

 We had quite a mess at Brooks' sprinkle station, and my mom will probably be sweeping up sprinkles for days!

Brooks decided to try some of the ball sprinkles.  Lane thought it was funny and Brooks wasn't so sure he liked them.

 The finished cookies!  Brooks wouldn't try a cookie (he is still so picky!) but at least he had fun making them.

I'm glad Brooks enjoyed decorating cookies, and I hope it will be a tradition every year! (at least until he gets too old to think baking with mommy is still fun :)

Early Present

If anyone has noticed, I've been posting a few more blogs lately than I used to.  One reason for this is just the busy time of year with a lot going on to post about, but I think the main reason is that we bought Brooks an early Christmas present this year.  We ordered him a slide from Step 2 and gave it to him a couple of weeks ago. He absolutely loves it! It's really the first 'toy' we've bought that he has been able to keep himself entertained with and doesn't need mommy or daddy to play with him constantly.  We put it up downstairs in our basement, and we have been spending a lot more time down there than we used to.  Since our computer with all our pictures is also downstairs, it's been a lot easier for me to take the time to do updates!

Brooks was excited about the slide the moment he saw the box.

He tried to help daddy put it together.

 Whatcha doing dad?  Are you done yet??

Finally!!

 It has a basketball goal on one side and came with a football, basketball, and soccer ball.  Brooks loves pushing the balls down the slide and going down after them.

So far, best Christmas present he's gotten!  But we'll see after this weekend!!