whobody loved christmasapalooza?

We have lots of Christmas traditions, but one my favorites is Christmasapalooza!

I wrote about it last year in this blog post.

It is a tradition we began in 2006…and it is a wonderful Christmas party with some of our closest friends (and their kids…who, coincidentally are my kids' closest friends ;))

Funniest thing is, this group of friends consists of Jason's friends from high school! We are so lucky to all still be living close, and still hanging out…and most of all, the wives actually like each other (maybe even more than the boys do!). 

So…the party is a blast! It is 'for the kids'…so we bring snacks, have Papa Murphy's pizza, and, if we are lucky, SANTA even comes to visit! 

So.Much.Fun.

17 kids is a lot of kids to try to get in a picture.

We will take what we can get!!!

 While we were taking the group picture…guess who showed up???

The Man in Red.

You can see in the picture below how excited CRUZ was to see Santa…

*cruz*

Luckily, most of the other kids 
enjoyed having him here.

*parker*

*cooper & parker*

*checking out the treats*

*lola* 

*avery*

*lily*

*keaton*

*nash* 

*vaughn* 

*tyce*

*colton*

*hayden* 

*alaina*

*tate*

*and jack*

(jack liked santa as much as cruz and paislee did…but cruz and paislee never quite made it on his lap long enough for a picture) 

*paislee*
(i didn't actually GET a picture of her near Santa…but if I had, this is what she would have looked like.)

*cade* 

Of course, before Santa left, he needed to make sure everyone got their gifts!

We had SUCH a good night…
and the kids had so much fun.

The mom's favorite part was when we put a movie in…and actually got to talk!

whobody visited santa?

One of our favorite Christmas preparations is going to the 

community center to visit Santa Claus! 

Keaton was very brave and was the first one of ALL the kids there to sit on his lap.

This was the closest the Cruzie got…then he got as far away as he could…

he did NOT care for Santa very much this year.

Nash was as proud as ever to visit with Santa.

And Lola joined in the fun too. 

The kids all shared their lists with Santa and chatted quite a bit.

And…check out where Cruz was most of the time the kids were with Santa…

crawling on the floor in front of them. Fun!

One more post done…quite a few to go. 

whobody put on a great concert?

Here are the pictures from the kids' Christmas concert at school! 

Keaton & Lola both very much enjoyed performing their Christmas songs.  

They both did an excellent job!

Lola was very expressive, and knew every single word to every song.

Cruz & Nash enjoyed the concert too! 

(Especially Cruzie…who danced and danced.)

Keaton had lots of fun with his buddy Kylar too…they had some special funny actions for the songs that they couldn't WAIT to do!

 Lola was especially happy to actually be able to BE AT the concert this year 

(since we missed it last year because of our Disney vacation.)  

We love all of these Christmas season events! So much fun.

whobody had a frozen birthday?

Lola recently turned SEVEN.  

She, of course, got to have a 'friend birthday party' too and invited 5 of her closest friends 

(sadly, only 4 could come)..but she had a BLAST!  

We took the girls to the movie Frozen and then went to Pizza Hut for supper afterwards.  We had a great time…and the girls were awesome! 

Seriously…they were SO much fun.

And all so pretty...

I think Lola had a wonderful birthday!

whobody had a double birthday?

So, I have had great intentions of spending lots of time in the afternoon during these last few months…catching up on this blog. 

Needless to say, it hasn't happened. 

So…as much as I would like to spend lots and lots of time on each wonderful thing that we have done since october (yikes)….I am just going to throw these out there so they are DONE….and hopefully I can come back someday and add a little more "heart" to them.

This baby will be here anytime in the next few weeks…and I just need to get things caught up on here before then…so here it goes!

Sometime between Thanksgiving and Christmas, we had a DOUBLE BIRTHDAY party for Cruz and Lola.  

Cruz turned TWO on Thanksgiving and 

Lola turned SEVEN on December 10th.  

We found a night worked for most of our family…

and got everyone together for a pizza birthday party.

Cruz LOVED the attention (and somehow, knew JUST what to do when there was a lit birthday candle in front of him!)  Too cute.

You should know that the green plate was 

FILLED with m&ms before the party…

but I made the mistake of letting Nash come downstairs and play before the party, while the cupcakes were sitting out. 

We are just lucky that there are still m&ms on top of the cupcakes.

Lola, of course, had a great time at her party too! 

She helped make her candy cane heart cupcakes!

The kids got AWESOME presents…Cagney helped Cruz open everything.

The gift that Lola got from us was a gift card for a Build-a-Bear…

she was very excited for this! 

Sadly, by the time we went to do our girls' day in Coralville to use it….she has somehow LOST the gift cards. Seriously. Lost. Oh well, I am sure we will use them sometime! 

Grandma Tractor also made Lola this blanket…she loved it!

Luckily Cruz got this awesome Flipeez hat…

when you press the 'tails' the ears go up and down. 

Hilarious! Nash and Cruz usually fight over who gets to wear it!

This was the present that Keaton gave to Lola: TOO CUTE! 

(I did not know that he was going to do this.)

I'm not sure why it changed from five to four….but I thought it was SO nice of him to give her his OWN money out of his piggy bank!

Nash was also VERY EXTREMELY proud to give Lola his present…

which included a paper airplane and...

 everything out of his backpack that day from preschool…including a calendar.

Lola did a very good job showing her appreciation!

Lola also got this rubber band bracelet making kit…

which has kept her very busy since the birthday party!

(She has even started selling them at school…)

We had a great birthday party…and I know that usually around each of the kids birthdays, I write a long heartfelt post about who the kids are and what they are like at that age….BUT I just can't do that right now. 

Hopefully I will get it done sometime in the near future!