A belated Christmas post…this is always a fun holiday, with lots of time spent with Gary’s family, and lots of food. It starts with Christmas Eve at Gary’s Grandmother’s.

Here’s Nathan getting ready.

Playing with Opa after dinner.

Gary and I managed to get a nice picture of just the two of us. This might be the first one since Nathan was born!

Christmas morning is spent with Oma, Opa, Aunt Julie, Uncle Jason, Jake & Ben. After coffee and opening presents, we have breakfast. It might be one of my favorite meals, partly because its a warm and happy morning and partly because it includes a contest to see who can eat the most. I think Opa took it this year.

Nathan broke into the candy cans before we even started on the presents. Eh, what’re you gonna do, it’s part of the holiday!

Oma has jingle bells, and Nathan made sure we all had them.

Nathan playing with one of his favorite new toys.

We got some cute pictures of the cousins this year. Nathan really loves them and it’s awesome to see them playing together. Jacob is especially good with Nathan and has a lot of patience.

Family portrait.

There aren’t any pictures from Christmas Day Eve because about an hour in to the family party the day caught up with Nathan and all that junk food he’d eaten came back up. We made a quick exit because even though Nathan seemed to be feeling okay afterwards, he’d been sitting on Gary’s lap…so, yeah, you get the picture.

Hanukkah was fun this year. Nathan was of course excited about the presents, but the best part was that he was really excited to light candles every night too, and by the last couple nights he was singing the prayers with us too. We got him a wooden menorah with candles he could put in himself and he helped us light the menorahs too.

We had Latkes on the first night and he liked them a lot. Also liked dipping them in his applesauce.

Oma and Opa came over one night, and Grandma and Grandpa Bob came for the last two nights and stayed for a few days. I think Nathan had fun celebrating with them and I loved having them all be part of the holiday.

Nathan had fun helping Grandma bake cookies.

I’m glad that Nathan is getting old enough to start to understand things about the holiday. He loved reading Chanukkah books throughout the week and even still likes to now. And we got a Rugrats Chanukkah movie that Nathan loved and wanted to watch over and over. Lucky for us, it was surprisingly not bad!

We went to a 3rd birthday party recently and it was at a Volunteer Firestation. This is the second party like this we’ve been to and Nathan was just as excited to ride in the Firetruck again. It was fun watching him run around with his buddy (the birthday boy) too. There are a few kids he’s really clicked with and Owen is one of them. They’re really cute together.

Someone got a little marker on their face and then found the new mirror in Mommy and Daddy’s room…

I know it’s probably mean to post this picture, but I thought it was cute. Nathan is trying to walk through 18″ of snow and couldn’t really get any further. This is him crying for me to come get him.

We’ve had snow three times already and winter has barely begun. If that trend continues we’re going to have a very excited two year old on our hands. Nathan loved playing in the snow (as long as his mittens adequately covered this wrists…the one time the snow got in there, he was done.)

The first snow was relatively light, but there was still enough sticking to build a family of little snowmen. And Nathan had a lot of fun stepping on them all that night.

The next snow was much heavier. Gary measured 18 inches of snow by the end of it.

Nathan had fun “helping” Gary shovel

And Fen had a blast.