Swimming and The Local Biker Hangout

I was loading new pictures onto the computer this morning when I noticed the pictures from our time swimming. Suddenly it dawned on me that I never posted these for your enjoyment! I believe I even teased you earlier in the week and told I would have some to post... So here are a few of my favorites from our time swimming in the pool at the hotel my family stayed at for a couple of days.

Tyler

Jackson and Nick

Chase - he got brave in that floaty! Took us all by surprise considering it took him 10 minutes to even want to get in the pool in the first place.

Chase

Jackson - this makes me giggle!

After all the chaos of Christmas vacated our house Monday morning, Nick and I decided to bring out another Christmas gift for the boys (we've yet to give them our gifts yet - we'll probably bring those out this weekend). These sweet bikes came from Nick's parents. The boys call them their motorcycles and boy do they love them! As I type this Tyler is sitting on his in front of the TV, watching Sesame Street.

L-R: Chase, Jackson, Tyler

 

Chase

Jackson (that's his attempt at a "thumbs up")

Trains, Trains and More Trains

Sunday afternoon we all loaded into 3 cars and headed to downtown Kansas City. The goal? See a bunch of trains and then have dinner delivered by one.

The kids (big and little alike!) had a ball looking at the massive train set displayed in Union Station.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The kiddos also all thoroughly enjoyed walking through The Link (an enclosed, above the street sidewalk system that connects several buildings in Kansas City).

 

We then took the kiddos to Crown Center for some fine dining. Ah, that line just makes me giggle... what we ate was anything but "fine". To be fair though, you don't go to Fritz's for the food - you go because a train delivers your food!

See that train at the top of the picture? It rides around a track in the restaurant delivering food! In the above picture the train is just dropping our box of food off. The food was then lowered to the table on a tray. Nifty, huh? The kids love it. They also love the conductor hats!

 

 

 

After dinner we bundled up and headed outside to take in the Mayor's Christmas Tree and the fountains!

 

 

 

 

 

 

And that, my friends, is how we ended our Chaotic Christmas! It was a ball and I wish it could have lasted longer! To close out my few days of excessive picture posts, I'd like to leave you with just one more shot. My family, all together again for the first time in several years!

Cookie Decorating With 2 Year Olds

Turns out the boys are still a bit young for cookie decorating. I'm thinking the decision to let them decorate gingerbread men with their older cousins (ages 3 and 5) was not one of my smarter moves of 2009. Oh well. Live and learn!

Of course, the boys thoroughly enjoyed their time with giant bowls of frosting on the table... Jackson alone had probably 5 or 6 spoonfuls of the sweet stuff!

 

 

Tyler had fun too and I saw him sneak a couple of spoons of frosting. I think he had more fun though watching his cousins decorate their cookies.

 

Chase wasn't into the whole "spoon it on in big globs" way of decorating. He wanted to try out the special decorating squeeze bottles. He wasn't really strong enough to squeeze much out though, so really he ended up just jamming cookie up the tip.

After their lunch of frosting and cookie bits, we gave the boys some meatballs for dessert... Oh boy was Jackson a mess by the end of all of that!

 

Real Snow

Remember my post earlier this month about our "First Snow" of the year? The snow that gave us a whopping half inch on the ground, but had the boys very excited? That snow is nothing! I think by the time all the snow was done falling finally a couple of days ago we ended up with almost 8 inches in our yard! We had a ball playing outside the other day... (Jackson is in the blue coat, Chase in the yellow and Tyler in the red) And yes, those are Target bags wrapped around their feet - I had no boots so did the next best thing!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Kansas Citians don't exactly know how to deal with 8 inches of snow. Lots of people got stuck in parking lots, we watched several people attempt to drive down our road and get stuck and then one of our neighbors got stuck pulling into her un-shoveled driveway. Nick and my dad went down to push her car out and then shovel part of the driveway.