Christmas in Virginia

This year we celebrated Christmas in Virginia and our first Christmas completely on our own. We went to richmond for Christmas Eve morning to an old theatre that shows movies. The specialty on Christmas Eve was the Polar Express. We made it mostly through the movie, but with two little wiggly ones, we had to leave early. Here are our obligatory selfies:

The best part of the experience was the organist who played before the movie. He played lots of Christmas carols while the audience sang along and at the end they even finished with fake snow. It was awesome!

 Like the responsible parents we are, we forgot to pack coats for our kids and it just happened to be cold and rainy, so I gave Eva my sweater while we waited for the theater to open.

Christmas morning was fun. It was our first year alone and I think it was a success. It was a quiet affair, but fun to soak it in with our kiddos.

Eva with all her loot:

Jack Boy

Jack, oh Jack. It has been the hardest of years and the best of years because of this little guy. He is SO cute and smiley, laughs at everything and has the softest skin. But he has had the hardest time figuring out sleeping and eating...and so he is our screamer. Which is hard, but we love him. 

We have taught him baby sign language to try to prevent the screaming and it has been working really well. Surprise, little guy just wants to communicate with us, darn it! He is also so careful and precise when he plays and it reminds me so much of Morgan. Here are a few of the many darling moments I caught on camera of him. Here's to figuring out what's hurting you kid and working on understanding each other better. 

This is a rainbow cast by our front door. Jack finds them everyday and sits and touches them. It's quite cute. 

Darling post bath baby. This kid LOVES water and baths.

Reading stories, also an everyday thing. He opens up his favorites and looks at every page until he gets to the end and then turns it over and starts again. It's very cute.

Thanksgiving 2016 and Other Things

This was before Thanksgiving, but Eva was so cute playing 'dinner time'. She set up this whole table with books for plates and put all the toys on top as the food. It was super cute. 

This was during our Thanksgiving week. The McKeans came to visit! We had so much fun with them. Grace, Eva and Jack played together so well. They are such cute little cousins.

This was after Thanksgiving, but so cute. Eva has been playing with our CD case pretending it is her baby (never mind that she has a baby doll in her room...). Anyway, she was carrying it around and I came upon this scene. She had just put her dress on it and very sweetly patted it and then sang it her lullaby and then walked away and said, "Night, night." There's nothing like a little kids imagination.

This was at stake conference on Sunday. I was trying to keep Eva reverent. She found my lipstick in my purse and begged me to put it on her. I pretended for about 10 minutes, but then the fun of that wore off. I decided an application of lipstick would be worth 5 more minutes of quiet. We took pictures so she could see that it really was on her lips. Love my girl!

Family Pictures

We met our friends, the Freemans, up on main grounds to swap taking each other's family photos for Christmas cards this year. We got some great shots. 

The Rotunda is the most easily recognizable part of UVa's campus. It is beautiful.

The leaves were beautiful as we walked back to our car.

Halloween Costumes 2016

This year for Halloween we were Goldilocks and the 3 bears. We decided on the costumes months ago and happily over the summer Eva became obsessed with Goldie and Bear on the Disney channel. So, it worked out pretty great. I made the hats, ears and Morgan's bowtie using felt and we found Eva's dress at a thrift store and then I hemmed it to the right length. It was fun to put this costume together. 

We went and trick-or-treated on UVa's lawn. It's an event Charlottesville has every year and EVERYONE in town comes. It's always packed. We got a ton of candy and only went to half of the doors.

The Most Sincere Pumpkin Patch

Virginia Law Families threw an event at a local pumpkin patch and it was so much fun. They had free hayrides, free brunch, free pumpkins, a corn maze, a giant slide and a little toddler play area. The kids loved it and it was the perfect Saturday morning activity. 

On the hayride.

Looking at the corn maze from the hayride.

Beautiful Virginia farmland. It was really picturesque.

They had a giant spiderweb net for the kids to climb on.

This was a mini hay bale maze for kids with a slide off one bale.

Eva and then Morgan and Jack going down the giant slide.

Haha...Jack trying to eat the grass in toddler play area.

The kids loved climbing through this tunnel.