Christmas in Kansas City

"You'll Shoot Your Eye Out..." Our annual Ralphie photograph with the Red Ryder Gun.

Not sure why this is sideways- I swear it doesn't look this way in Picasa... Anyway, here are some pictures of Christmas at Bass Pro with the kids to see Santa. Our pictures were horrible this year. Gus refused to smile and Hazel screamed. Not worthy of posting, to say the least...

Gus decorating Christmas cookies. I did most of them while he napped, but I saved back a few for him to enjoy adorning. He sure had fun (although he wouldn't eat any of the ones he decorated because he doesn't like Red Hots and he covered his in them!).

Hazel was more interested in eating them.

Opening Christmas presents at home from us, on December 23rd. As you can see, Gus loves wearing temporary tattoos. He insists on having one on each arm.

Hazel was fun to watch open her presents this year. She could open wrapped packages on her own and got really excited to see what was inside.

As some of you heard, Hazel face-planted out of her crib one night last week. She gave us quite the scare, bloody, bruised nose and fat upper lip. There was a lot of blood that scared mommy very much! So, she got a toddler bed for Christmas too. Here she is helping daddy take the crib apart so he could get it to fit in our bedroom, just in time for new baby. We were hoping to keep Hazel in the crib a bit longer, but our little monkey had other plans.

On Christmas Eve, Papa and Gma Dillavou came down to KC to spend the holidays with us. Since I am too pregnant to safely travel back to Iowa this  year, they made the venture here. We had a funny church experience on Christmas Eve; due to our regular church being standing room only 15 minutes before Mass (yes I thought that would be enough time- guess I was wrong!) we drove around until we found another service. It ended up being a Lutheran candlelight vigil, about 40 minutes long- very different, but was memorable.

Here are the kids opening presents from the Dillavou's.

Gus opening up a gift from his cool Ralphie bag. He kept saying, "He looks like me!" It was cute.

Here are some pictures from Christmas morning, after Santa came. Hazel loves her babies! She tries to fit as many as she can in her Bitty Baby stroller (from Gma and Papa). She is such a good mommy- she loves to feed and change her babies clothes.

Santa brought Gus a cool Transformer Firehouse!

Gus trying to prove that he is bigger than the huge puzzle he got from Gma and Papa. He wasn't lined up quite right, but it was close.

This week was nice, but hard... Gus and Hazel went back to Iowa with Gma and Papa for a few days so that we could get ready for our new little bundle of joy that will be arriving soon. I can say that we now do have everything all set up and organized for baby, so having the kids back in Iowa has been a tremendous help. I even started the new baby's scrapbook! I didn't get as much done as I wanted to on my online classes, but I will just have to work hard on that over the next few weeks. A big Thank You to all the grandparents who took turns watching the kiddos this week for us.