3 Days to Go...

...not that anyone's counting. Actually the last two days Easton has forgotten his advent chocolate. How could you forget you get to eat a piece of chocolate first thing in the morning? Oh well...it's nice at other times of the day, too.

So Saturday afternoon Lauren came by to watch the boys for us. We were able to accomplish a lot. Then we treated ourselves to dinner at Pappadeaux's. We had a coupony/gift card but I don't eat seafood and there wasn't a lot of choices for me and because I didn't get an "entree" they wouldn't let us use our gift card. Bummer.

As we were finishing up Lauren called to say that Dalton had thrown up. Good thing we were on our way! She did really well with the boys. 5 hours is a long time to be housebound with two little ones, especially when you don't "do" diapers. :) But other than that it went great as far as we're concerned, Dalton's puking must've been a fluke, and Lauren went on her merry way. She'd fed them dinner already but isn't comfortable with bedtime so we came home just in time to get the boys to bath and bed.

On Sunday morning we slightly slept in and after awhile the boys and I dug into our gingerbread house. I have always wanted to do a yearly gingerbread house as a tradition. I had this idea even back when I was married to Ben. In fact, we did one...and then I bought a pre-made set to do another year. I've never done a gingerbread house since then. So....every year our tradition has been to get out that box with my every intention of putting it together, but we never have. Seriously, that thing is over 5 years old. But it's time had come, I made sure the boys knew we couldn't be sampling any of the parts, old as they were and we got to work:




Well, stupid me didn't read the directions in advance and we had to let the "house" parts harden for hours before we could decorate. So, it set during quiet time and we came back to it:


Easton followed a lot of what the "directions" (the picture on the box) said to do:




Dalton did a few parts too but didn't love when he'd get the icing on his fingers:


Before long, D asked to get down and then Easton and I could really get to work:


The finished product:



You can see the frosting was a little runny. Oh well.

I did a tiny bit of shopping and returning...we did some playing while watching the Broncos disappoint:


So much for our Buffalo Chicken Sandwiches for dinner (Denver was playing Buffalo). The boys had a muffin tin dinner. I first read about the idea from Dr. Sears. He suggests having a muffin tin stocked with healthy snacks as a "nibble tray" for picky grazers. We never did do it, though. Then AJ has been offering muffin tin meals for Adam lately and I thought our boys would like it too. Only we used a mini muffin tin and everything still didn't get eaten:

Let's see, left to right, top to bottom you'll find: peanuts, raisins, cheese cubes, snowflake Ritz, tortilla chips, fruit leather, ham, strawberry cream cheese, stale Cheetos, banana, apple, and walnuts. And we can't forget the festive toothpicks for stabbing their choices! We love festive picks around here. Easton ate some of everything, even the ham. No surprise as, aside from the ham, their dinners usually consist of a sampling of those very same foods. Jason was all, "I didn't even know we had 12 things in the house they'd eat". :)

We started watching Toy Story after dinner. Both boys are really into it again all of a sudden. Dalton is a Woody fan. We couldn't finish it before bed so we saved it for this morning during our doughnuts:


Here they are with their figures. E's got Buzz and Zurg...D's got Woody:


It's been pretty cute. The three figures slept on a pillow in E's room last night but as soon as Dalton joined E in the big bed this morning he handed over Woody to Little D. They've been using the Little People Farm and the Diego Resuce Center to "play Toy Story". We love watching them--and playing too!

So, even though they'd just eaten breakfast, we had an invitation to brunch later in the morning. I didn't think we were going to go (my mom invited me yesterday) and at 9:45 last night I called Lauren to tell her we weren't gonna meet them and she guilted me into it with a, "But Kwitiiiiiiii, this might be my last time [to go to that restaurant] before Californiaaaaaaaaaa". She is moving there in, like, a week for school. :(

That's all it took to convince me and we decided to go. Here's the boys entertaining themselves while we wait for Gramoo and Lauren to arrive:




She is gonna miss my boys sooooo much:


She is worried Dalton will forget her:


Anyway, that's the latest from yesterday and today. Time for me to go get Eastie out of his quiet time and we have an afternoon of yummy baking ahead of us. Toodles!