Tangled

We saw Tangled yesterday as a family.  We took all three kids.  It was quite daring I know.  Rylee and Piper have been so anxious to see it.  It was a fun movie and we all had a good time.  Sawyer did not make too much noise.  Piper sat on my lap for the first hour, then got bored.  Rylee loved it.  She sat in her chair laughing at certain points where I think she was the only one in the fairly full theater doing such a thing.  The only problem was the ending.  She was crushed by how the movie ended.  I don't want to give anything away if you have not seen it, but I might try to request an alternate ending so I don't have to answer more questions when the movie comes out on DVD.

A Buffalo Christmas

I want to preface this with a few questions from Rylee for Santa. Let me know if you know any of the answers to these. She was not quite daring enough to ask Santa at the mall.

How do reindeer fly?

Does Santa have parents?

Does Santa take his coat off and wear a t-shirt when he is in Florida?

To prepare for Christmas, we held our annual Christmas tree cookie making event.  It involves stacking cookies with frosting and then adding a red hot on top.  The girls had a fun time putting the cookies together.  They did not exactly pass the hygiene test, so do not be offended that we did not share them with anyone.  Piper did a good job until she realized she had a bunch of cookies in front of her.

 We had a fun Christmas together.  We had some friends come over for dinner on Christmas Eve.  Heather did a fabulous job on everything.  The kids acted out the nativity story from the Bible.  It was probably the most chaotic reenactment I have ever seen, but it was fun.

What a good star!

Rylee as Mary

A wise man with a couple of other guests modeling the new line of strollers

Christmas morning with children is special.  They are so genuine with their emotions and excitement that you cannot avoid smiling.  We are blessed to have such great family and friends.

We hope you all had a Merry Christmas!

Cape Cod

We made a trip to Cape Cod last summer around the beginning of July.  We did not have much experience there so we planned to take a tour of the cape during our week there.  We stayed in Mashpee and made trips to Sandwich, Dennisport, Hyannis, Chatham, Falmouth, Woods Hole, and Provincetown (and I am sure I missed some).  While the cape itself is not huge, doing the entire place in a week is tough with one child who naps and the other one who only wants to spend time at the hotel swimming pool.  I will try to touch on some of the highlights of the trip.

We both fell in love with Chatham.  We spent some time walking down the main street looking at shops. We were blown away by the simple and beautiful architecture of the area.  I wanted to take pictures of the area, but the streets are small and I feel awkward going around with a camera.  We managed to get a picture of one of the houses.

We also visited the Chatham Fish Pier in the afternoon.  We managed to watch a scallop boat come in with their catch.  I prefer experiencing an area much more by doing stuff like that than the other tourist attractions.  The girls had a fun time watching the birds and seals that were following the boats. 

At the fish pier

 

We also went to several different beaches.  The first one by Sandwich was rocky and the water was freezing.  We should have thought something was up when there was only one other person on the beach.  Rylee lost her pink boogie board there in a matter of seconds.  She put it down in the water and wind/current just took it out to sea.  I tried to go after it but I was not prepared for a full out ocean swim in those conditions.  So we resorted to other beaches on the south side that were much more pleasant and fun for the girls (with sand).

Playing in the sand near Hyannis

Another day trip involved quite a drive up to Provincetown.  We debated for a while on whether it was worth it to spend the extra time to go up there.  We apparently just missed the huge Portuguese Festival there, but the place was still full of tourists.  The city had a large marina with lots of tour boats, many for whale watching.  We walked up and down Commercial Street and saw some interesting things.  We bought overpriced and supposedly homemade ice cream on the way.  The girls were exhausted by the end of the trip.  I am pretty sure that is evident by their expressions in the photo.

We also stopped at a really neat place on the way up to Provincetown called the Salt Pond Visitor Center in the Cape Cod National Seashore.  We were able to go on a walk along a salt marsh with a large pond.  It was a great learning facility and I am glad we stopped there.  

We most of all enjoyed spending time with each other.  I might try to post more later about the good ice cream places we went to and the amazing clam chowder, but I have to update about other things first.

 

Just hanging out before bedtime

Newborn Pics

We had some newborn pictures taken by our friend about a month ago. She did a great job and we thought we would post a few of the pictures. Sawyer is doing well and getting excited for Christmas. We wish that we could be closer to family this year, but we are also having a lot of fun doing stuff on our own.

Year in Rewind

I am going to try and post things that we have done over the year. I figure that if I do a little each day I might be able to get some stuff done. The hard part about this though is that Sawyer is not on them. I could photoshop him in some of them, but I got some negative feedback on the last time I did that. These pictures are from Halloween. Rylee was a beautiful ballerina and Piper was a ladybug.