Santa Came

Since we are heading out of sunny AZ on Wednesday for the frozen tundra, Santa came to our house on Saturday night so the big man had a nice surprise on Sunday morning.

Since the big man is so young this year Santa was able to drop off his presents early and Maxim had no idea. He even played on the boxes in the kitchen. This was great. Next year Maxim will be too big for this, so if there are any large gifts that Santa drops off early we will have to hide them.

This was the most fun I have had on "Xmas morning" since I was a little kid. To see the big man's facial expressions is priceless. He understood opening presents and had fun tearing the paper. It took an hour (with help from mom and dad) for him to unwrap his gifts, and there really weren't that many. He would get distracted from one present to another and at one point he was over the present unwrapping thing. 

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I just loved the Elmo slippers on him. It was beyond adorable seeing him in them. He loved the big wheel that is too big for him, but he will grow into it. The water table will be a big hit once we can put water in it. The play house is also a big hit too! He likes the basketball hoop so he can put everything in the hoop and watch it fall through. He is actually pretty good at throwing his balls in the hoop. 

The big man got a sneak peak of his very busy Xmas weak ahead of him. He made our Xmas extra special this year and I look forward to watching him in WI.

Zoo Lights

It only took nine years but we finally made it to Zoo Lights. It's definitely an event for children so I am glad we waited to go with Max otherwise I am not sure if I would have liked it. Since this is a very popular holiday activity that brings all the random people out of their homes we went on a Wednesday night. That is very random and rare for us since we usually stick to a routine with Max during the week, but sometimes our sanity out rules a routine. 

Zoo Lights revolves around a pond and has tons of bright lights for the children to look at. There is even a music show that the lights play to. Max's favorite part of the light show was this ball in the middle of the pond. No matter where you walked you could see this brightly lit ball and if for some reason you could not see it Max pointed it out every five seconds...ball...ball...ball!

Here are some photos of us sharing the light experience with the big man. We were there for a total of 30 minutes. Maybe it would take longer if Max was a little bigger. We will find that out next year and I am sure again the year after that. The light show is not that big so we got through it pretty fast and the big man fell asleep in the car before I even got out of the parking lot.

Playing in the Backyard

The big man just loves to play outside and he will play all morning long until nap time and then again after nap time. It is both fun and exhausting. One thing he likes to do in the backyard is journey down to the bottom of our yard and check out the orange tree. Since it's all rocks and on a slope he holds our hands on the walk down.

Once down at the bottom he points out all of the oranges and then we walk back up to the top of the yard, only to walk back down again and check out the oranges. This toddler has tons of energy and can do this for hours on end. It's super cute so of course we busted out the camera and got some pictures.

Meeting Santa

Like I said in my recent post, the big man was not a fan of Santa. We went on the night of Black Friday just like we did last year to avoid any crowds. We arrived and found that there was no line. Due to his stranger danger attitude and how he really dislikes males I already knew it was going to be bad. I asked the cameraman if he was ready before I even put the big man on Santa's lap informing him this would be fast because I already know it's not going to go well. The young kid was surprised and jumped behind the camera and was ready to capture this awesome picture.

The poor guy lasted a half a second before I jumped in to get a picture with him. I kind of felt like a bad mom for a second because I thought the whole thing was funny! I now have an awesome photo to show the big man when he's older how much he was afraid of Santa.

Thanksgiving Weekend

I am a little late on this post, but we have been busy. For Thanksgiving we went to the Seifert's house like we have been doing almost every year for the past nine years. I am super bummed that I did not get a family photo of the three of us like we did last year. Oh well, but thanks to Kristin for taking this picture of me and my favorite little man.

He had fun on Thanksgiving eating his turkey and everything else on his plate. His favorite though was grandma's buns. Yes, Andy and I stayed up until 1am the night before making two batches of these buns and it was oh so worth it.

On Friday I did not do any shopping, well, maybe a little online. Instead we spent the whole day outside playing in the backyard. That is the big man's favorite thing to do these days. You cannot open that back door without him or he freaks out. Plus, I enjoy it too because then he is completely wiped out at night from all the fresh air.

After a day of playing we headed to see Santa, which was an epic fail. The big man was not a fan and actually freaked out, so I had to get in on the photo with him. 

I decided it would be fun to make and decorate sugar cookies with the big man. Yes, I do know he is 17 months old and will not get it, but I figured it would still be fun. I made them from scratch and did not use the dough from one of those plastic tubes...gross! Once the cookies were baked I was showing the big man how to decorate them. He was excited so I put one on his tray so we could "decorate together." I really didn't expect him to decorate, but thought it was still something fun to do. Of course he did not decorate, instead he grabbed the cookie and shoved it in his mouth. He loved the cookie so much that he had frosting all over him. He had two cookies and then he was on a sugar high for the next few hours. Fun!

We had to follow the cookie adventure with a fun bubble bath to get him all clean again.