Christmas at Great Great Grandma and Grandpa's House

Here are a few pictures from when we went to Great Great Grandpa and Grandma's house to celebrate Christmas.  Cousin Parker got to go to so it was fun to play with him.  Here are some pictures from the day.  It won't take long to figure out what my favorite thing at their house was. 

 We went to the basement and Parker and I found the piano and we both sat and played it together.

 Great Aunt Linda showed me how to stack these boxes back at Thanksgiving and when we got to Great Great Grandma's house I immediately went looking for the boxes so I could stack them and drive my cars on them like a ramp.

 Cousin Parker and Auntie Jill being silly.

Parker thought my ramp was a good idea and he decided he wanted to try to help too.

Great Great Grandpa Norbert and me posing on his favorite chair. 

Santa brought us a...

Wii!

When we were opening our presents from Santa there was one final present to open that didn't have a name on it.  Brayden and Mommy decided to open it to see what it was.  We found out it was a present for our whole family.  It was a game we can all play together.  It was a Wii.   We have the couple of games that go with it and it is a lot of fun and even Brayden loves to play.   Daddy's favorite game is tennis.  Brayden loves to play baseball.   It is amazing how quickly Brayden learned to play.  He knows how to wear the wrist strap and hold the remote.  He even watches the screen and tries to play by himself.   It is a fun game for us to play together. 

Brayden's favorite game to play is baseball.  He is so sweet and will let others take a turn too.

He so takes after his Daddy.  When opening the Wii box Brayden immediately found the batteries.  He then went to the drawer and found the screwdriver.

Brayden and Daddy playing tennis together.

We have all created our Mii's.  We must have made them look pretty real because Brayden can identify them by looking at the screen.

Merry Christmas Part 1

This post is best described in pictures so here we go...

 Before we left for Christmas Santa made a quick stop a our house. Brayden's favorite presents were the little construction vehicles he received.  There were 2 outside of his stocking  and then more inside and once he figured out there were more he was very interested in looking in his stocking.  His favorite is the loader and the bulldozer.

 At Oma's house, Brayden and Grace were interested in all of Oma's Dept 56 houses she had set up.  Grace made sure Brayden didn't touch the "pretties".

 Grandma Becky was putting together boxes of cookies so Brayden decided to help.  Their job was to use all of the different kinds Grandma made together.  Brayden took this job very seriously.  He would even try to count the cookies as he put them in the box.  Then he would decide which one to do next in the box.

 Sledding at Grandma Becky and Grandpa Marc's house.  Grandpa blew up the inflatable tubes so it was a much smoother ride.  Brayden didn't like having so many layers on and the snow was so fluffy it was hard to walk in but once we got him on the sled he loved it.  Although upon getting to the bottom of the hill Brayden would say " I carry you."  I wish that is what he meant because I could have used some help getting up the hill but in reality he wanted us to carry him up the hill.

 Brayden got a doctor dress up kit for Christmas from Grandma and Grandpa and he loves it.  He thought that the the vaccination looked like the thermometer they used at the doctors office so he was putting it in his ear to check his temperature.  He also would check Grandma and Grandpa's temperatures too. 

 Papa had a Harley train that he decided to put under their tree just like my train by the tree!  Brayden was so excited to be putting up a train.  It even goes automatically just like Brayden's geo trax.   Brayden and Grace loved watching the train go around the track.

 I got lots of Cricut cartridges for Christmas and I love them all!

 Brayden got a new bike from Oma and Papa and he was so excited.  I rode a bike early and Brayden loves going on bike rides so this was a great gift for this summer.  When Papa wheeled the bike out Brayden started jumping up and down and ran to the bike.  It is still a littler big for him but I am sure he will be riding before we know it.

 Brayden and Daddy love playing together!

Oma has a keyboard in her playroom and Brayden wanted to get it out and play it.  He sat down and played the keyboard for a long time.  Andrew tried to play and Brayden informed him, "No play now Daddy".  Apparently he wanted it to be just his turn. 

Stay tuned more pictures to come.

Baking Cookies

Brayden loves to do anything that we do, which includes baking!  So for Christmas I decided to take the easy way out for time purposes and we bought some prepared dough so all we would have to do was line them up on the pan.  Brayden thought that should be his job so he carefully counted all the way to 8 before losing track and starting over again.  He put them on the pan and then stood by the oven door as they baked.  When we took out the baked cookies he jumped up and down.  Next came the fun part frosting and sprinkles.  I did the frosting and let Brayden sprinkle the cookies.  Before starting we talked about how you would shake a little bit to decorate the cookie.  Brayden thought he needed to turn it upside down and then shake as hard as he could so he ended up covering the cookies in sprinkles.  Hopefully Santa likes cookies with extra sprinkles.

Arranging the sugar cookies on the pan.

Hi Mommy!  This is fun.

Brayden was so proud that he was doing this all by himself. 

Almost done.  Ready for the oven.

Checking on the cookies since the oven buzzer went off.

Let the sprinkle fun begin!  Half a bottle per cookie sounds good to Brayden.

We got through almost all of the cookies and then Brayden got concerned because he saw we didn't have many left so as I put them in a container Brayden picked one up took a bite and then giggled when I turned around.  He knew he wasn't supposed to have one and that he was sneaking a bite. 

Swimming

The other day I had swimming lessons and I asked Andrew if he would bring Brayden and when I was done with lessons I would take Brayden swimming.  Andrew and Brayden got there and I was sitting in the office and when Brayden saw the pool he got very excited.   I asked if he wanted to go swimming and he said "yeah".  We went swimming while Andrew went down to the gym to play basketball.  We swam for about 30 minutes and had so much fun.  Brayden was starting to get cold to we decided to get out.  We were getting dressed and this is the conversation I had with Brayden.

Me:  Brayden, I had a lot of fun swimming with you today. 

Brayden:  I had fun swimming with you too Mommy!

I love how quickly Brayden's vocabulary is growing and how he is able to communicate and have a conversation with us.  Brayden didn't want to leave the pool but when I said we were going to go downstairs to the gym to find Daddy it was suddenly ok.  As we were walking out the door Brayden said, "Bye pool I'll see you later". 

I didn't take any pictures of us swimming but I will add a picture just for fun.

Happy Birthday Mommy!

After a couple takes and a little editing...

Hi Santa Claus

We took Brayden to go see Santa Claus and all the way Brayden was talking about going to see him.  When we got there they said he was on his cookie break so we had to wait 45 minutes.  Fortunately we were at Bass Pro Shops so we went and explored the store.  Brayden enjoyed the large fresh water fish tank although when the fish came closer he usually moved back from the tank.  They also had some fun activities set up like a big monster truck with a remote control and a train.  We played until it was time to get in line.  While we were waiting we saw Santa sneak out from his workshop and Brayden exclaimed " I see Santa Claus.  There he is right there."  His excitement was cute but it quickly wore off as we were standing in line.  He told us he wanted to go play with the train.  We had to tell Brayden that we would go play with the train after we saw Santa.  We watched as the kids in front of us took their turns and then it was our turn.  Andrew put Brayden down curious as to what he would do.  He walked right over to Santa Claus climbed up on his little foot stool and said "Hi Santa Claus".  It was so cute.  Santa asked if Brayden had been a good boy and his response was "yeah".  We were then able to get a couple of cute pictures of Brayden with Santa.  Santa talked to Brayden for a couple of minutes and told him to be a good helper and pick up his toys when he was done playing with them, listen to his mommy and daddy, and to also give mommy and daddy lots of big hugs.  Here are a couple of pictures of our visit.

 Ready for my picture!

 Yes Santa I have been a good boy this year!