And.......

We're back! It's been a loooooong couple of weeks, but we survived Christmas and New Years with an awful cold smushed in the middle.

We had such a great Christmas! It's always so great to have everyone together, although we did miss my cousin Heidi, her husband Dwight, and baby Harry. But we had a great time playing "the game," with a few different rules this year. The hot items of the year were a reusable shopping bag, a snowman picture frame and a mini bottle of Patron. Jackson was interested in the gifts, mostly the ones that weren't addressed to him. But he also loved the bags and tissue paper.

I think it was my brother who referred to it as the "Christmas hangover, " but I totally agree, the day(s) after Christmas are kind of a bummer. And with a yucky, stuffy cold, it's even worse. With 20 people, 3 dogs, a 3 year old and a 1 year old, well, there was a little bit to clean up. And that's after my Mom spent the better part of Monday cleaning! YIKES!!



Cleaning with a stuffy head and sick toddler on your leg is not ideal. Luckily, Great Grandma came through with the tissue reserves on Christmas! Everytime I turned around someones nose needed to be wiped, so much so that by Thursday, Jackson was grabbing his own tissues and wiping his own nose!

But we did a little bit each day and by New Years Eve we had almost all of the decorations down and the house cleaned up. I told Matt, I think the last time I spent this much time in my pjs was the week Jackson was born! And I think this is the first New Years I haven't made it to midnight!

That's OK though, it just makes my resolution that much easier: make it to midnight next year! And so far, 2012 is off to a great start! Our Ducks are Rose Bowl champs, our household is healthy (well, almost), Jackson gets more and more fun each day and we are so excited for all of our adventures this year! Hope you'll join us!

Wordless(ish) Wednesday

Yogurt doubles as hair gel.

Santa's Workshop

That's how I refer to our house this time of year. Full of Christmas cheer! We are busy, busy, busy, making, baking and chasing Jackson out of all of this fun (read: messy) Christmas stuff. The only thing missing is the reindeer!

I'm so lucky to have the help of some pretty cute elves! I've had so much fun with Jackson and Griffin this year. Griffin's always asking me if he can "help." He did a spectacular job helping me wrap some gifts yesterday. He was my official taper. And Jackson was carefully inspecting our work.

My elves and I set out to make a snowman yesterday. Snowman? you say. Yes, you don't need actual snow to make a snowman:

This is just one of the many Christmas ideas I can credit Pinterest with. We are making almost all of our gifts this year and Pinterest has been my source of inspiration and instruction. If you don't know what Pinterest is, check it out, but be careful because it's addicting!

Here's a peek at one of the projects I finished. Disney princess hair clips made from ribbon. The perfect gift for a cute four-year-old little girl :)

Wordless(ish) Wednesday

I left the room for 10 seconds. 10.

 

Did he think since it blended with the floor, I wouldn't notice?

Let the holidays begin!

At least for the Croses! We finally have our trees decorated, lights up, it's beginning to looking a lot like Christmas! I've even started baking, so it smells a lot like Christmas.

Matt and I were just talking tonight about how (pleasantly) surprised we are that Jackson has left the trees alone, for the most part. He looks at the ornaments, he touches them, and every once and a while he pulls one off. But it's not the war zone of fallen ornaments I had pictured in my head! He even helped decorate the trees, I'd give him an ornament and he'd run over and lay it on the tree. Pretty darn cute!

Once we get gifts under the tree, I might be telling a different story.....

Wordless(ish) Wednesday

Happy Birthday Daddy!!

Oh Christmas tree, Oh Christmas tree......where are you?

One family. One saw. Hundreds, no Thousands of Christmas trees. And we had to find the perfect one (or two).

That's how we spent our Sunday. It turned out to be the absolute perfect day to chop down our Christmas tree. The sun was shining, it was cold, but not frozen fingers and toes cold. And did I say the sun was shining! It actually only took us about 20 minutes to find the two perfect trees.

That's right, I said TWO. We are putting up two trees this year, which makes me very happy! We are hosting Christmas for about 20 of our favorite relatives and so I thought we needed to be extra Christmas-y this year.

Of course I may also deeply regret this decision. One of Jackson's favorite games right now is getting into something he's not supposed to, me telling him "no." and obstructing his access, him screaming and pretending to walk away, that is, until I walk away, then he whips around and is right back into whatever he's not supposed to be into!! So, like I said TWO trees could be double trouble!