Merry Christmas!

Happy Birthday, Walker!

We celebrated Walker's birthday last week, but today he is officially 1 year old. Kelsey had a great "Winter One-derland" party with lots of yummy food and a hot chocolate bar. I didn't manage to get pictures of all the decor and festivities, but of course I took pictures of my favorite birthday party activity - the cake!Walker tore into his cake. It was fun to see him destroy it and I was impressed with Kelsey's ability to just watch as he smeared icing everywhere and even dumped the cake on the floor. I'm afraid the neat freak in me wouldn't be able to stand it! Walker even allowed his cousins to eat some.
Elliott wasted no time and helped himself.

Adeline tried to help pick the cake up off the floor but said it was too heavy!
Happy birthday, Walker-doodle! We had a great time celebrating you and love the fun-loving little guy you are!

Santa!

Another of my favorite holiday traditions is seeing the "real" (according to Malachi) Santa at Aunt Meggie's office. We kept our plans a surprise for the boys until this morning when Malachi got his card out of the Advent tree. He started jumping up and down as soon as he read, "Go to Aunt Meggie's office to see Santa today!"
Malachi asked for Perplexus Epic, Perplexus Rookie and wall racers. Santa asked what Malachi's room looked like. After replying that it had a bunkbed and lots of posters, he had to admit it wasn't completely clean. Maybe that will help inspire him to put his dirty clothes in the hamper?

Elliott took a while to warm up and sit on Santa's lap, even though he spent the entire morning saying, "Teetah (Santa), tractor!"
I think Jonas asked for diapers.
Elliott was a fan of the cake pops!
Malachi had fun with the picture frame craft. He definitely takes after me - when he realized he had not put the stickers on exactly how they were in the instructions he had to peel them off and reposition!

The boys enjoyed the face painting, too. Malachi got a sleigh with reindeer.
Elliott chose a snowman. Both boys cried when we made them wash their faces before bed!

Thanks, Aunt Meg! The boys had a great time with you and Santa!

The Grinch

One of my favorite Christmas movies is How the Grinch Stole Christmas, so when I heard the Grinch himself would be at Timber's, a restaurant in Bainbridge, you know we had to go! Elliott was terrified and wouldn't leave my lap. Malachi also acted a little timid but still wanted in the picture!

Trimming the Tree

Tonight we decorated our tree - my favorite of our family traditions and one the boys were very excited about!

Gotta have matching jammies!

Too bad I don't have a soundtrack for my blog, you'd hear Perry Como singing some good Christmas songs right here!
Elliott loved the ornaments. We had to tell him more than once to not throw the balls!

Malachi being silly.

Erik's got his hands full!

My boys.

We finished the evening with How the Grinch Stole Christmas and some popcorn.

Poor Jonas

Sweet Jonas, this is just the beginning of all the things you'll have to endure as the youngest brother. I usually protect you from your silly brothers, but GranMols decided to laugh instead. I'm sorry! The good news is that you're going to be one tough little guy!

Midnight Shopping

Midnight shopping - I've been two years in a row now so I think it's safe to call it a tradition. This year we left around 1am and arrived at the outlets around 1:45. We parked really close (unlike last year - remember?) and found some great deals. I spent some birthday money on a couple new shirts, bought matching Christmas jammies for the boys for next year and got a few presents taken care of - success!
I'm already excited for next year!

2 Months

I'm about a week and a half late with this update since Jonas turned 2 months on November 22nd, but I wanted to wait until he had his checkup so I would have his current stats. He's now weighing in at 12lbs., 6oz. and is 23.75 inches long. He had to have 3 shots today which he didn't like too much...but at least the fear of getting shots kept Elliott sitting in his chair for a few minutes so I could comfort Jonas!
Jonas is sleeping very well. On a good night he will go to bed around 7:30 and sleep until about 4:00 or so, but will nurse and go back to sleep until at least 8:00. He eats every 4 hours during the day and takes multiple naps. He is definitely more awake and alert now and has even begun focusing on toys and moving his hands as if he wants to grab at them. His brothers show him a lot of attention and they are always rewarded with a big smile. He loves to be left alone on a blanket on the floor to kick his feet - a luxury not often afforded since I can't trust Elliott not to run over him or tackle him!

Thanksgiving Recap

What a wonderful Thanksgiving! We started the morning early with the Turkey Trot in Chillicothe. Erik wasn't able to run because of an injury, but Meg and Aunt Laura walked the 5k and Mom pushed Elliott while I carried Jonas in the 1-mile walk. It felt good to move a little before all the food we knew we would consume! Around noon everyone came to our house for some appetizers and to watch football. We had planned to have another football game in the backyard but everyone seemed to prefer to nap a little instead. We squeezed in a short photo shoot in the afternoon for our family and Kelsey's and then everyone went to Mom and Dad's for dinner. We ended up with 17 adults and 8 kids - what a full house!

The table looked beautiful, thanks to Meg, Mom, Kelsey and Malachi.
The kids had their own special table in the sunroom. What a great idea!!

As you can see, we had an incredible spread!

Jonas enjoyed snuggling with Grammy Litter.

The THREE new additions since last Thanksgiving!

Walker was NOT happy about sitting for a picture with these babies!

We missed having the other side of our family with us this year, but know you all had a wonderful day too! Maybe next year?!

Cookies!

Last Wednesday Meg, Kelsey, Kim, Mom and I got together to bake cookies for the Lloyd Company's annual Open House. We ended up with 6 kids in the house and we were still able to get about 30 dozen cookies made! Pretty impressive, huh?!

Oliver was happy. Jonas was too, except not in this picture!

Walker's pretty cute...even when he's getting in trouble, which happens quite often.
Adeline and Elliott always have fun together. Especially when they're sliding down the stairs or doing other things that probably shouldn't be allowed.

Malachi was in school for half the day so he didn't get a picture. He was a good taste-tester when he came home though!

Aunt Meg

These kiddos love their Aunt Meggie!

We're missing Kelsey's kids but I don't think Meg could have handled three more on her lap anyways! We were so lucky to have Megan in Bainbridge almost the entire week. She was a big help with baking and decorating for Thanksgiving, and watching and entertaining kids all week...oh, we also got to have lots of fun together in the meantime!

Thanksgiving

We have a lot to be thankful for and here are our top 3:

Are We Crazy?

Erik knew exactly how I'd like to celebrate my birthday, so he surprised me by inviting some of our friends over for pizza and cake tonight. All along I thought we were going to my parents' for dinner, but at six o'clock there was a knock at the door and people just started piling in! After the first few seconds of mentally checking the condition of my house (floor swept?, toilets scrubbed?, counters cleared off?, etc.) I relaxed and realized having so many people I love together at my house is one of my absolute favorite things. We are so blessed with such wonderful people in our lives!

Here's a picture of all the kiddos that were here tonight:
Wow, that's 16 kids in case you lost track! Thank goodness for the basement!

Erik, good job. You're the best and I love you. Thank you to everyone who helped me (and Anna who also had a birthday today!) celebrate!

My Silly Daredevil

Doesn't Elliott look like a sweet big brother?
Well, he is. Most of the time. But then the rest of the time he's more like this:

He's a force to be reckoned with! It's pretty much my full time job to keep him safe. Or rather to keep Jonas safe from him!

Jammies and Legos

Saturday was just one of those days. We didn't have plans so the boys got to do exactly what they wanted: stay in jammies all day and play legos! It was so fun to see them playing together so well...until Elliott messed up Malachi's creation!

And just in case you wondered what the other little guy was up to while all the lego construction was going on, here he is!

September Babies!

My Grandma Litter has 9 children (mom's number 6), 15 grandchildren, 20 great-grandchildren and 1 great-great-grandchild. Out of that many people and including everyone who has married into the family, there were NO birthdays in September...until this year! And now we have two - Audrey Alice was born on September 10th and Jonas joined her on the 22nd. Grammy Litter looks pretty happy about these additions, don't you think?

Litter Family Fun Day

This year Megan had the (brilliant) idea of having a Family Fun Day at Grandma Litter's. Mom and Laura thought it sounded like a good idea and made it happen - with quite a few fun activities such as the "Scarecrow Throw," a box maze for the kids, picture booth and dress up costumes, pumpkin painting, homemade bird feeders, Halloween search and find tub, Aunt Tweed's homemade donuts, silly string war, an adult scavenger hunt (I don't have pictures of this because I was carrying Jonas and leading my Aunt Kim who was wrapped up like a mummy!), and lots of apple butter stirring! We ended up having almost 50 people show up and canned a total of 151 pints of apple butter - YUM!

I had lots of pictures and couldn't narrow it down any more than this, so enjoy!