'Tis the Season!

It's been over a month since my last post but just as I've been too busy to post I am sure all of you have been too busy baking, shopping, or wrapping to read our blog! In case you have any free time before Santa arrives, here are a few pics of the kids enjoying the Christmas season!

Our annual tradition of cutting down our tree at Deer Hill Farm in Princeton continued again this year. And just like it has done almost every year, it started to snow flurry while we were hunting for our tree. We decided this year that they must have a magic snow making machine hidden in the tree forest!!

The kids are enjoying the tree and get so excited every morning when we light it up (at 6:30am each morning - can't wait to see our light bill this month!!) I haven't been able to keep presents under it this year though - Sophia started unwrapping them all one day so I had to move them all back up into our secret hiding spot!

Evan has been very excited this year to count down to Christmas Eve and has been keeping very good track for us on the advent calendars.


One thing Evan is asking for this year for Christmas is his front tooth - actually probably two front teeth, as the other one is about to pop out at any moment! He's growing up too fast, losing teeth already :(

Sophia is growing up too fast too - she's almost 17 months old and is doing great! She's so much fun - a little rascal. She has no fear and therefore usually has a visible bruise somewhere on her forehead (right now it's her chin that's bruised). I can tell we'll have our hands full with her. Evan was never this brave at this age. He was content to roll his cars along the carpet or inspect tags on all his toys at this age for hours on end. Sophia never sits still and is constantly wanting to be around her brother. She's a good girl though and we love her to pieces!

Sophia is our own "Elf on the Shelf"! Her favorite place to sit since we put up our Christmas tree is behind it, on the heater shelf. She is always behind the tree, having her bottle, playing with toys or just hiding from us quietly. Honestly one day I thought she had disappeared - Ev and I couldn't find her anywhere. I was actually starting to panic when I spotted her behind the tree, quiet as a mouse, hiding...she is a rascal!!

Evan had his holiday music concert and party last week at nursery school. He did a great job clapping and ringing his bell - it was really cute and he was SO excited for it this year - He just loves school these days!

Kissing under the Mistletoe!


Merry Christmas Everyone!

Naughty or Nice??

Well, for those of you who haven't already heard (Evan's been telling everyone he has seen in the last 24 hours), Evan's letter to Santa is officially on its way to the North Pole! This is the first year that Evan actually has written a letter to Santa - if you could call it a letter. It did have a proper salutation - "Dear Santa" at the top and a proper closing - "Love Evan" at the bottom, but the body of the letter was just a list, line by line, of what he would like this year for Christmas. No introductions, no fluff, no brown-nosing. Me, being the English major and all, was thinking along the lines of "Dear Santa, my name is Evan Pelletier and I live on Lowell Ave"...blah blah blah..."I've been so good this year and I really hope you'll bring me a new toy" blah blah blah.. Instead it read:
Dear Santa,
Follow Me Thomas
Logging Adventure
Batcave
Speedway
Love,
Evan
I encouraged him to at least add "I've been a good boy this year" at the end! He did good though and actually wrote every word all by himself - with our help spelling of course. It was really cute! And he could hardly wait until school was over to head to Santa's Mailbox to send it on its way (Macy's has a special mailbox for letters going to the North Pole which also helps fund the Make a Wish Foundation). It was super cute! Nana joined us and we actually made an afternoon of it - eating pizza in the food court and riding the Carousel. It reminded me of our fun trips to Chestnut Hill with my own Nana Flurry growing up. A nice way to start the holiday season!!

Sophia the Chatterbox at 15 months!

Hard to believe Miss Sophia is 15 months old! We took a video of her this week in the tub - chattering away. She has a ton of words already - some of her favorites are cookie, backpack, babybel (the cheese), moon, balloon - kind of random first words. Although I remember Evan wasn't talking much at all at 15 months but a couple of the words that he was trying to say were downstairs and dumptruck. Again...random for first words - certainly not easy ones!!! Anyways, we captured Sophia chattering away during her bath and thought the distant relatives would enjoy seeing her at this fun age! I haven't been able to post any videos in about 3 months so I finally took some time to try to figure out the problem tonight. I believe I needed to sign up for YouTube, as it seemed to only be accepting this type of video. This is new to me, so I think the video does show up but then there are some random videos of Snoop Dog or something afterwards which aren't mine so just disregard and bear with me while I figure out the whole YouTube process. (I am only about 4 years behind, right??!) Enjoy!

Halloween!

The kids had a great Halloween this year, despite the colder temps! Mommy, on the other hand, pretty much missed out on Halloween altogether this year, due to an icky bout of the stomach flu that had me bedridden and quarantined from the kids for 3 days! To kick off the weekend, we had planned to take Evan to the Roger Williams Zoo Halloween "Spooktacular" on Saturday evening but had to scrap our plans. Jeff quickly stepped in and tried to create a very miniature "Spooktacular" of his own on Lowell Ave. and carved a few pumpkins with the kids. Kudos once again Daddy to your artistic abilities! Ev was much more into the "spookiness" and "scariness" of Halloween this year and he and Jeff had lots of fun lighting the pumpkins Saturday night and trying to spook each other in the dark. Jeff said that one of Ev's screams was actually movie-worthy, in fact, I heard it all the way through my closed window and through the cocoon of blankets I was wrapped under in my bed!
I was able to at least get out of bed, take a shower and make it downstairs for a couple hours on Halloween night. I even made it outside to take a couple of pictures and to take Sophia and Ev to two houses to trick-or-treat. Jeff took over from there and I took Sophia inside where she and I had the hard job of sitting in the warm house, watching the Pats game and handing out candy. (Do you think Jeff was upset about that??!!! just a little!) Jeff braved the cold temps and escorted Superman through the rest of the neighborhood. Sophia was surprisingly more into Halloween than I thought she would be. She LOVED her costume and proudly ran to the door each time the doorbell rang to greet the trick-or-treaters...it was really cute! Jeff and Nana ended the evening by taking the kids over to visit Grammy Dot on Alpha Road, an annual tradition that both she and the kids look forward to. Uncle Bob and Aunt Karen were also there with treats for the kids! The one tradition I really missed this year was meeting up with the Carlson/Carpenter/Berube clan for our annual Halloween trick-or-treat on Lowell Ave. Hopefully we can resume that again next year. I did get a peek of them from the doorway as they came up the street and they were a scary bunch, as usual!! ;) Here are a few pics from the weekend....

The green pumpkin on the end was one that Evan planted and grew himself this year! We planted lots of seeds this summer (probably a bit too late) and though we had lots of "possibilities", in the end, this was the only pumpkin that made it - I think if we had planted the seeds a bit earlier it would have ripened in time. Regardless, Ev was so proud of it!

My sweet little strawberry and my big strong Superman!!

The very spooky Pelletier house

Sophia and Ev trick-or-treating at the McKinnons

At the O'Neills

Sophia's back from trick-or-treating, now she wants to eat her loot!

"Please Mommy, just one?"

Sophia rushing to greet the trick-or-treaters!

What a scary bunch!

Happy Halloween Grammy Dot!

Happy 5th Birthday Evan!!

It's hard to believe Ev is 5 years old! We celebrated all last weekend with both family and some "little" friends! Even Cousin Emilia flew all the way from England to celebrate with her cousin Ev - that was the best present of all! Here are a few pictures from the festivities. As you can see from the pictures, Ev chose a Cat in the Hat theme this year - the first year since his 2nd birthday that he didn't choose "Thomas"!

A beautiful Fall day at Tougas Farm

Happy 91st Birthday Grammy Dot!

Thanks to Aunt Karen and Uncle Bob for hosting a wonderful party last night - I'm still full from a delicious meal and tons of cake!!

Rail Trail

Compliments of Hank Ouellette....you can tell he has a nice camera - these are so much more clear than the pics I take with my rinky dink camera!! He was taking pics of the Rail Trail event yesterday and snapped a few cute ones of the kids. Ev was actually up in the conductor's seat on the train!

An early Bday gift.....

Ev has been a very patient little boy and even though he probably could have used a new bike at the beginning of the summer, we had decided to wait until his birthday. People were starting to ask if he was practicing to be a clown in the circus, that's how funny this big, almost 5-year old looked on his 12" bike!!! We took him to Toys R Us last night and had him try a few different bikes/sizes, and settled on a 16" snazzy bike with NO training wheels as an early birthday gift. No joke, before I had even opened my eyes in bed this morning, Ev was in my room, completely dressed - he had made his bed, started his breakfast and already completed 3 checkmarks on his "responsibilities chart" (and checked them off too) all before 7:15am this morning! To say he was excited would be an understatement!! He was riding his bike by 7:20am before Jeff and I even had time to have a cup of coffee! Here are a few pics of his new wheels. I also included a couple pics of Sophia at 13 months old - she, too, is just growing up TOO fast!! (Don't you just love her "bling")?? :)

A fun day at the beach!

We decided to take advantage of the nice weather and venture up to Ogunquit, ME for the day Saturday. What a beautiful day it was! Despite the cold water temps, Ev spent hours swimming and riding waves, and both kids enjoyed playing in the sand. It was the Festival of Kites so there were tons of kites on the beach too, which was neat for the kids to see. We hiked part of the Marginal Way and then had dinner and ice cream. I just love the beach in September! Here are a few pics of my little beach bums!

Jeff's Big Hike

Even Hurricane Earl didn't scare Jeff away from hiking Mt. Washington this past weekend - he said there were 50mph sustained winds at the summit with 70mph wind gusts. I'm not sure which would be more scary to me - hiking to the top in those conditions or driving to the top with Uncle Dave behind the wheel, which is how we made it to the summit two years ago - both seem equally as treacherous!! ;) Good job Jeff!

Ev's 1st day of School!

Long time, no post! I hope to be better about posting this fall. My problem is that we moved our computer downstairs to the playroom/basement so I am barely on the computer now and often don't even get around to checking my email on a daily basis. I feel very out of the loop! I'll try to be better so you can see how much the kids are changing, especially Sophia!
Today was Evan's first day of school. He was very excited to go back this year and when I picked him up afterwards he said that "school was wonderful today!" He was in the same classroom, with the same teachers and most of the same kids - there are about 5 or 6 new little kids in his class this year. He is most excited about his field trip this fall and being able to ride the school bus to get there. This will be his first field trip (they go to the apple orchard) and he has been talking about it constantly since I mentioned it last week! Here are a couple pictures from today. As you can see, Sophia was happy to bring her big brother to school too - no one could believe how much she grew over the summer and how great she is walking. She was barely crawling at the end of the school year last spring. The last picture was his class coming in from the playground at the end of the morning. Too cute!