Time Consuming.

T.V. is so time consuming for me. Especially right now with the Olympics. I'm like an Olympics junkie. I love every single second of the Olympics. I love all the sports in both winter and summer. I will watch whatever is on. I love the opening ceremonies, watching all the athletes walk in, imaging how that would feel, learning about the host country through beautiful artistic elements. I love learning about the athletes and their stories. I love Mary Carillo. I'm invested and I feel for the athletes.  I. Love. Every. Second. I eat it up. I would stay up all night for 2.5 weeks to watch every second of every sport.

Alas, I don't and I can't. But my point is this: I've been getting little else done with the Olympics on t.v. And next week when they are over, we are getting rid of our cable. To save money and so we can do swim lessons with the kids. Priorities. And I think it will be good for me.  We mostly watch stuff on network t.v. anyways so we will figure things out.

After t.v. is gone, and the Olympics are over, I will hopefully be blogging more since I'll have more time on my hands (lol probably not as much as I'm imagining.)

Anyways, back to the holiday post part 1 I am WAY behind on. We spent Christmas Eve as I have always remembered it, at my maternal grandparents' house with that side of my family. It wasn't anything special but was so nice. Christmas was extra fun this year with 3 little kiddos running around, especially an almost 3 year old who had to be convinced to open ALL of the presents without playing with anything first.

Enjoy some photos from Christmas Eve...Christmas day coming soon.

Also, this Christmas was a significant step up from last Christmas where Kayla got literally everybody sick.

Oh Christmas Tree!

Normally, I'm completely and totally ready for the holiday season mid November (even before my own birthday!)  But this year, I'm just not feeling in the Christmas spirit.  I'm over tired and overwhelmed and stressed about some stuff going on but I'm trying to make sure to create holiday traditions for my family.  (Sidenote, Elf has gotten really lazy and I stopped taking pictures of his hiding spots.  So elf posts are over.  I have better things to write about. :)  But Elf is still traveling a little bit for Kayla.)

Two weeks ago, I finally insisted we go get a tree.  Justin and I have had 2 real trees (out of three Christmases we've been married - last year we were still with my parents.)  I'm not opposed to a fake tree, but we really don't have the room now.  And there is something a little special about taking the time to go pick a tree together.  We went to a place nearby to pick out our tree after Justin got home from work.  No cutting down our own this year.  We are lucky we got out with two sick kids and all.

Justin and Brody 

Kayla wasn't terribly impressed with the trees

The nice guy offered to take a photo for us!  Our first non professional family photo (I need to be better about this.)

Then I got to thinking about decorating the tree.  Kayla is a little bit too little for real ornaments.  She took a lot of Aunt Meg's ornaments off of her tree at her party.  We also don't have a ton of ornaments anyways and I didn't want to spend a lot of money.  One middle of the night feeding I came up with a brilliant idea (it's amazing how when you become a mom you become just a little bit more crafty.)  I had all this extra red and white felt from making their Halloween costumes so I pulled it out, grabbed a pen and scissors (for mommy and daddy obviously) and we tried to teach Kayla how to trace things.  We made circles and squares and rectangles.  We traced some letters from her bath letters, and Justin tried to show her how to make a snowflake.  Daddy and I cut them out and we put hooks on them and had Kayla help us hang them on the bottom of the tree.  Free, simple, toddler friendly activity.  Yay me!

Daddy making a snowflake

Those are my prenatal vitamins: we were using the bottle for a circle shape.

This is what Brody did. :)

Kayla had a really good nap that day...excuse the bed head.

Hugs for Daddy.

Brody watching Kayla and Daddy make ornaments

We used only a few letters, B, K, M, D, H, G...you get the idea :)

Daddy and his little ones

Crooked star and all, I love it.

"Kayla half" of the tree

Four Hales

Brody

Kayla

What toddler friendly tree ideas do you have?

EOTS Day 5

Random thought first:

Last night, while walking down the hallway to bed, I couldn't help but think about how I felt sad and guilty that Kayla was all alone in her own room while the rest of her family sleeps within 10 feet of each other.

This morning, I woke up thinking, "That lucky little shit."  :)

Elf got into our mail today (Kayla found him right away at breakfast):

Elf on the Shelf

We started doing Elf on the Shelf four days ago with Kayla.  We thought she would enjoy the "hide-and-seek" aspect of the whole premise.  If you are unfamiliar with EOTS, basically you buy the little elf (they come in both genders and my hair, eye and skin color combos!) and then read the book to your kids so they understand the idea.  Basically, Elf sits in your house to "spy" on your kids and reports to Santa every night to tell him if your kids have been good or bad.  He/She then returns to your house in a new position to watch over the kids the next day.

You are supposed to have your child name the Elf when they arrive, however, Kayla doesn't really get naming things quite yet, so for now, our fair skinned, blue eyed boy elf is Elf.  Clever and original. :)  Kayla doesn't really get that the Elf reports to Santa about behavior and she also doesn't really get Santa, but every morning she says "Elf!" and we tell her she has to find where he is.  She has a really hard time with the one EOTS rule, you aren't allowed to touch elf...this is how Kayla feels about that rule:

I decided to take pictures of Elf's spying positions each day so I plan on at least posting that each day or add it on to other posts that I write.  So here is a catch up of days 1-4 plus Kayla's reaction on the first day.

Day 1:

Kayla's Reaction:

Day 2:

Day 3:

Day 4: