Best Friends are 3 Today!

I have such a hard believing that 3 years ago today my sweet, adorable twin baby boys were born.  It is such a privilege to have twins and so much fun to watch them grow together.  They are the best of friends and I have enjoyed watching them learn to crawl, walk, talk and play together.  They are a perfect pair together and yet have such different personalities.  I pray they will always be each others best friends and there for one another ALWAYS.  

Cooper is 2 minutes older and is so passionate. His emotions are able to flip like a switch from screaming upset to sounding so sweet and saying "I love you", in the blink of an eye.  He is very technical and pays very close attention to detail.  He usually doesn't mind having some time to himself and can play alone well.  He is a rule follower most of the time.  He loves to ask "why?" to everything.  I love his big blue eyes and the heart he has.

Cohen is also extremely passionate.  He is extremely loving and gives the best hugs ever.  He literally wraps his entire body around you.  He asks to hold Parker every morning the minute I grab him out of his crib.  We call him monkey boy because he climbs on things, like a real monkey.  He is mischievous and loves to know as much as possible.   Cohen  is very social and would prefer playing with someone than alone.  He has learned to turn on the charm and bat his eyes when he wants something. 

Happy Birthday to my sweet boys,  I love you with all my heart!!!

Christmas Festivities

Holy pictures over load.  I just lumped all the Christmas activities that happened over the week into one post.  So be prepared, I gave you warning stop now if you've seen enough of my kids.  

Here we go. We had to make our cookies for Santa.  That was hilarious to watch them all try to roll out their own dough because they insisted they could do it themselves of course.  We finally made some progress once they allowed Mitch and I to give a helping hand.  We waited until Monday morning to decorate them.  One activity per day is enough and clean up.  I think Santa is used to having a tiny bit of cookie along with his mounds of icing on his cookies.  They loved the sprinkles as well WOW!!!  Luckily we had plenty of sprinkles because we went through a lot of them.

The kids even got some snow while Daddy was already off work.  Thank goodness or they would have been begging me to take them out, which would have been hard to accomplish with Parker. We got to stay inside and make hot chocolate for them when they were finished.  

Christmas Eve we went to my parents that morning to celebrate with them.  We spent most of the day there and opened gifts and enjoyed a late lunch.  We enjoyed our Christmas Eve service at church.  I always love listening to our good friend and Pastor, Steve give wonderful messages and that night was no acceptation.  We headed to my grandparents and celebrated with my Dad's side of the family once church was out.  The kids did so well considering they had such a long day and Parker was the only one the napped.  One of our family traditions is getting new p.j's on Christmas Eve to wear before Santa comes. So they were all nice and cozy and dressed for bed before we left.  After some good family fun we headed home.  All 3 boys passed out in the car after being on the road for 2 minutes.  Payton stayed up and was able to put out reindeer food, pick out Santa's cookies and milk.

Christmas morning seeing the kids so excited is one of the greatest joys of being a parent.  I don't think anyone was disappointed.  Payton was the only one that actually asked Santa for anything and she was so sure he would bring her a hula hop, and amazingly he did.  Cooper and Cohen each got a dump truck and Parker got an animal stacker.  They played with their new toys and then Mitch's family came over late morning and we had brunch and then opened gifts with them.  We are so blessed and the kids are lucky to have such a great Aunt and Uncle.  They even had the boys birthday present since they won't be in town for their party.  We played games later in the afternoon during naptime. 

We had a great Christmas!! It's so hard to believe it's all over and the new year is around the corner.  Time goes by so fast it's crazy.  We loved spending good time with family and enjoyed having Mitch have a couple extra days off work and have us all together.  We hope everyone had a great Christmas!

yes, he found the tree

 ready for cookie making

 loving cutting out cookies

 rolling out the dough

 pretty much just making a huge mess :)

 only way to decorate cookies is with your shirt off

 Payton wearing her apron

 Cohen helping pull the sleid

 lets go

cute boys

 Blanton celebration

 train time

 Oh... that's for me, THX

 look another gift

 Mimi and Cohen

 Cooper and Papa Jim

 In our Christmas p.j.'s

 Pepa and the babies

 my sweet girl after putting food out for the reindeers 

 cookies for Santa 

 Santa came

 Cohen in his stocking

 Parker checkin out his present

 Cooper sportin his new hat

 Christmas breakfast

 Payton ready to dig in to her gifts

 the boys enjoying their trucks

 Peek-a-boo

 Aunt Jodi

 Lovin with Uncle Sean

 beat!

Union Station Christmas Fun

Mitch took the day off so we could enjoy some fun Christmas family fun.  We invited Amy and the kids to join us because Noah loves trains just as much as the boys do.  We figured with 3 adults we could handle 7 children 5 and under!  We got positive results.  The kids did a great job they had so much fun seeing the trains and listened pretty well considering.  It was busy but could have been much worse. They got to ride the small train and see all the small trains set up.  They boys were in heaven and the girls enjoyed it as well.  

When the kids had enough of watching the trains we walked to Crown Center and enjoyed lunch at Fritz's. We decided the divide and conquer approach was the best solution.  Mitch stood in line at Fritz's, Amy needed to feed Emmett, and I took the big kids to the crayola store to color to take up time.  Mitch called to have us come down and Amy had just finished feeding and kids were hungry.  Perfect timing! We had such a great day together and even got a couple pictures of Cohen and Mila to start off their slideshow at their wedding.  They are the cutest things together and they are both infatuated with each other. They were hugging, holding hands, and making sure the other was left behind. 

They are so stinkin cute.

Lyman clan

cute kiddos 

 Mila and Cohen

 ridin the train

 look at the trains

 best buds

 they could stay here all day

 colorin their trains

 my little stinker

 Parker had fun with the big kids too

 learning to like trains already

 my blessings

 man are they related or what? Hello Luke!! oh... no that's just your kids.

 color time

 Mila sharing kisses

 Mr. and Mrs. Lyman (someday)