Christmas and more!

'Twas the night before Christmas and all through the house every Szolusha was stirring preparing for the celebration of the birth of Jesus. Axel was equipped with kitchen utensils in hand, excited that Santa would taste his baked cake, as fast as he can. 

 Last minute decorations and frosting by Axel were put on after a nice new aged Christmas service was attended. There were cookies, hot cocoa, and coffee consumed while Axel listened to a new Christmas story about little Sammy giving to the poor and celebrating what Jesus stands for.

 Mommy Szolusha was afraid Axel would wake so she drugged him with Zyrtec a little too late (9pm). Christmas morning mommy was patiently waiting as the clock struck 845am before the little Axel awoke. Mommy got up and made breakfast and lattes while daddy and Axel kept dreaming their dreams. Finally, the Szolushas were up, here is Axel giving Louis a Christmas doggy cookie while mommy is eating.

 After  the stockings were open daddy and Axel took a break to eat their Christmas french toast.

 And then it was time to open Santa's big gift. It was the easel Axel didn't know he wanted until Christmas morning.

 Here he is working hard on his first painting.

 It is a green house with a blue roof and chimney and a red hawk who is chasing Miss Elisa, a neighbor, through the woods.

 And here is Axel's first drawing of a picture of pregnant mommy.... this daddy and I thought was a masterpiece!

 Home made pizzas were made for dinner....with the cooked egg on top daddy's gourmet treat!

 On Friday, yesterday, we had the privilege of meeting the McFarren four at the Children's discovery museum. Axel has a lot of fun showing his cousins Sophie and Jack around the place. I love this picture of them working together to blow the big bubble.

 Jack is amazing and has no fear. He loves to get right in the mix with his big sis and Axel. Axel and Sophie are apparently more timid with Axel the winner at this point only wanting to watch from the outside. Later Axel asked me why he didn't go in and I had to tell him I really don't know why he didn't want to go in and join in on the fun.

 I thought this was a great picture of Axel with the McFarrens looking at a bird feeder.

 And then again at the fossils.

 I believe the favorite part of the visit for all of the kids was playing in the water. Poor little Jack got soaked when we went back for more play time in the water because there were no more rain jackets and the kids had to wear their own jackets. Although, the McFarrens had to go after that we were glad for the visit with them and hope to see them again soon!

After we said goodbye Axel wanted to go back in for a little more fun and exploration. He found this room  that was full of a giant cardboard maze/ castle. Axel had fun running around for 15 minutes through all of the little mazes. 

 Here is a better idea of how cool this cardboard maze/castle was. What a great idea! After a few more minutes of fun we headed home ourselves for lunch and quiet time.

 The day ended and began with a doctor's appointment for me and the baby. In the morning I found out that I measured over 3 weeks small, where the week before I measured right on target. The doctor scheduled me for an ultrasound in the late afternoon to double check the baby's growth. We went all together to the afternoon appointment so that Axel could watch a movie and get a certificate to come into the labor and delivery room with us just in case I go into labor and no one is available to stay with Axel at home until Auntie arrives or before Dad and Sonia arrive on January 12th. The good news is the baby is perfect and currently weighs over 6 pounds. The reason why I measure small is because her head has fully dropped into my pelvis. The doctor informed me that my body is already getting ready to deliver baby girl Szolusha. Keith is guessing she will come in a week and my guess is two weeks. Yesterday evening I packed my hospital bag and Keith installed the car seat. Now all we have to do is pick a name and wait for her to let us know she is ready for her big debut!

Christmas before Christmas

Axel's piggy bank was finally full to the brim and he is finally able to count to 50, so we had a great time sorting and counting Axel's money this past week. 

 You can see how excited Axel was to empty Mr. Piggy.

 On Friday, Axel went to visit Santa again. He really wanted to wear his ti-dye shirt again. The picture looks very similar to last year with the same Santa, nearly the same outfit on Axel and the same smile. The only real difference is that Axel is a year older and has shorter hair now.

 On Saturday we had our little family Christmas with Auntie, Uncle, Grandma Susan and Grandpa Brian. They were kind enough to come to our house to shower our future baby girl with lots of clothes/gifts and to shower Axel and us with a great Christmas gathering. It was so nice to have the family together. It has been a long time since just the 7 of us got together.

 Axel was so excited to see Auntie he couldn't wait to tell her all he knows about Christmas and the Grinch. He even read "the Grinch that Stole Christmas to her and Uncle Ryan" with a little help from them of course.

 Keith and I had a great idea of having a family activity of decorating Christmas sugar cookies. The five of us had a great time letting our creative juices flow while we patiently waited for Grandma and Grandpa to arrive.

 I was equally impressed by how good everyone was at decorating cookies.

  This batch turned out much better than the previous batch.

Axel continues to be Mr. Funny Man. Here he is joking that he is going to eat his cookie creation. We were all snacking on chips and salsa because we were getting hungry. Axel decided to snack on chips and frosting, but when I caught him dipping multiple chips in the frosting he decided to place a frosted chip on the cookie he was decorating at the time instead of eating it. 

 I didn't get a lot of good pictures because my phone doesn't take the best of pictures, but I wanted to capture the two couples. Here they all are enjoying themselves.

 All in all we had a great day and feel very thankful for the time we were able to share with them.

 This morning we went to our neighbors house for a late breakfast. Axel got to play with Max and Rishaan together for the first time in a month. All of the boys have been off and on sick so we haven't had all of the families together in awhile. Rishaan had to leave early so Axel continued to play with Max. Here is a cute picture of them pretending to go to school.

 This evening has been a lazy time of watching football and playing games. More football than game playing, as you can see below.

 My sister and I loved reading cereal boxes growing up. Axel took interest in this Life cereal box this past week and we have done the activities on the back over a half a dozen times. He wanted to do it with every meal despite the fact that no cereal was involved. I thought this picture was really cute because he looks like such an old little man here. He is always surprising me with his intelligence and it is exciting to see him develop over the weeks and months.

Axel has no child care for the next two and a half weeks so we are looking forward to some more one and one quality time with Axel as well as family time with the three of us before baby girl Szolusha arrives. With four weeks to go it really could be anytime. We want to wish everyone a Merry Christmas just in case we don't get to post before then!

Holiday Fun

 Here are a cute few pictures of Louis and Axel from last Sunday when we took our family photo for our Christmas card. Axel still loves to pretend that he is a doggy at times. 

Louis is such a good sport when it comes to being dressed up or playing with Axel. He takes a lot of abuse and we are lucky to have such a good dog.

Axel had a grand idea of building his train tracks around the Christmas tree. He has one automatic battery operated train, Diesel, that can go around by itself. It has been hours of fun since the tree went up.

On Saturday, Axel went to his friends birthday party. Here he is decorating a cookie, I mean, tasting the frosting. All of the kids decorated a cookie to be a wheel on the 3D train cake that was made for the party.

Here is the master piece with marshmallows and all. Axel really wanted to eat it. He actually ended up taking this one home and making a different one for the train cake.

The week before our neighbor hosted the annual holiday party where all of the neighbors get together to mingle. Here Annika, Axel's babysitter, is holding him and Sophia. Sophia is Max's sister and over the past 6 months or so Annika started babysitting Max and Sophia as well as Axel. She is turning into the neighborhood babysitter. I absolutely loved doing this myself when I was in high school. It is cool to see here really enjoy the kids company.

This weekend we made and decorated sugar cookies for this first time as a family. Axel takes after his daddy and loves this type of thing. I am not sure if it is because he likes the arts and crafts part or the eating of these sweet projects. This was a three day project. One night the dough was made. The second night the cookies were rolled out and cooked.

The next morning was the high light of the project where we all decorated them.

Can you see how meticulous Axel is? This makes me so proud. I would love to take all of the credit for this trait, but when it comes to sweet treats, Keith is just as detailed oriented as I am with everything else :)

Here is the finished product. I have to get better at making the frosting. We hope to have more colors the next time we do this, which is suppose to be this weekend. I have a feeling we might postpone this until next year, but we will see if time permits this fun activity.

Axel has been receiving gifts from all of his grandparents. Grandma Sonia said Axel had one gift that he could open early. He politely called to ask permission to open it "now".  He received the book Rudolf the Red Nosed Reindeer read by Grandma Sonia herself. It has been the hit of the week. We have already gone through a set of batteries. I think he has listened to it over one hundred times. Thank you Grandma Sonia!

We are looking forward to this upcoming weekend. We have Auntie Shannon, Uncle Ryan, Grandma Susan and hopefully Grandpa Brian all visiting to spend an early Christmas with us since I am not sure if I will be able to travel over the holidays. With the baby coming in just a few short weeks we will have to see what the doctor says next week. I really don't want to take the chance of going into labor hours from home. 

It looks like the Szolushas will have a quite Christmas with church on Christmas Eve and present opening on Christmas Day. It will be nice to having a relaxing day since I plan on working Christmas Eve and the day after Christmas. 

Christmas is in the air!

We ordered a new 9 foot Christmas tree on black Friday and it arrived on Tuesday! Axel and I were so excited we spent over an hour putting it up and shaping the tree. Daddy also joined in on the fun when he got home from work. Wednesday was all about putting up the lights and Thursday Axel and I spent the day putting up Christmas ornaments. 

 Axel loves it as much as I do. He really wanted to decorate and re-decorate the tree all day long. It brought tears to my eyes when he said how beautiful the Christmas tree was and how much he loves it. He is hoping we will find a small tree for his room for next year during the after Christmas sales.

 His favorite part about decorating came when I found the colored glass ball ornaments in the attic. His first thought was "bingleballs" from the Grinch. Here he is reciting a few lines from the movie and pretending he is the Grinch.

 It is absolutely adorable hearing him pretend to be the Grinch.

 Here he is looking at more bingleballs that he took down to organize, fix and then re-hang on the tree. I had to tell him that he cannot continue to play with them because they are made of glass and are really designed for decoration purposes only. He finally got the point when he broke one and is now extra careful only replacing or rehanging a couple per day instead of every single bingleball that he can reach (which is nearly all   36 of them since he wouldn't let me help him hang them on the tree.)

 Here is the finished product. The only thing we are missing is a tree topper. We haven't found an LED lit star one that we all like so we might not get one until next year, but that is okay by me. I rather wait and find the perfect one than to buy one just for the sake of having one.

 Axel continues to have a great imagination. He is very inventive. When I got out of the shower yesterday I found him with the tape making his own train of trucks. It was cool to see him figure out that the tape stays better with an anchor tape perpendicular to the tape attaching the trucks. I had to put a limit on the use of the tape only because I really didn't want the entire roll of tape consumed for this one project of his.

We went to the doctor on Thursday just to double check Axel's skin and this dry cough he has been having. I am proud to say that Axel weighs 29 pounds with his clothes on. I knew he was getting heavier and that it  wasn't just me getting weaker! It is funny though, how Axel always tells me how strong he is and that he needs to help me lift and move things around the house. He is the best helper anyone could ask for. I have been so blessed with how much he is growing up. He has helped me every step of the way over the past few months. He helped me put together his new furniture, he helped me go through baby clothes, organize his sister's room, decorate his room and his sister's room, decorate for Halloween, Thanksgiving and now Christmas.  I love what a great helper he is and hope it continues.

We have lots of fun activities coming with the holidays upon us so check back soon for more Szolusha fun!