Handprint Snowman Ornaments, Take Two

One of these days I'll wrap up my holiday posts and actually move on to January events...

Back in December, the boys and I sat down to create their annual Christmas ornaments to family members (and teachers). Thanks to my new discovery, pinterest, I decided on a variation of last year's handprint snowman ornaments.

I liked that these weren't on the glass balls (which have a good chance of breaking through the years), and that if someone wanted, they could simply hang it as a decoration rather than as an ornament.

Alex's finished products:

Alex customized several of his. The one for my mom, for instance, included a SnowGranny with gray hair. Alex's were also unique in that many of them had a distinct rock star/zombie feel to them.

Here are Ryan's finished products:

Can you tell I helped a bit on his faces? ;)

We even made special pink and purple ones for Laurel and Audrey!

The only hard part was deciding which ones to keep for myself...

The LEGO Cul-De-Sac

After Christmas, we headed up to Dallas for a few days. Our first stop was the new LEGOLAND Discovery Center that had opened up there this Spring.

We were all excited, especially our resident LEGO expert, Ryan. Here he is taking a picture with his new LEGO camera of me taking a picture of him outside the center.

Despite the fact that we had reserved tickets ahead of time, we still had to wait in line for over an hour before we could get inside. This did not start things off well for Team Danger.

It did give me a chance to admire the LEGO Christmas tree on display, though, and decide that I want to have the boys make these next year as Christmas presents.

Finally, the big moment arrived and we were granted entry to LEGO mecca.

Except... it wasn't quite the LEGO mecca we were all expecting.

I knew that it was just a "discovery center" and not a full-fledged LEGOLAND, and I had done my best to explain this to the boys before we went. But after our visit to the San Diego LEGOLAND 2.5 years ago, we were expecting just a little bit more.

When you enter, Professor Bric-a-Brac engages the kids and teaches them how they "make" LEGOs.

 The boys were excited to participate.

 But in the end, the result was so hokey and so brief that Alex and Ryan were not amused.

There was a cool ride you can then go on.

But it was sort of a low-rent Buzz Lightyear Space Ranger Spin that was over way too quickly, and which you couldn't ride more than once.

Other than that, there was one other flying ride, a giant playscape that really wasn't very LEGO like, and a 4D LEGO movie theater. The boys spent the bulk of the time in the plasycape.

 There were also some cars you could build out of LEGOs and then race down a ramp, and this tower you can build and then shake so you can test how sturdy your building design is.

The best part of the visit was seeing how they had constructed Dallas' big landmarks out of LEGOs. It would have been nice to see some other Texas cities as well, the way that the San Diego and Orlando LEGOLANDs also includes San Francisco, Las Vegas, New York and Washington D.C.

It even included a display of our hotel for the next few nights, the Gaylord Texan.

At the end, Alex commented that it really wasn't much of a LEGO "land.".

More of a LEGO City, I suggested?

Nope, Alex thought it was more of a LEGO Street.

Well, not even a full Street.

Just a LEGO Cul-De-Sac.

New Year's Time Capsule

One of the joys (problems?) with kids being able to read is that Alex read in a magazine an article called "Family Traditions to Start NOW!" And since he is all about family traditions, we started a new one this year and created a New Year's Time Capsule.

Basically, the boys filled out a questionnaire about themselves listing their favorite things. We're going to pack in away with the Christmas decorations, and then New Year's Day, they will fill out a new one. Afterwards, we'll read their old ones and compare notes.

Some of their answers were expected, like Ryan's favorite color is blue, and Alex's favorite thing to do outside is play soccer. And that both boys listed carrots as their favorite vegetable, since that's about the only vegetable I can get them to voluntarily eat. But there were many surprises waiting for us. Like Ryan wants 108 children when he grows up, and Alex wants to live with us when he grows up. We were also a bit surprised to hear that Alex listed his best friend as Britten, a boy we've never heard anything about. And that Ryan listed Giles (his new BFF this year in kindergarten) and his cousins Connor and Matthew. But neither boy listed each other as their best friend. They also both wrote down they loved to race their brother. Neither Carl nor I could begin to imagine where this competitive streak comes from...

I was glad that Ryan was able to fill out all the answers himself. He needed help reading them, but he felt more than comfortable writing all his own words. They were filled with fun spellings, which I have to admit I kind of love.

Of course, after we did this I found some cuter examples online of what other people have done, so next year I hope to take this to the next level.

Christmas Morning

 
Christmas morning started at a decent 7:36 a.m. Once again, Santa left a few smaller items in the boys stockings hung outside their room, and I'm pretty confident this bought us at least an hour. Especially since most of those smaller items were mini LEGO sets which required assembly.

 Santa also left a few items in their main stockings by the chimney.

 We had a great morning, and everyone got what their hearts most desired.

Even superhero LEGOs.

 And Harry Potter robes, scarves, glasses and brooms, to go with the wands they picked up this summer at Wizarding World.

 When the morning was over, we had a great big mess, Ryan at play on the floor with his Power Ranger Samurai Megazord, Alex walking around with his Guitar Jamz, and Carl busy with .... my iPad.

The End of theYear of Shamus

Even though I was massively under the weather, we spent December 23 at Sea World. It was the last use for our year long passes, and we just love going to Sea World at Christmas time to see how beautifully its decorated.

The weather was cold - very cold  - but it was dry. So Atlantis was out. The kids rode on all the kid themed rides, like the Shamu coaster.

And then we had several special events planned. The first was lunch with Shamu. We'd never done this before, but this year on Black Friday they had a sale so I could buy the lunch tickets at 60% off. So we did.

This was great, and we all agreed it was a very special Sea World memory. You get to go back behind the Shamu stage, eat a buffet lunch (Alex, who has been obsessed with buffets since Disney, was over the moon), and you watch the trainers train the orcas.

They come up very close to where you are, and the boys loved it. They especially loved the trainer, and asked him a LOT of questions.

We walked through the Candy Cane Forest, where Alex, much to my disgust, did his best Christmas Story impersonation.

 And we watched the Polar Express in 4-D once again. It didn't snow the way it had in years, past. Bummer.

Our other special event was that we had milk and cookies with Santa and Mrs. Claus.
 

And we always love just walking around the park at Sea World. You never know who you are going to meet!

 

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Santa Comes to Town

We've been tracking Santa's progress all day across the globe thanks to NORAD - right now Santa is in Rio de Janeiro.

And yesterday, we finally had a chance for some good one on one time with Santa Claus.

As suspected, Ryan had a hard time limited his requests for Santa. But the jolly old elf said he would do his best for him, but laughed, "No promises, ho ho ho..."

 Alex limited his request to just one item: the remote controlled video spy plane. His grandparents are supposed to be giving him this tomorrow, and I'm a little afraid that he might be disappointed he has to wait until the afternoon to get it. He's expecting it to come from Santa, so we'll see how this goes.

One of the pluses of watching Santa's flight across the world, is that once Santa leaves Europe, the boys freak out he is on his way to the Americas, so they went to bed nice and early. And they instructed us to hurry on to bed, too. They know Santa won't stop by if anyone is still awake, you see. If only I didn't still have a million things to do...

The Lunch Chefs

While Carl and I were finally outside decorating the house, the boys were mostly inside to avoid the cold and let Alex rest.

They would come out periodically to ask us if they could do something or eat something or watch something, and several times they asked us when it was lunch time. Apparently, they got tired of hearing "later" as an answer, because they took matters into their own hands.

Around noon, Ryan came outside and announced it was time to come inside for lunch. Carl and I came in, and the boys had not only completely set the table for us, but they had "cooked" and put plates of food and drinks at our spots.

Now, this wasn't exactly the lunch I would have prepared, but the fact that my boys had warmed up leftover pasta, sausage, "tore" up some salami and ham, poured out some shredded cheese, and added a Christmas cookie to the plate made this just about the greatest lunch I've ever been served.

The best part? Dessert was still to come, because as we were told, the cookie on our plates was part of "lunch," and should in no way be considered dessert.