can it please be june yet??

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im counting the days!

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nice day at the park

a couple days before christmas all the big people's decided to go snow boarding. i couldnt go cause at the moment i was still technically pregnant. man if i had known that i could have gone without messing anything up (it was already done for) i sooo would have loved to go! but anyways.....i stayed home with my kiddos and decided we needed to do somethin fun too. we ran a couple errands doing some very very last minute christmas present shoppin then decided to grab some mcdonalds and do a picnic at the park. taylor got pooped out shopping so she stayed with nana and took a nap. uncle mike even rode his bike to the park and hung out with us.
we like this park cause its just around the corner from my moms house and its hardly ever crowded. it has lots of clean safe fun toys for landen and lots of benches for me to sit and watch him from.
he managed to make a little friend and enjoyed running around with him. we had a fun day together :)

and finally CHIRSTMAS!!!!

christmas with our families is always a few days worth of events. this year we went down to joe's family a week before christmas so we could be back home to visit bud as long as possible. we went and saw christmas lights together and had a nice family dinner for uncle nicks birthday too. but of course the highlight of the visit was exchanging gifts. christmas is so fun with small kids that are soo innocent and excited to open toys.
landens latest toy favorites have been the toy story characters. he loves loves loves buzz lightyear and enjoys woody too. so alot of his gifts were the toy story theme this year. who knows what next years requests will be :)
taylor was easy to please with a baby doll and some cute outfits and a few other baby toys. most of the time she just wants to be involved in whatever her big brother is doing.
poor joe didnt get to unwrap any of his own gifts cause landen wanted to "help". joe LOVES to open presents and to get suprises, but he was a great sport and let landen open nearly ever one of his gifts.
after christmas with the brooks side of the family we were headed home to do christmas morning at our own house. we put out cookies and water (landen didnt want to give him milk) and some baby carrots out on the lawn for the reindeer too.
christmas morning was soo much fun with the two kids. landen was so excited for taylor to get her gifts and he would just talk to her about how fun her things were going to be.
no clue who's present this is being upwrapped, but not superised at all to see that landen is the one doing the unwrapping!
taylor knows how to close all these little doors, but still hasnt figured out how to do all the different knobs to open em back up. guess it'll take a while :)
santa brought taylor some cheerios in her stocking. landen had to open em up for taylor and let her have her treat. gee thanx landen :) gotta love the mess huh!

after christmas at home we still had three more houses to go to! we were in for a very long but fun day!
first up was Nana's house (my mom). we had a ton of people crammed in her not so big living room. and with presents and wrapping paper goin everywhere it was a miracle we all made it out alive.
next up was my grandmas house. she lives on the total opposite side of town as everyone else so thats about a half hour drive. everyone went back to their houses from nana's house and the babies took naps and the grown ups took showers and got dressed. all landen wanted to do was play with this new toys.
he wanted to ride in uncle buds truck to get to grandma's house and suprise suprise he fell asleep on the way over there. took him a while to wake back up to do more presents.
the babies were tryin to be so helpful and open out stocking box of household goodies.
we had a big huge christmas dinner at grandma's house and had a great time with family. after her house we all went back home to let the babies take another nap and then off to grandpa's house (my dads)
the big boys all got these cool indoor remote control hellicopters and landen got a spider man helicopter toy too. he totally felt like he was one of the big kids!
as you can tell we had a huge and tiring and exciting and wonderful christmas. every year our families do way too much for us and we are so grateful for everything they do. we try to teach landen the true meaning of christmas but it sure is fun watching his open all his gifts. its cute tho, cause if you ask him about christmas he knows to tell you that we are celebrating Jesus' birthday. :)

landens first REAL beach trip

so landen has gone to the beach several times but he always refuses to touch the water. he will want to put on his swim suit and take his sand toys and he plops down in the sand and never budges. so we didnt think anything of it when grandpa watched taylor at the house while she was napping and we hopped in his little electric car (that has no windows and no doors, more like a street legal golf cart) and headed down the road to check out the beach, we didnt even pack extra clothes or towels.
landen stepped foot onto the sand and as expected plopped down. joe decided to walk around the rocks and look for giant star fish while i watched landen dig. landen wanted to join dad and walked over towards the edge of the water where the rocks shoot up. landen actually touched the wet sand with his feet and just got braver and braver.
he has NEVER let the waves his his ankles ever until then! we werent there very long, but he somehow managed to get soaking wet from his toes all the way to his ears.
luckily grandpa's car had some extra beach towels in the little trunk compartment for emergencies. we wrapped landen up and buckled him into his carseat and headed home. poor guy was freezing cold covered in sand and tired but he sure had fun!

Legoland and the aquarium

While we were down celebrating christmas with joes family we decided to stop by legoland and the little aquarium next door to it. this past summer we bought season passes to go but this is actually the first time we were all able to go together. landen had a great time riding the rides and visiting with his cousins and auntie april and grandpa. i was rather suprised at how many little rides they actually have there. i know they are just about as expensive as disneyland but never knew if it was close to as fun. id say if you have a small kid thats at least 3yrs old then they would love it. anything younger and they cant really ride much. anything older than maybe 13-14 and id say it might be too babyish for them. they dont really have alot of bigger kid rides.
this is the smaller cars ride they have. there is one for older kids where the track is huge and its like a little town with stop signs and intersections and the whole bit. but for landen this was awesome. kinda like the disneyland autopia ride but without the thing between the tires so you dont crash and the kid actually gets to be the driver all by themself!! he rode this one a few times in a row!
grandpa was even a good sport to ride a few rides with landen.
this is like a kiddie version of freefall at magic mountain. it pulls the row of seats up pretty high and then lets it freefall for a second and then bounces you back up and drops you a few more times. i totally thought landen would be scared but he absolutely loved it! he just laughed and laughed the entire time!
this one you drive this jetski lookin thing and it actually goes over water. i think its supposed to be a water ride where other people get you wet, but the boys were lucky and stayed dry.
this was by far his favorite ride of the day. just one of those big huge slides where you sit on a mat to go down. we were there during mid week so it was pretty empty so he would just slide down and turn around and climb right back up and do it over and over again. legoland is only about 5 minutes from the in-laws so i figure we will keep the season passes and go back lots of times!
this is how long of a day we had! for those of you who know taylor the idea of her falling asleep and cuddling you at the same time just isnt in the picture. but i was so happy to be able to capture it on camera with her falling asleep for the very first time cuddling her daddy. he loved it too!
the aquarium is nothing fancy just lookin thru glass at fish but landen enjoyed it. he knew some of them from our fish tank and most of the ones from Finding Nemo.
it is nice cause all the viewing windows are pretty low so the kids get a perfect view. i think inside this one was some sea horses. he recognized them from pinocchio.
he was especially excited to get to touch a starfish. the two starfish we have in our tank hide pretty much all the time, so we're just lucky to get to see them!
and my happy little girl cruisin in the double stroller daddy is pushin. she is soo much more content that landen was at this age. i totally remember carrying him and pushing around an empty stroller when he was a baby. and she just takes her seat and enjoys the view!