Decorating Sugar Cookies at Christmas :-)

So this year I wanted to start lots of new traditions around our household and decorating sugar cookies was one of them! Riley insisted that we buy pink icing, a tub of white icing and 3 different kinds of sprinkles. It was so much fun decorating and eating those yummy sugar cookies! Definitely think we will be doing this again next year :-)

Here is where we set up our cookie decorating center!

I made Christmas trees and Santa cookies to decorate. There was a bit of chocolate icing left so I grabbed that too.

Riley REALLY wanted to eat some of the large chocolate sprinkles I bought so I put a few in a pink cup for her and she had a BLAST slurping them up in the pink cup!

Bob was seriously intense while decorating his cookies. And they came out beautifully! My goal was mainly to fit as MUCH icing as I could on one cookie and then demolish it, hee-hee :-)

I asked Riley to put her cup down for a minute and say, "Cheese!"

Licking her fingers :-)

My hubby is such a ham :-)

Enjoying her last few sprinkles :-)

Here is Riley's cookie that I helped her decorate. I did the pink icing and then SHE wanted to do the green sprinkles. So I let her and they of course came out WAY too fast so they pretty much dumped everywhere! I was able to shake them around though and get a good coating of green on top of the pink icing.

One of Bob's beautiful Christmas trees!

Riley then decided it was time to dig into her cookie. I thought she was going to pick it up but noooooo! She instead dipped her finger about 5,000 times into the icing and ate just the icing! I took a million pictures of her face as she scraped all the icing with her finger and licked it off. Below you will see the progression of her cookie eating or should I say...icing eating :-)

Her cookie when she was done :-) I'm glad we did this hours before her bedtime so she'd have a chance to get out all the sugar wiggles!

My goofball :-)

I think Bob and I each ate about 3 of these and then Riley ate one so here are the rest of the ones that weren't eaten :-) Not too bad for our first year!

Definitely a great tradition we will be doing again next year :-) I wonder if baby Jack-Jack will like icing... (hee-hee)

Christmas at Aunt Brenda's House!

Christmas at Brenda's was fun and busy with a full house, tons of food and lots of Magic fans (plus one Celtics fan...Chuck!). Everyone was incredibly into the basketball game that day and although super close the entire game, the Magic pulled out a win at the end!

Here is my sweet aunt Brenda doing all kinds of work to make Christmas dinner incredibly yummy and delish! She is holding my favorite appetizer in the world...BRIE CHEESE! She buys this huge circle of cheese and covers it in seasoned and buttered almonds. Then she heats the entire thing in the microwave until the inside is nice and hot. After heating, you cut the cheese open and spread it on some yummy crackers. SO GOOD! I love it with the almonds too. It just seems to make the whole appetizer that much better :-)

Two sweet sisters with matching outfits! :-)
Eating dinner! Brenda had roast beef, pork tenderloin, garlic red potatoes and carrots, brussel sprouts, rolls, a lime jello mold with nuts and cherries (my mom made this and it was SO good), and a bunch of other stuff that I can't for the life of me remember now! I know she had a veggie plate too but yeah, can't remember the other stuff :-)

Brenda had a TON of people over that evening so a HUGE full house! Everyone was into the game on tv :-)

The Cole Christmas Tree! It's a bit blurry but you get the idea :-)

Riley wanted to do "nosey-nosey" or an Eskimo kiss with everyone at the table. It was too cute!

Laughing afterwards about it :-)

Okay so my cousin Derek got this head massager thing from Brookstone and he tried it on my sister Katie. This is Katie's face and hair after he tried it :-) I have to say that it feels REALLY strange but also REALLY good.

This is what it looks like :-) These prong things go down on your head and it's so strange feeling!

This is supposed to be after the picture below. Riley was still doing the "nosey-nosey" or Eskimo kiss with everyone and Pa thought she was being so cute :-)

Nosey Nosey!

Eskimo kiss for Auntie Katie! She looks so pretty all decked out in her Christmas outfit...which just so happens to be the present I got her for Christmas! :-)

Later we did our gift exchange with Brenda and family and this was Riley's turn to open a gift!

Daddy did a great job helping Riley with her gift. Here he was reading her the card that Brenda got Riley. It had Mickey and Minnie on it!

Aunt Brenda got Riley a pizza kit for her kitchen! Super cute :-)

Daddy's turn to open a gift!

Yay! A gift card to California Pizza Kitchen! YUM! Thank you so much Brenda and Jim!!

Movie tickets too! Love it! Yay! Perfect date night :-)

Brenda got me this rockin pink purse that is absolutely GORGEOUS! So I had to model it :-)

I LOVE the size and how big it is! Will hold Riley's juice, diapers, etc AND my own stuff!

I also got my birthday present from Brenda and that was another absolutely gorgeous purse that I didn't get a picture of. Bob had already taken my camera and stuff out to the car while I was opening my bday gift so will have to take a picture and put it up later.

Thank you Brenda and Jim for a wonderful, yummy meal and an awesome Christmas celebration together :-) And thank you for our cute gifts! Love them!

More Christmas pictures to come! :-)

Christmas at Nana and Pa's!

So the first of a few Christmas celebrations started yesterday at Nana and Pa's house! We arrived early so Riley would be in good spirits and so we'd have ample time to open everything and eat :-)

Here is their tree with presents galore!

This was Bob's secret gift! Hmmm...wonder what it might be...

Riley immediately went and gave Pa a hug :-) So cute! Love the Santa hat Pa!

Then she went for Nana and a hug from her! Love your Santa hat too Nana!

Then she got UBER excited and started squealing and rolling on the couch :-)

Legs up!

We ate in two stages...cinnamon rolls, fruit and ambrosia salad first. Then we opened gifts and then we ate our big brunch! Before anything started though, Nana wanted Riley to open one gift first so she'd have something to do while we were eating our rolls and such.

It's a cute purple table but not just any purple table. This has a top that you can draw on with all kinds of dry erase markers. It comes with an eraser too for cleaning up whatever you don't want on the table anymore :-)

Here was Riley waiting for daddy to get the marker open :-) Nana said she's going to buy more markers for this thing but for now, Riley had the marker it came with to draw on the table.

Color time!

What beautiful scribble! :-)

Daddy observing Riley's art :-)

Then we ate cinnamon rolls, ambrosia salad and fruit and then it was time for presents! Riley did her stocking first and got all kinds of goodies. Her FAVORITE thing in the stocking was the little Thomas the Train Engine. I think it was Percy. It went with a much larger gift that Riley hadn't opened yet.

For whatever reason, she was FASCINATED by this little pink mirror in her stocking. Too cute! She went around showing everyone and looking in it and squealing, ha-ha :-)

Showing Pa the mirror :-)

Showing daddy the mirror!

This gift she wasn't too thrilled about cause she didn't know what it was and we didn't actually open it. However it was one that mommy requested and I am super excited about! Basically it's a stoplight alarm clock that has the obvious red, yellow and green lights on it. What it does is lets a child know when they can get out of bed! So when the light is red, they have to stay in their bed. Then when it turns to green, they can get up! So once Riley starts sleeping in her big girl bed (which I will really enforce as soon as Christmas is over), then I'll set the timer for 7am most likely (since Riley usually is up sometime between 7:15 and 7:30), it will turn green and then she can hop out of bed and come see us! :-) A bunch of my friends in playgroup have this and have raved about how wonderful it is! So I was ALL for it :-)

Dora tennis shoes! She's going, "Oooooh!"

Bob is obsessed with these chocolate donuts so my mom got him the Pop Ems AND a box of the regular ones :-)

A frame that says, "There's No Place Like Home Except Nana's." I totally forgot to put a picture in it though! Will have to do that later.

Riley helping Pa with his gift!

We got Pa a Boston Red Sox gel mug that he can put in the freezer and then drink from. He was super excited about it cause he's a Boston Red Sox nut! :-)

Riley's expressions after opening this Dora doll were absolutely priceless! She LOVED it! I think her favorite part were the eyes that open and shut when you pick her up verses lie her down.

Touching the eyes :-)

Grinning from ear to ear :-)

I got my mom costume jewelry pearl earrings and she LOVED them!

A HUGE assortment of princess shoes!

My mom gave Bob a baby Gator outfit for Jack Jack :-) Bob thought it was super cute!

And Gator pj's :-)

We got Pa his favorite candy...chocolate covered peanuts!

After we were almost done with our gift opening, Katie finished getting ready and joined us! She was all decked out and looked super cute with her Santa hat too :-)

Giving Auntie Katie a kiss while opening one of her most favorite toys of the day...her Thomas the Train set! Riley flipped over this thing!

She LOVES anything that has small compartments with doors. This thing had a ton so she was already opening the tiny doors.

Auntie Katie went and got her presents for Bob, Riley and I!

Okay I posted VERY few pictures of me on this day cause I look dreadful! No makeup or anything so only a few pics of me for this post :-) Here I am showing off some of the adorable earrings Katie got me!

Katie got my mom and I these matching black beaded necklaces that are absolutely GORGEOUS! So we're both wearing them here :-)

Katie opening my gift to her! You'll see what it is in a minute below...

Riley was THRILLED with her Thomas the Train set!

Bob was playing with some of the hand puppets that Riley got :-)

I got Katie a black dress since she is now singing a lot in front of her church. She loved it and said it fit perfectly which I was so happy to hear! The part around her middle section was a tiny bit large but she said she can throw a belt on with it :-)

Still playing!

Next daddy helped to open Riley's Sesame Street House...which was another huge hit with Riley! It came with Big Bird and Elmo so we'll have to pick up Cookie and Oscar the next time I see them.

Back to Thomas the Train while daddy finishes opening the Sesame Street house!

Next it was time for Bob to open his huge gift! Drum roll....

A weight bench! Woo-hoo! Bob told me that he really wanted to start lifting again and would LOVE a weight bench for Christmas. So we went online and looked at Walmart's website and the cheapest was $175. And that was just a small, regular sized weight bench. So I told Nana and she and Pa found an Olympic Size one for tall guys on Craig's List for a GREAT deal! So they went and got it and then put a bunch of bows all over it to decorate it some :-)

Sitting on the weight bench was a huge 24 pack of some special kind of beer my mom and Brenda sampled at Total Wine. They liked it so my mom got some for Bob :-)

Benching and Beer....hmmmm.... :-)

My cutie patootie modeling the weight bar :-)

Sitting on top of the beer were 2 movie tickets for Bob and I...woo-hoo! I should also insert here that Katie got Bob and I movie tickets too. Yay! One of our favorite gifts for sure! :-)

Here was Riley's other favorite gift and it was from her Auntie Katie!

A huge princess teapot set from the Disney store! Woo-hoo!

Riley immediately dumped them all out everywhere and proceeded to play with them :-) She really wanted water to fill the cups up but we told her we'd do that later :-)

Overall it was a wonderful and happy Christmas celebration with Nana, Pa and Auntie Katie! Thank you so much for all of our wonderful goodies! We love you three!