So there’s a bit of stuff to catch up on. Its Christmas (Merry Christmas!) and with Christmas comes craziness. But good crazy. Fun crazy. All about the kids crazy. We packed in a whole lot of Chrsitmasy things this past week, in the run up to the big day. The most important being our visit to Santa to make sure he got our list of requested gifts and to clear up any questions he may have about anything on the list.

It rained hard the evening we went to see Santa, not that we cared. We were on our way to see Santa!

Keane brought a copy of his list with him, to make sure he forgot nothing.

The 5 minutes we had to wait to see the Big Man, felt long.

But nothing like a bit of silly play to keep themselves entertained.

Keane is holding tight to that list.

Santa!!!

Cullen shyly listing off the toys he’d like to see show up on Christmas Day.

Keane breaks out his list.

Cullen’s face as Keane reads through his list for Santa.

Christmas Eve and it was time to get the Christmas cookies baked.

Chef Keane & Chef Cullen.

Roly poly.

All the festive shapes and a couple of sharks cookies.

Out of the oven and time to decorate.

Keane’s cookies.

Cullen’s cookies.

Ta-dah! Santa will not be able to resist these yummy cookies.

Last weekend we had our annual Gingerbread House Party. Four years the kids have been doing this very sugary, very messy pre-Christmas project with their friends, and they love it. And you’d right to assume that as they get a little older, the decorating would get less messy. Well, you’d be WRONG. Its as messy now as it was when they 2 & 3 years old. It’s the sugar you see. For every 1 piece they put on the gingerbread houses, 2 go into their mouths. So very quickly they go from being a somewhat well behaved, group of 4 – 8 year olds, to a group of drunk midgets riding a sugar high and bouncing off the wall.

The calm before the sugar storm. Cullen is well impressed with our party set up.

Naked Gingerbread Houses waiting to be abused by 9 energetic kids.

Keane doing a little practice decorating.

The gangs all here. Lets do this.

The intensity. Serious business this decorating.

Cullen is focused.

Ashton, very happy with his work so far.

Yes, looking well.

Logan was feeling the red tones.

Henry with a little help from his mom.

Bryson.

Cullen and Bryson with a glass of marshmallow cheers.

The youngest of the group and only girl, little Stella.

Julian and Luke.

Candy in the mouth, icing on the cake.

Yes, we’ll have ALL the icing.

Smoothing things out.

Cullen is very happy with how things are going on his roof decorating.

Going with a blue ocean theme, theres a shark feeding frenzy happening on top of Cullen’s house.

Bryson wants a closer look at the happening frenzy.

Julian doing some lovely work with the M&M’s.

Taste testing.

Talking tactics.

Luke, still enjoying the available candy.

Bryson’s house.

It rained. For 2.5 of the 3 days we were in California, it rained. But due to the time difference, the boys were wide awake, ready to rock at the pre-sunrise time of 5am. So our very early morning start meant that we now had plenty of time to pack in some outdoor fun, before the rain clouds showed up, which was right around lunch time.

Our hotel was right next to a vineyard. So somewhere around 7.30am and we are off on a vineyard hike.

Always so full of energy and bounce.

Nothing like an early morning stroll in the warm California sunshine.

Always looking for opportunities to climb. Cullen with no patients for climbing, went with the crawl under option.

Closing in on the summit.

A pretty cool statue of a vineyard worker was our reward for making it to the top of the hill.

Down is always a lot more fun then up. Both of them bounced most of the way back.

Wondering, waiting to see if any trolls or snakes live under the bridge.

As soon as we got back to the hotel, we had a quick costume change and headed straight to the pool.

And we didn’t spend as much time in the pool as we did playing on the poolside furniture.

Swallowed up.

1 up. 1 down.

Lounger bounding.

And the reason we were actually in California, our friends wedding. And here we are, all dressed up and ready for some nuptials.

So we disappeared to California over the weekend to attend a friends wedding. The weather was a combination of sunny and pissing rain. Mostly the rain. But we didn’t even care. A nice little break from the norm is always good, especially for the mental health and especially this crazy time of year. But, before we left for our mini break, we went shopping for our Christmas tree. The biggest Christmas tree we could find.

We arrive at the Christmas tree lot and the boys are ready to shop.

Found it! The biggest Christmas tree on the lot.

But the bad news? It was already sold. Daddy goes off to do a bit of negotiating with the Christmas tree people, and we wait.

Unfortunately, we can’t have our 1st tree choice, so we pick out a perfectly good and also big 2nd choice.

Cullen’s shark approves the decision.

Already decorating with their toys.

Entertaining ourselves with a game of catch while we wait for our tree to be cut down.

And there it is.

Loaded up.

Cause Christmas tree shopping can be exhausting.