We left cookies and milk out to Santa. I hope Santa appreciates how I went to bat for him and said it wasn't okay to take a couple of bites out of his cookies or to maybe leave him just one. The four year old confidently told me that Santa wouldn't know. Does he even know how this Santa thing works?
Bradley saw this picture and wanted to know why the fire was still on. I had to assure him we had turned it off before Santa was supposed to arrive.
Christmas morning was pretty darling
And Patrick enjoyed his breakfast of m&m's and eggs for Christmas morning. Thanks, Santa, for the giant candy cane of candy in the kid stockings ...
Opening presents was a group project
And we even got some good cuddles and naps in between one set of grandparents departure and the other's arrival.
Testing out marble run
Eleanor is really good at singing Jingle Bells.
My parents were fortunate to come out just as everyone was starting to feel better and we had a lot of fun mostly just playing around the house and going to the park.
You can't tell but in the picture below Eleanor is sobbing because Grandpa is carrying Bradley instead of her (she was carried on the way to the park and Bradley had been promised a Grandpa ride on the way home). Having Patrick pull her in the wagon did nothing to console her.
Patrick snuck over to the bench a lot for cuddles during meals
And Bradley LOVED playing a ridiculous amount of new games with grandparents.
Goofy response to knocking down the marble run tower
Watching shows with Patrick is such a treat
Patrick's favorite game one afternoon was pushing Grandpa off the couch. Grandpa is far too nice.
Official group shot of the visit!
Eleanor was sneaking up on Grandpa here in order to jump on his stomach. Grandpa may be a prince of kindness. At one point he moved his hand around to pretend to grab at Eleanor's feet and then every time she jumped off of him she would lean over and whisper to him and tell him not to move his hand again.
Patrick was still a bit of a mess for the first part of the visit and was usually pretty clingy around Mommy and Daddy ... but Grandma quickly found a way into his heart.
This is the way:
My mom brought a cool science experiment for the kids to try out on static electricity.
Bradley's first question "Is that a dead cat?" No. It was fake fur. But we all saw his point.
Patrick loves science
My mom MADE this princess outfit for Eleanor. The princess obsessed girl was pleased.
We snuck a trip to Urban Air Trampoline Park in on the most crowded day ever. Oh well. We still had fun.
And then Great Wolf Lodge happened. OH MY. It was amazing.
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| Picture as we walked in the door |
We showed up early so we started with Magiquest
Fun times at the arcades
And lunch in a life sized gingerbread house!
Then we checked in and it was off to the water park!
The older two still need to thank Grandpa for his devoted assistance in getting them across an obstacle course that they were at least a couple years too young to really do on their own.
And we also owe a debt of gratitude to our official photographer, Grandma.
It was tough work to mostly sit on the sidelines and take photo after photo of grandchildren having a blast in the water park (the trip was a Christmas present from my folks) but someone had to do it.
Back to the first day: we took a short break in our room and got Patrick up from his nap and then it was back to the water park!
Patrick was a fan.
Bradley kept insisting on having Patrick ride down his lap on the little water slides. It's a toss up who enjoyed it more.
Eleanor soon had Grandpa lined up to catch her on the water slides in the kiddie area and I was shunned in favor of Grandpa catches.
All that swimming could tire a kid out.
We sent Patrick home with Daddy for the night but first he got some cuddles in with Grandma.
Patrick had been having a rough go of it between the cold and teething lately and his crib at home seemed like the best plan. The rest of us settled in for cozy cuddles and story time in the great hall.
There was "snow" during story time so Eleanor caught some.
The kids slept like rocks once we finally got Eleanor to settle down. And Bradley joined me in my non regulation sized twin bed at 5am, but at least he went back to sleep. This is why he usually gets to share a bed with Eleanor.
Eleanor had to be comforted by Patrick in the arcades before the pool opened, because I failed to win her a Paw Patrol stuffed toy in a big claw machine.
But then we were off to the pool and I have a new favorite family photo!
There are so many fun things to do at this water park.
On the second day we discovered that Patrick is absolutely okay with going down kiddie water slides on his own.
We even took Patrick down the really big water slides once because he fit the height requirement and he did great sitting on Daddy's lap. But then we decided to chuck him down the medium water slides where he was required to go solo and he did not like it so much, especially when he flipped himself over and went down on his tummy and ended up in a bunch of water at the end (which I quickly scooped him up from). Parents of the year?
I also greatly upset Eleanor when I relieved Grandpa of his slide catching duties an hour into our water park time and had him go down water slides with Bradley for a while. Eleanor did not appreciate the change
She finally did better when we reunited her with Grandpa and we all went into the kiddie hot tub area.
We went home in joyful triumph! (Because we bribed the kids with milkshakes from Chick-fil-A in order to get them to leave Great Wolf Lodge and come home happily).
The kids got to make chocolate pie with Grandma and Patrick insisted on getting in on the action.
In the picture below Eleanor is telling Bradley to "look in the mirror!" and I think she told him he was frustrating or something along those lines because he wasn't letting her have all the turns while baking.
Regardless of discord while baking, the end result was delicious!
And we even got in a game of Pie Face.
Everyone was very sad to see Grandma and Grandpa go, although Grandma kindly left us a mountain of cookies to remember them by.
We've been getting back into the routine ever since they left.
Although Eleanor was very tired from skipping her nap on their last day and fell asleep on the couch so both of her brothers seized the chance for extra Eleanor cuddles.
There are always cuddles at the Scott house.
Later ...
And songs and cool kid time.
Although sometimes Patrick lets it be known that he misses vacation and WHERE IS DADDY? Why is MOMMY trying to pick me up when I've just woken up and she's obviously the wrong person?
I wonder why he loves him so much?
I'm so lucky, I never felt like I had time for a real meal when the kids were tiny and now they feed ME!
Daddy put a treasure map in a bottle for Bradley and this kid instantly figured things out and ran and found the treasure Daddy had hidden.
Bradley and Patrick are becoming such buddies. Patrick can be quite insistent on getting Bradley to play with him.
We're just getting back into all sorts of cuddly, normal Scott family activities. Do NOT leave anything on the island right now if you don't want scissors boy to cut it up.
I told Patrick he was naughty for coloring on his hands instead of the paper and this was his response.
We were delighted to get a bit of snow in the new year.
Mostly because it meant we needed to drink hot cocoa.
The kids are quite insistent on real mugs these days. I'm not at all worried.
By the way, it is far easier and so much more fun to bring snow in to children on days where it is 10 degrees than it is to take children out to the snow.
Eleanor got to bring the class stuffed toy elephant home and I had to take pictures of that thing with her for an entire weekend. Luckily it was a fun weekend!
We went to Rainbow Play Systems with a bunch of friends from a church group.
It was very tiring. Side note: I know Eleanor is my daughter because the other night at bedtime she put her cold feet on Bradley's legs for a moment and said "You're warmmmm. I'm going to do this again later." The picture below demonstrates that she didn't get it quite right, but at least she's trying.
And then Eleanor had her first gymnastics class! I let her pick out her own gymnastics outfit on Amazon and can you believe we found one with a tutu attached? She loved the class, had a blast.
Nathan geared the boys up and celebrated the Seahawks win.
And we had a fun family outing to the Prairie Fire Museum (we call it the dinosaur museum) and we ended up becoming members because we had such a good time!
They have a program called Little Explorers Club and it just so happened that the first event of the year was taking place two days after we signed up for our membership. So I got Bradley and Eleanor in to the Dino Diets class and there was great excitement and the kids can't wait to go to the next one which is called Keeping Warm in the Ice Age. Bradley is finally getting to ask all of the questions he's ever wanted.
Does this kid love dinosaurs? He's spread out his collection on our bed here (on the right side, after he weeded out the inferior animals on the left).
And we have a dinosaur island game that came with three small dinosaurs. A *few* additions have been made to the game on Bradley's watch and I have to say that the t-rex card is far more exciting to uncover when it means that all your dinosaurs have to flee the game board and take refuge on a cardboard island he had his grandpa make for him.
We finished up our Sunday outing with taking the kids out to eat at the child friendly Rock and Brew, which is conveniently located about 100 yards away from the dinosaur museum. Our children at a dinner of french fries and soda and rocked out.
This is my world. I can't believe how sweet this crew is.
Even if the previous photo soon inevitably turns to this two minutes later.
