We had an amazing Christmas here at home this year. We were sad not to be on the West Coast with our families... but were really excited to be able to spend the week with some of our St. Louis family. Jen, Steve, and Amelia Allen moved in for our "week in the mountains." We are pretending we are stuck up in the mountains until January 1st. We have hardly left the house and it has been wonderful! Here are some favorite pics from the week:

We did spend time with our families via the web cam on Christmas morning. It was fun having a bit of Washington, California, and Nebraska in our living room. Here is Dan's Mom and Dad:

Carter and Amelia in matching Christmas jammies trying out the new wagon:

Carter has a bit of a truck thing. Here are some gifts from Grammy and Papa that he refused to put down:

Christmas cookies shipped from Nebraska:

All 4 of our guys were by on Christmas at some point during the day. Here is Fred's brother, Ty, playing trucks with Carter:

Tower of trucks:

Playing trucks with Jen and Amelia:

Balancing Amelia's ball:

Mac Dan:

The Allen fam at the park tonight:

The Reeve fam:

Our little tie guy. This is Carter's Christmas outfit. He wore it to church today and actually kept the tie on for the entire time he was in the nursery!!

There are two stores in this city that I try to avoid... Shop-N-Save (we like to call it Shop-N-Scream) and Wal-Mart. I have been to Wal-Mart more times than I would like to count this week... but that's just how it goes when you live with teenagers. Anyway, I was checking out yesterday when the cashier asked me if she could see my ID. No I was not buying alcohol... I was buying an old Kung Fu movie. The cashier didn't believe me that I was older than 16!! Oh well... I can only hope my young looks last me for years to come.

In another shopping incident this weekend Dan got a high five from a random woman for walking with Carter in downtown Maplewood all by himself. Way to go Dan!

I think this house has just about the best kitchen ever. I love to bake and have never lived in a house before that had such great counter space. Steven has been asking me for days to make these orange rolls (a holiday tradition from Dan's side of the family). They take about three hours (and a lot of counter space) to make. I kept telling him that I would do it tomorrow... but after about three days of saying that I figured I should make them. Here they are fresh out of the oven last night...

Our Snowman

Carter and I decided to build a snowman since we had so much free time today...


It took a good bit of time since it was just the two of us... but we got it done.

I'm really kidding. I saw this when I was driving by Jr. High Park earlier today so I took Carter back this afternoon so I could take his picture. Pretty Cool! I don't think I've ever seen a snowman so tall.

Two more shots from the park today... this will probably all be gone in the next couple days.

It was a good day for these three reasons...

We stayed in our pj's by the fire until 3pm...

we spent the evening with Steve and Jen playing this...

and we got a lot of snow today!

We have some very polite delivery folks in this neighborhood. Yesterday, when the UPS man came to drop off Carter's gift from his Nana and Papa... he left it in the truck and came to the door first to make sure Carter wasn't around. Then today when I came downstairs I saw our newspaper here...


Pretty smart to put it on top of the car so it didn't get lost in the snow. Hopefully Dan remembered to take it down before he left this morning.

As Carter has grown we've really come to find out that he is a "pick your battles" kind of kid. We just have to come to grips with the fact that we are not going to win every battle. This is the latest battle that we have lost...


The truck book now goes to bed with Carter for naps and bedtime. The book has started to look pretty bad actually... although not as bad as his favorite blanket that I had to use to wipe up my spilled soda off the floor of a department store today (a Carter battle story that I'd rather not get into... lets just say we were both in tears by the time we got out of there).

He is so in love with trucks that we joked about just wrapping up all of his current trucks for Christmas. They are really the only thing he plays with... that is until this afternoon when he was playing with the newspaper. Dan finally realized he was only holding the newspaper because he found a picture of a truck.


Carter was so frustrated with it that Dan ended up cutting it out and laminating it with tape so Carter could carry it around the house. We can only hope he will be this passionate about school when he is older.

A Slide for the Inside

My Mom suggested I bring Carter's slide indoors after my post about spending so much time in the house. Today I finally did. For some reason we don't spend a ton of time in the basement. It's such a great space. I also stashed some of Carter's toys in the wooden box between the couch and chair. Now I just need to convince Dan to rig up his swing down there and bring in the sandbox and we'll be set for the winter :).

Saturday... Carter has two books that he loves. One is in the shape of a dump truck and one is in the shape of a fire truck. He has looked at them so much that the pages have all come apart. He doesn't care that the pages aren't in order anymore... we usually end up with a pile like this with pages from both books...



Sunday... Like father like son.


Today... not feeling so great. He needed a lot of extra cuddles which is totally fine with us.

This morning I was in the living room when I realized I hadn't seen (or heard) Carter for a couple minutes. I found him in the dining room staring out the side door window at one of the maintenance men from the school district. At first I was a little shocked to see someone on our side deck so early in the morning... but then I realized he was salting all the steps around our house. How awesome is that?!!

Christmas in Maplewood

I love that even though we live in a big city we still get the small town feel. Last night was our annual Christmas tree lighting in downtown Maplewood. All the shops were open and serving hot drinks and desserts.

Snow showers...



and colander showers...


Carter didn't like either.

The Art of Eating a Joe Joe

First you beg your Daddy who you haven't hardly seen for two days...

then you plead because you really, really need one...

Your Daddy caves because you are just too cute in your winter gear..

Then you pop it open so the cream is perfectly on one side...

It really only takes about two seconds to take care of that cream...

Then (while still holding your paci in one hand) you take a bite out of both sides of the cookie at one time...

That's how it's done folks!

Carter got to see Santa for the first time today. We met some friends out at the Oakland House for a story, puppet show, cookies and a chance to sit with Santa. Carter did okay. We had a little issue during the puppet show and during our visit with Santa... but other than that it was fun and much better than waiting in a line at the mall.