The Walkers

Game night with hot chocolate and ice cream marshmallows!

     So I absolutely LOVE baking and cooking. Im always trying new recipes and If I ever hear of meals with ingredients Im not familiar with its all the more tempting to track down the ingredients and make it! I think owning a bakery would be SO much fun! Lots of work and I would probably weigh 500 pounds but still fun! 

Vanilla Macaroons with eggnog fluff cream filling

Packaged ready to be taken to Family and Friends

Hunting down our christmas tree. Drove around for quite awhile looking for a perfect one and the realized we forgot an axe........... yup!

We were sick off and on for the first couple of weeks of December. Luckily Mike and I never were throwing up like the boys!

At Kalebs Preschool Christmas program!

My Brother Michael unfortunately was deployed to Afghanistan for his 5th tour (I think) a little before thanksgiving. Im really close to him and his family so it was really sad to not have him here for christmas. We all wrote letters and sent gifts. When I asked Kaleb what he wanted to send Uncle Mike for christmas he said "A Hug, I wish I could Hug Uncle Mike" At first I had No clue how to make that happen and I remembered this idea so kaleb laid on his back and we traces his arms and head, cut it out and sent Uncle Mike hugs from us!

Making ornaments

Driving around to see christmas lights

Christmas EVE Morning I made Peppermint pancakes :)

The sunday for Christmas (Christmas eve's eve) We had a movie night. We popped popcorn made hot chocolate and watched Polar Express.

Christmas eve the boys got Christmas "Grinch who stole christmas" Pillow cases made by me and new P.J's and slippers.

My gift from Mike :)

   Kaleb helped me make some M&M cookies on christmas eve. He is such a good helper in the kitchen. After the boys went to bed "Santa" wrote his yearly christmas letter to the boys on "North Pole" stationary. When I was growing up I always looked for to santa's letter that he left by the cookie plate. So we have been doing this the past two years. 

I may or may not be slightly obsessed with tea.... but anyways this was my tea fortune on Christmas Eve I thought it was very fitting to the holiday season.

After santa made his visit.

Boys Stockings

Christmas Morning, Mike and I keep Christmas simple with each other this year I got him a hunting bow with a case and 5 bows. He is pretty excited to test it out. Mike got me an external speed light flash for my DSLR, love it!!!! /span>

Love me my blankets

   On Christmas morning we opened presents and did stockings at our house and then headed to Mikes dads house to have breakfast with them and hang out for a bit. It was kind of a crazy morning out of all the mornings our children are up at 7 they decide to sleep in on Christmas morning and we end up having to wake THEM up! Mike likes to describe our morning as speed dating but with present opening. We had to rush the kids a little at opening things and then rush to mikes dad cram in the fun and then rush to my parents house. I think we are starting to lean to the idea of staying home on Christmas..... At Grandpa and Grandma Walkers (Glenn & Jody)  we had a VERY yummy breakfast and played just dance 4 and YES mike played too I have videos, it was great fun!  

Playing with some of the toys he got! You can build lots of different forts (igloos, rocket ships and so on) and drape blankets over it.

This was the boys BIG christmas gift this year. Giant waffle blocks = hours and hours of fun!

Poky greeted the boys with a letter and a special peppermint/ white chocolate macaroon cookie. Making snow angels as well.

Shoe train

Snow ball fight with Kalebs Ninja turtle this was a favorite.

Even though this is simple kaleb LOVES it!

These were a few of the main ones we did. Other nights were simple poky just hiding somewhere or up high ( shelfs, the tree and yada yada)we have had poky scan pictures of himself with our scanner but sadly failed to photograph it! 

      I plan on getting our family blog published into books at the end of each year for keepsakes and one of my new years resolutions is going to be trying to document our life better including the small little but ever so important details for example the two pictures of Keaton below.... Whenever he is tired he plays with his ear and curls the hair by his ear around his finger. Its the sweetest little thing!
      Christmas is right around the corner I cant even believe how fast it came. Growing up my family was HUGE on holidays Michaels not so much (according to him) so it has been a slight adjustment in our marriage finding a happy medium. We are just used to "celebrating" differently. One of the traditions I remember growing up with that I have continued with the boys is wrapping 24 christmas stories and having the kids take turns picking and unwrapping one each night in December. Its fun not knowing which story its going to be and spending the extra time each night as a family cuddled reading stories. A tradition that Mike and I started together last year was the Elf on the Shelf Kaleb has a blast with it and even though we suck aren't the greatest at remembering to move it every single night we have fun trying to think of funny creative things to do with "Poky"-- Named by kaleb privilege of being the oldest.
        As Kaleb is growing up and turning into such a boy I find myself feeling a tad sad because I know a lot of things are behind us but I also get really excited because he is becoming such a funny, unique and awesome individual. We can carry on conversations with him and he has his own Ideas/opinions in his head to contribute (can be a bad thing sometimes) and I love that he's old enough to start really getting into activities with us; board games, building gingerbread houses, snowboarding (if we can please get some snow this year) and so on.

Building a ginger bread train with dad!

Decorating the tree

Watching us put up christmas lights.

Hold onto the Magic. Kaleb is reading to Keaton by the tree.

This little boy LOVES his bath time especially when he gets the whole bath to himself!

          Keaton turned 1 on December 5th! It seems like just yesterday we were in the Hospital meeting him for the first time! I have a feeling it seems to go faster with each little one! Keaton is already walking (has been since 8 ish months) running and has recently learned to climb. He climbs on the couch and up on Kalebs little table in his room. He also likes to pull out drawers, empty them and climb in them! Yup we love him he keeps us busy adds so much to our family we feel extremely blessed to be his parents! Right now he says Mama ( A lot), baba(bottle) , dada, baw(ball) and I swear he almost said I love yesterday his vocabulary seems to have really starting to take off in the past week exploring with new sounds. Keaton has 4 teeth on top and 4 on bottom and is getting some coming in on the sides. For his birthday we had family stop by made some cotton candy ate pizza and hung out! It was fun! I love the fun chaos of family and cousins getting together!

First time ever meeting Keaton

We ordered this GIANT balloon for keatons birthday it was super fun and pretty indestructible the boys loved playing with it. I originally got it for keatons 1 year shoot-- didn't end up using them for that.

Cupcakes

Made keaton a Dr. Suess "Hat" for his birthday smash cake.  I used fondant which he did NOT like hence the expression and also had it refrigerated so he wasn't a fan of it being cold. His first reaction was to spit it out! Failed! We ended up giving him some cupcakes which he loved and made a fun mess with.

We made cotton candy ( Harder than I thought thank goodness for  Grandpa Walker and Mike)

Keaton and Emma. Both our boys just love her!

Flash back to the day keaton was born.

So Tiny!