Gingerbread house

I decided to get brave and try out a gingerbread house with Eli this year. I figured he would do fine with it, it was just me not wanting to do something quite so messy with a two year old that has held me back before:) I'm a very clean person, and I hate messes, so the idea of doing a gingerbread house just seemed like a lot of work for me. But, I decided to suck it up this year. I'm so glad I did. Eli loved working on his house. He didn't even make too big of a mess (he is so his mother's son:)). This will probably have to become a yearly tradition. Next time I will even let Kamdyn join us...this year she happily played all over the floor getting into mischief so we could decorate our house.

I have to say that I was very impressed that Eli didn't try to eat any of the candy until I told him he could have a gum drop. I was shocked....he loves gum drops so I didn't figure they would manage to stay out of his mouth.


Thankfully we were pretty much done with the house by the time I told him he could have a gum drop. He wouldn't stop eating them after the first one and I had to take them away. He wasn't too pleased. It's all fun and games until mom takes away the gum drops!
Our beautiful finished product. For next year I have a gingerbread train. So fun! Can't wait!!

Christmas Time

Whew! Another Christmas has come and gone already. Can't believe it's all over already. Christmas was so much fun this year. It was exhausting, but a lot of fun. We had several days full of lots of family and tons of delicious food. I definitely love the food of the holidays, but I feel like I have to do some major working out to make up for all the stuff I eat. Well worth it. I do love Christmas, but I'm always ready to get back to a "normal" schedule. The kids' rooms have been cleaned out to make room for all their new treasures, and I have a nice little pile going for the goodwill. I love cleaning stuff out:) I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas too!

Dips

I love all things chocolate. So a little tradition of the women in Brian's family is one of my favorites. Every year (sometime after Thanksgiving) we get together to make chocolates. The centers are made the day before (I have yet to help with this part....maybe next year:)) and then the next morning we dip the centers in chocolate. So yummy. The first year I was a "family dip" I wasn't sure how I would like playing around in chocolate, I don't really like messy hands. It was actually a lot of fun, and it's even better when you get to sample the chocolates you are dipping. It's a good thing we only do this once a year, I would get outrageously fat eating chocolates every day. I have no self control when it comes to sweets in the kitchen.....this time of year is dangerous for me:)

In the middle of the dipping process. We get warm chocolate on the counter and roll the centers in it. We do this over and over:)
Hard at work....I was dipping my oreo bon bons for our Christmas plates to the neighbors, the ones in front of me are cherry centers waiting to be dipped.
Virginia was busy cutting the carmels. YUM, my favorite!!
All done. We had a ton of chocolates, there was more over to the left. Good thing I give a lot of ours away:)

This is how we do it, man style

Last weekend Eli got the chance to have some "man time" with daddy, papa, great papa, uncle Ben, and his cousin Wesley. They flew to Kansas City to visit Union Station and see their train exhibit. I was a little (ok, a lot) nervous about Eli flying. I HATE flying, so I was having a hard time being cool with my two year old flying (without me, even though I wouldn't want to be on the plane:), and on a little plane too!). I just didn't know what he would think about it. But, he handled it like a champ, very unlike I would have. If I had been on the plane, I would have been gripping the seat for sure. Brian said he just sat there and looked out the window and would say "high" every once in a while. Once they got to KC, Eli was in heaven. I place full of trains to look at!!!!! Life doesn't get much better than that in his eyes. I've been told he was running around like a maniac. He is still talking about the plane and the trains, the "black one engine" he saw. I think it's safe to say he enjoyed himself:) Gonna be hard to top this "man trip" and I can promise him now any mommy/son trips he gets with me will involve only the car:)

Union Station

Eli's Heaven here on Earth. This kid loves trains.....

How we spend our evenings

Brian and I often make up new "games" to play with Eli in the evenings. They are ridiculous little games that he seems to love and that we usually end up regretting we even started with him. I always say, "If you don't want to do something ten thousand times, don't start." This is true of our made up games. Eli loves them, and constantly wants more. It's nice that it keeps him occupied, but it usually wears us out! Brian was making Eli fly in his laundry basket the other day. He was having a blast, but that's a lot of work to swing him around in that basket. Brian is a great daddy and will do it over and over for Eli. I don't usually do it quite as many times as Brian:)


We also spend a great deal of our day keeping this little rugrat from destroying her brother's train track. Having a train table in Eli's room was an awesome idea before Kamdyn became mobile. Now, I often ask myself several times a day why we put something like that in his room. He could play with his trains all day long, and Kamdyn could destroy it happily all day long. Neither one of us has the desire to fix the track all day long., so we spend most of the day trying to get her interested in other toys (sadly this rarely works).

Our sad excuse for Christmas decorations

This Hutton family looks a little bit like a family of Scrooge's. We are very sadly behind on our Christmas decorating. I am one of those people that won't put the Christmas tree up until after Thanksgiving. So the earliest Brian is ever allowed to bring our tree up is Thanksgiving night. I LOVE Christmas decorations. I think they are beautiful and make the house look so nice....but I hate putting them out. For those of you that know me well, you know I am kind of an OCD clean person...everything has a place, so when it comes to Christmas decorations, I kind of feel like the house is out of order. But I still put them out. This year has been the exception. For whatever reason, I just have no desire to decorate the house. Brian brought the tree up Thanksgiving night, but we couldn't decorate it yet because the rest of our Christmas stuff was in the attic. I certainly haven't pushed Brian to get it down:) I had already decided that I wasn't going to put ornaments on the tree this year because I don't feel like constantly keeping Kamdyn away from all the ornaments, but I had planned on putting the rest of our stuff up. But it's still tucked away safely in our attic, and at this stage in the month, I don't really mind if it never makes it down:) Thankfully the kids are young enough to not know the difference. Eli loves Christmas, and all the Christmas decorations, but he is happy enough with just the tree being plugged in. It's a good thing too, because that's as good as it going to get in this house this year. So sad I know. But I do have an advent calendar too. I put it out 3 days late (had to get it cut out and put together), and there is nothing "fun" to do hiding in the envelopes this year, but it's still out:) So, if you come to our house this Christmas season, don't think we hate Christmas. We don't, I'm just too unmotivated to make it look like Christmas time in here. For this year, our undecorated tree and advent calendar will just have to be enough....

Here is my finished advent calendar. It took forever to cut out all the stuff for this, but it was worth it.....I love the way it turned out. I have big plans to put some really fun activities in it next year. In fact, maybe I will just get them ready before I put this away for the year so I don't have an excuse to drag my feet next year:)

I hope the rest of your houses' look much more festive than ours! Poor Eli.....he loves Christmas.....pretty sure I'm failing him on this season this year:)

Illuminations

This past weekend we went to Illuminations. We took Eli last year and he seemed to enjoy looking at all the lights. We decided it probably just needed to become a tradition. But this year instead of going with daddy, we went with Granny and Aunt Erin and cousins too. The kids all seemed to have a lot of fun. Eli loves running around chasing after his cousins. Kamdyn and Shepherd did an awesome job too sitting in the strollers all evening. Thankfully we had a nice night. It was pretty chilly, but there wasn't much wind, so it was bearable outside. Can't wait to take the kids again next year. Then I will have two running around!

They were pumped....can you tell. It was tough controlling Kamdyn:)


I think this was a new addition this year. I would have passed it if I had know it was there. Not because I didn't want to see it, but Eli has a slight obsession with trains, and I knew if he saw it it could be hard to pull him away. Sadly, he heard it before he saw it, so there was no turning back. He would have gladly stayed there all night, but this is where the cousins and granny come in handy:) If I had taken him away from the train, he would have thrown a royal fit, but with Wesley and Bethany moving on, and Granny pulling him away, we escaped fit free. Thank you granny and Wesley and Bethany!
Had to get a shot of all the kiddos. Bad picture, but funny moment. Kamdyn and Shepherd were sick of the strollers, Wesley was freaking out about being on the ledge, and Eli and Bethany were interested in other things.