It's Holiday Time...

So much has happened over the last month.  Julian had his third birthday.  We celebrated Thanksgiving with family.  We went to the zoo.  Gretch started taking her first steps, Julian has turned into a beatnik poet, and so many more things.

To start off we celebrated Julian’s Birthday at the end of last month.  We had such a fun time and he loved his birthday party.  He wanted a robot cake so we went with a robot theme for the party.  He loves robots! I kept telling him he was going to have a robot cake but we had his birthday party a few days after his actual birthday and everyday from his birthday on he was asking for his robot cake.  We are sort of lame parents and Julian just had ice cream with candles in it and a couple of presents for his b-day. 

 I made him a quilt and he got a hotwheels truck to store his other hotwheels. He looks like he sleeps a lot more comfortable with his big blanket and I haven't found him in weird positions or places for a long time.

Anywho when the big day arrived he had a ton of fun while momma tried to figure out just how to make a robot cake.  It all went well till I got to the fondant.  Which was a disaster! So Aaron ran to the store and three tubs of frosting later we had this bad boy:

 

The leg/arms made out of rice krispee treats were a big hit with the kids and probably way easier to make than cake ones.  So that was great and Julian loved the robot everything and playing with his “snends” as well as all of his awesome presents! It was great! P.s. We didn't spend very much on decorations and just printed silhouettes of robots off the internet and then glued them to paper goods from the store. 

 

Soon after that we went to the zoo on free Wednesday with our great friends.  Julian loved the sea lions the most and I think Gretch was the most amazed by the giraffes. Julian also could not get over putting his head in the lions mouth.  He never wanted to leave and thought it was the funniest thing ever. We were blessed with an amazing heat wave so that it was a nice sunny warm day for the zoo.

 

The rest of the last while we have been enjoying Christmas festivities and burning lots of midnight oil getting the basement finished for Christmas.  Which reminds me a lot of last year except for minus being nine months pregnant and working up to Christmas eve night. 

Julian and Gretch got to tell Santa what they wanted for Christmas at our Church Christmas party and we picked out and decorated our Christmas tree.    

Apart from all that Gretch and Julian just continue to grow and be awesome.

Gretch has a fancy two step going on and she loves to stand up in the middle of the room and take a couple of steps.  Which I think she started doing a little over a week ago and then she also loves to walk on her knees.  She LOVES to rock out to all music and stops to dance whenever we sing or play music. She also jumps her highchair around the room and uses everything that will move in our house as a walker.  I was especially impressed when I saw her rip up the stairs one stair per knee.  Like I don’t think that should be possible but she is aggressive and active! She is also very sweet and cute and seems to finally be over her whole stranger danger thing and hat hating. Yay!!

Julian is still very active and always wants to go play out in the snow.  We finally made a snowman yesterday and some snow forts, I’m starting to think that may become my everyday life if he has his way. He is a really good brother to Gretch although I’m sure he is a big reason why she is so aggressive but he plays with her all the time.  They share toys and collect things together (especially Christmas tree ornaments).  He will give them all to her.  She looks at them and gives them back to him, and then he collects them in one spot to use later.  They do it all the time with different things.  He is also so creative with pretending to be a robot or a turtle. He put a storage box that opens on the bottom and was like “robot robot” in his best robot voice.  Besides that he is talking a lot more but totally like a little beatnik poet. He told me a twenty word story that was like,” water, hot, baby, foot, ouch, daddy, water, no!... and so forth.  It so funny and he is so expressive when he is telling me what is going on.  He also found my walkman and knew just what to do with it.  He was rocking out!

One of the most exciting things for us though is that we actually finished the basement and got carpet put in last Friday.  We are so excited about that and that we have a family room now that we can all enjoy together (That is not covered in drywall chunks, and the kids are not playing in sawdust and on cement floors). It feels like we just got a new house for reals and have some before and after pics:
Here is what some of it looked like in various phases of being finished,

Once we drywalled, mudded, sanded, and painted we finally put in carpet. Yay! We have been working on this for a long time and are so happy with how it is turning out.  Here are the most recent pics,

the hallway

right in front of the toy room

the tv side


 
We also recently finished up a board and batten project in the living room. (this is for you Yumi!)  We have a long skinnyish living room and felt like this kind of squared it out a little bit and really love how it turned out, especially with the new carpet in there instead of the old mauve stuff.

There is still a lot of finishing work to do but we are so grateful to be done with all of the big stuff, and look forward to enjoying the Christmas season with family and friends.