December/Christmas

I love December and Christmas time. And this year was no different! We had a lot of fun getting into the Christmas spirit and starting new traditions with our little family. Here's a recap:

Kolton LOVED the Christmas lights. He would get really excited when we turned on the Christmas tree and lights around the house. He also loved driving around at night, looking at all the lights. It definitely kept him occupied while driving! We would constantly hear "ights" and "oohhh" coming from the backseat as we passed houses with lights. Poor kid doesn't quite understand what happened to all the lights now that Christmas is over.

Kolton also enjoyed "helping" us decorate Christmas cookies. He ate the cookies faster than we could decorate them!

I don't know how much Kolton enjoyed this, but I really enjoyed dressing him in Christmas outfits/colors.

We took new family pictures and sent out this Christmas card: (I know the picture quality is horrible, but you get the gist!)

Can you tell a difference with Kolton in these pictures??

Yep, the Santa curse came over Kolton this year. He definitely didn't like being in the same room as Santa. If you show him a picture of Santa, he gets excited and says "santa", but seeing him in person makes his skin crawl. He even had two chances to like him, but it was no use. I kept trying to explain to him that Santa is nice and brings you presents, but he didn't listen. Maybe next year...

The week before Christmas, we went with Ryan's mom, dad, brother and sister-in-law to the coast to get away for a couple days. California had been getting a lot of rain, so it wasn't the best weather, but it was still a nice mini-vacation away from home.

We stayed in California for Christmas this year. It was low-key and very relaxing. We got to start our little family traditions for Christmas Eve and Christmas day. It was a lot of fun. For Christmas Eve, we relaxed most of the day, had a nice dinner and then went to watch a light show that a house in the area puts on. Kolton enjoyed it for the first 15 minutes, but started to lose interest after (it was over 30 minutes long). We came home and then opened our Christmas Eve presents, which are always jammies. Here is Kolton in his jammies before he went to bed:

We woke up Christmas morning and I made Ryan carry on the Oldroyd tradition of starting a fire, turning on Christmas music, and ringing a bell to let us know we could come down and open presents. It is now a Waters tradition, whether he likes it or not! :) We learned our lesson last year and definitely cut back on presents for Kolton. Kolton still wasn't old enough to really get excited when he saw his presents, but he helped open everyone and has enjoyed them all. Kolton got a play tent with balls, a table and chairs, an Elmo chair, a pillow pet, a couple Elmo DVD's, and some clothes, along with some smaller stalking stuffer gifts.

After we opened presents and played for a little while, we went over to Ryan's parents house and had breakfast and opened more presents there. Then we came back home to put Kolton down for a good nap before heading back over to their house for dinner after Kolton woke up.

It was a very nice, relaxing day. I need to be better at taking family pictures, so next year I will get one! I am already excited for next year!

Can you tell he loves Elmo? He kept this outfit on ALL day (even his slippers and at times, his Elmo sweater)

Exhausted after a fun-filled day!

Disney World and Universal

My grandpa has a time share in Orlando for a week in November, so every year my family (or some of them) meet my grandpa for a Disney/Universal trip. I hadn't been since I was in high school and my grandpa has said that he wants to sell the time share, so Ryan and I decided to take advantage of a free place to stay and join them this year. We met my grandpa, his wife, Mary Lou, my mom, my dad, Hannah, my Aunt Julie, my cousin Olivia, and my Aunt Vicki. We spent 2 days at Universal (one day on each side) and then went to Disney's Magic Kingdom for a day, which included Mickey's Very Merry Christmas Party--where you buy a special ticket and they close the park to all other people and have lights, decorations, music, free cookies and hot chocolate, a christmas parade, and all the rides with less lines. It was a very fun and busy few days.

I was very nervous wondering how Kolton would do with his schedule all mixed up, a 3 hour time change, no naps in his own bed (which he loves), and just long, long days in his stroller. To my surprise, he did wonderful! He was such a trooper and had no major meltdowns!! He even fell asleep sitting up on my lap during one of the rides!! We had a lot of fun and I can't wait to take him back when he is older and gets more excited about everything!

Day 1: Islands of Adventure (with the new Harry Potter part--awesome!)

Entrance to Harry Potter...the detail was so amazing!!

Butterbeer = NASTY!!!

Waiting patiently for everyone to get done with the "big kid" rides

FINALLY a ride for Kolton! :)

My dad took one for the team and went on a water ride with the little girls even though it was getting cold outside...and this is how we repay him :)

Day 2: Universal Studios

Not quite sure at first about the characters, but ended up really liking them!

Minus Ryan

With Ryan

Notice anything different with Kolton?? Yep, we had to buy him a new outfit because he had too much fun playing in the kid area with water, which soaked his shirt and jean shorts. There were a lot of T-shirts, but not many choices if you needed a whole new outfit! Luckily we found this one :) And he spent pretty much the whole day in it, so we got most of out moneys worth!

Day 3: Magic Kingdom

Another day in the stroller....

Waiting for It's A Small World

Can you tell Ryan is having a fun time? :)

A little family pic/nap before our 7pm-12am Mickey's Very Merry Christmas Party begins!

This sums up the trip...had a blast, but was VERY exhausted by the end of it!

Halloween

Kolton really enjoyed Halloween this year. It's so much fun to see him grow and get to the age that he can enjoy the holidays more and participate in the festive activities.

He loved going to the pumpkin patch. We pretty much spent our time chasing after him. He picked out his own pumpkin, had a blast going through the kids haystack maze, and even took some cute family pictures...although we all weren't in a picture together...

He also enjoyed helping us carve our Elmo and Cookie Monster pumpkins...for about 15 minutes before he ran off to play with his toys. He's not a fan of having anything on his hands, so as long as he had his "tools", he was good to go. Ryan and I aren't even close to being pros at carving pumpkins, but I thought they turned out pretty good! Believe me, they were much harder than they look!

And of course, Kolton enjoyed going to the ward trunk-or-treat and also trick-or-treating as the one and only, Elmo! Isn't he the cutest Elmo you've seen?