Santa and Snowballs

Hard to believe that we are just 10 days away from Christmas! The past four days have been full of pre-holiday fun!

On Saturday, AJ turned two months old. It seems like I just posted about his birth, but here we are 2 months later. It’s been fun to watch his personality start to come through. He is cooing a lot now and we are starting to get smiles from him. My wife, who always gets the cutest clothes for our kids, had the perfect outfit for his two month photo shoot.

Originally, those PJ’s were supposed to be used in the Christmas pictures we had taken. We weren’t allowed any outfit changes there, so we just used the sweaters that the kids had.

Ella also had a pair of Christmas PJ’s that she was going to wear for pictures, as well as a very cute dress. We actually had her put the dress on one day and I got a couple nice pictures. It didn’t take long for her to express her dislike of the dress, however, and she took it off. We’re not sure if it was the frill on it or what, but I’m glad we got at least a few pictures in it.

We decided that we were going to take the kids to get their picture with Santa. We weren’t really sure about going to the mall and waiting in line and all that. We saw where Cabela’s and Bass Pro Shops had a contact-free Santa photo opportunity and jumped on it. We made an appointment online and it was a very quick process.

I guess we thought that there would be a chair next to Santa, and we hoped that Ella would be able to hold her brother in it. There was a bench, however, and neither of us was comfortable with Ella holding AJ on it. So we all got to be in the picture! Even though Sam and I weren’t necessarily dressed for it, the picture came out ok. Best thing about it – it was free!

The highlight of the past few days has to be yesterday. Sam’s mom bought Ella some “indoor snowballs,” to play with.

They are basically big cotton balls. They don’t hurt and they have enough weight to them that you can actually throw them.

At first, she wasn’t really quite sure what to do with them. We were out in the living room and I was sitting on the floor with her. I grabbed one and threw it at her. She would go and get it and bring it back to me, and hand it to me to throw again. So I decided to toss one to Sam, who threw it at me. When I got hit, I overreacted and pretended to be thrown to the ground. At that point Ella picked them up and started to charge at me with them and knocking me over.

Eventually, we had our snowball fight. She mostly charged at me and pushed me down, but when she’d throw one and hit me, I’d be falling to the ground. We must have played for 90 minutes. It was constant chuckling from me and loud boisterous laughter from her! My God, her laugh!! What joy that brought to me! Sam even commented that it had been some time since she heard her laugh like that!

For 90 minutes, I was 5 years old. It was silly. I was fun. It is a memory that I will treasure for the rest of my days.