Holiday Adventures

Little G reaching for a Candy Cane- notice they are all at the top?

Love this picture!

Last year we stayed in Istanbul for the holidays. We had a great year, and were thrilled that many (most) of our friends also stayed in town. This year, we decided though, that we wanted to head to the States! This time we went East Coast style, seeing as we went out West for our trip this summer.

We had a fantastic time!! It was full of lots of laughter, late nights, delicious food, date night adventures and of course all the best Holiday traditions! There were a few casualties, namely a pair of pajama pants and two dead gold fish, but those are stories for a separate time... We stayed with our besties Tim and Ash, who happen to live right by Noah's Mom. Everything trip-wise went extremely smoothly, and we arrived to twinkling lights and big hugs, just a couple of days before Christmas!

Miles especially was excited to celebrate his first ever Christmas!

Here he is opening his Christmas Eve Pajamas

I completely intended to get better pictures of the other boys, and one of all the littles in their pjs that night, but in the excitement it just didn't happen. Mental pictures will have to do.

Santa did manage to find us though, and he brought both of our little families a pretty good stash!

Miles loved opening his Christmas morning presents just as much as Christmas Eve!

The Lego obsession is really starting to take hold in our house, Santa did well I think.

Ronan got this Imaginext Spaceship. A couple of our friends have it. He ALWAYS wants to play with it when he sees it. Needless to say, he is thrilled to finally have one of his own!

Miles was the best age for the fun, he loved ripping and pulling the paper and bows! So cute!

I love this picture too, because it gives you all a nice view of his cute red hair that is filling in so nicely! We love our little ginger!

Now, this is a shot of all my boys deep in Christmas morning concentration, coincidentally the only one I got of them all together!

All Miles wanted was a bow apparently.

X-man got this awesome guitar-they all loved playing with it!

So, I did pretty well with the camera up to this point, and then I got pretty much nothing! So you'll just have to imagine the other fun and the fact that our friends were indeed there with us! I really can't believe I didn't get any more of all of us that morning! Oh man.

Now, here is the Sunday morning Christmas Sweaters shot. I tried to get them all looking and smiling. Really I did. This one is pretty sweet though, so I'll take it!

Porter and Miles were in a smiley mood though! Such cute brothers!

Now we can't forget the American food…Of course we had to eat at our favorite spots! They just opened a new B-dubs, and we were happy to enjoy one of our favorite East Lansing traditions! YUM!

We plowed through those 50 chicken wings in nothing flat! You would think we hadn't eaten in a week! Love the wings and the company. A good night indeed!

Now, for some of the big excitement on this trip:

it was a SURPRISE for his mom!!!

She had no clue we were coming, and we showed up on her doorstep on Christmas Eve!!

It was so fun to surprise her, and she was blown away! It was great, and we were excited it all worked out without spilling the beans!

She had not met baby Miles yet either, so this was the best part!

We got to do lots of fun things with our buddies, and the boys loved getting to have constant buddies for two whole weeks! I'll do a few separate posts for a couple of the things we did, but we also just loved hanging out and playing together at home!

Ash is a supermom and whipped up some awesome homemade playdough. I have never done this. I don't know why! It is WAY better than from the store. I'm sold!

We drove to see the big Christmas lights display on New Year's Eve, which were terrific! We were so happy to see a fun display of real Christmas lights! Being somewhere that "feels Christmasy" makes all the difference in the world!

Then of course we had Chinese take out for dinner, which was delicious and got some pretty ridiculous fortunes from the cookies. Porter was disappointed that his was more of a "statement" than a fortune. Such is life though, you never know what you're gonna get!

Porter and his dumpling. He was very excited to eat it, as you can tell.

Happy New Year 2012!!

These silly boys in their cute New Year's attire! They loved using their noise makers! We had black-eyed peas on New Year's Day again this year, and are hoping it brings us as much luck and happiness as it did for 2011!

We had such a wonderful trip. We always love every second that we get to spend with these guys, and this trip did not disappoint! We laughed A LOT, had some fun adventures, continued our streak of being cursed while going out to eat together (at least I didn't cry this time- don't ask), watched movies, ate way too much delicious food, the men played some good basketball and Ash I even got in a bit (though it is never enough) crafting time!

Thank you so much again for everything guys! We love you all to pieces and missed you the second we left! Thanks for the holiday memories 2011!