Holiday Hoopla

Given that I was so incredibly sick my first 16 weeks of my second pregnancy, it was a challenge to still stay active and interactive with the family during the month of December.  It was very important to Mike and I to try to make the transition for Tyler as seamless as possible.  We knew big changes were coming, as I was halfway through my pregnancy with what we found out this month was a LITTLE GIRL, so we wanted to do lots of fun family activities with Ty while it was just the 3 of us.  Ty is getting to a really fun age.  We can take him to lots of fun holiday activities, and he really appreciates and enjoys them now.  It's so much fun for us to watch him light up and get excited about picking out a tree, going to see Santa or seeing the lights at the zoo.  I was quite a trooper, as I was so sick during this time, but I barrelled through, so that we made the holidays very special for our little man.

The first big snow, of many :)

 Halfway through my pregnancy with our little girl

 Picking out and trimming our real Christmas tree

 The first year putting up the train under the tree (we thought Ty was ready)

 Childrens Academy Holiday party...visiting Santa (he was so excited, and not one bit scared this year!)

 The preschool room performs their holiday song...it was so cute I actually cried (although it could have been my raging pregnancy hormones).  Are they not so incredibly cute!?  Tyler is in the white vest, and the adult in the picture is his teacher Miss Terrie

 We arranged a few fun events with the Frantz family.  The first fun holiday activity was riding the "north pole express" to see Santa.  It was a cute idea.  We all rode the Lebanon RR to see Santa and have some snacks.  It was a cold day, but definitely worth the time, money and chill.  The kids loved it!  They even wore their PJs, like in the book/movie. 

Mommy & Ty (in his PJs)

 The crew (minus Mike) on the train on the way to see Santa

 Santa & Mrs. Claus with Tyler

 Connor, Liliana & Logan Frantz with Mr. & Mrs. Claus (Lily is fast asleep)

 Enjoying his hot chocolate on the train back home

 Holiday event #2 with the Frantz clan was a trip to see the Zoo Lights at our awesome Cincinnati Zoo.  I had never been before, and always wanted to go.  We all have zoo passes, so the trip was free.  It was also very wet and very very cold, but we made the best of it.  The boys and Lily were all bundled up and us adults kept warm either running after the kiddos or drinking some hot coffee/chocolate.  It was actually a lot of fun!  We made lots of special memories.  I hope we will make it a yearly tradition from here on out.  The lights and special events were really worth the trek. 

 The boys (Connor 6, Tyler 3, Logan 3) with their light-up zoo swords (thanks Melissa for those)

 I had to include this pic too because I thought it was adorable.  Our dog, Cincy, had a major accident in our office (on cream carpet!).  We were having a huge crowd over for Christmas Eve, so we had to do some major damage control.  Ty and Mike used the rented steam cleaner to clean up the horrible mess.  Ty loves to clean!  He's my big helper!