Too busy to blog

I guess we've been too busy enjoying ourselves and not busy blogging about it. Thanks to a friendly reminder from Grumpa, here is a little update...

Our boys are doing very well. They both really enjoyed the holidays but Zach obviously got it more than Tyler. We decorated our house with lights and a one of a kind holiday snowman 'tree.' I think our snowman tree will be a new yearly tradition. I remember feeling left out when a lot of my friends had Christmas trees growing up. I like the tradition of picking out a tree and decorating it with your family. I wish it wasn't called a Christmas tree. Why couldn't it just be called a 'Holiday' tree? Maybe next year. Anyway, we had a nice 8 nights of Hanukkah. Zach was in charge of lighting the candles every night. Then, he got to pick one present to open each night. He got a lot of big kid toys. I felt like he really needed some new things. Tyler, on the other hand, didn't really need anything b/c he has all of Zach's old stuff. So, Tyler got books. You can never have enough books, right? Next year will be different, I'm sure, because Tyler will understand more. But he really does like books. We spent one night of Hanukkah with Mimi and Grumpa, one night after Hanukkah with Grandma Ros and one night with Adam and Sarah. The boys were spoiled! We spent Christmas Eve and Christmas Day with the Hodess family. Our boys got to wake up at their house on Christmas morning to a bunch of presents under the tree. It was fun for everyone! Both Zach and Tyler got presents in their shoes on Christmas morning, which is a tradition in Vietnam. I explained to Zach what some people believe about Santa. The Hodess family expanded on what I said and by bed time on Christmas Eve, Zach was officially freaked out that there was going to be a random man in the house delivering presents while we all slept. Ha! But when it came time to open presents in the morning, he was very surprised that Santa knew he liked M&Ms, space, dinosaurs, motorcycles and numbers, etc...

During this holiday season, we have been trying to teach Zach how fortunate we are and that it's nice to give to those less fortunate during the holidays. I think it's really important for him to grow up knowing this. He has been putting money in the red Salvation Army baskets at the super market and every time, it sparks up a conversation about how lucky we are to have what we have. And how it's nice to give to others. I hope it sticks in that brain of his.

We plan to spend New Year's Eve with friends this year. It should be fun being with four or more other families with kids for the night. Sleeping should be interesting.

We had our first big snow storm of the season. Zach LOVES being outside in the snow. For a kid who gets cold so fast in the pool, he is a champ in the snow. He can be out there for hours and not complain once about being cold. He went sledding a little today in our neighborhood. We plan on bringing him sledding down a real (small) hill this week while Chad has the time off. He is going to love it. Tyler likes being outside in the snow but isn't a big fan of actually being down in it. He took a little ride on the sled today, too, and seemed to like it.

Here's to more blogging in 2011 :)