Look at my little handsome's

oh, yeah. Santa is in the pic also :) See, all of my preparation paid off. We've been viewing last year's picture with Santa, talking about him (and his lap, Avery is very detail oriented), visiting other Santa's, even had one aborted trip when it wasn't the RIGHT Santa, and all for my one good picture. Sigh, I'm happy. I don't work, what else do I have to do, right?

Here is last year's pic, and again, what a difference a year makes!

Santa!

We took the boys on Saturday to the Cuddlers Christmas Party at the hospital. They will be so confused if we ever have to go to Providence for a medical reason, normally we go to play :) Santa was there. We've been talking about him and looking at his picture for awhile now, to be ready. I wanted them to see this Santa in preparation for the one at the mall that I like.

It took 45 min. to get Avery this close. Noah was still across the room. After about 5 min. of talk and talking Santa out of his bell...

Avery was within grabbing distance. LOL

He was a little unsure at first, but in true Avery fashion, quickly warmed up to Santa and started giving his 100 watt smile.

So I took the plunge, grabbed a candy cane off the tree, grabbed Noah, and plopped him on Santa's lap.

He wasn't sure.

It got better, but he was never fully into the guy in the big red suit.

Excuse me!

This is what happens when your oldest farts on Santa's lap.

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas...

And here are my elves! We had these lights out for about a week before we hung them up.

So we would plug them in and the littles would go to town, making light shows on the wall.

But then we hung them outside the window and things got ugly. Avery was extremely angry that he could see them but not play with them. I had Rich get out our 3 foot tree, and here's why...

Last year we had this bad boy up, in the "dining room" which is actually the living room. This year we've switched rooms again, so there is no place to put it, and I didn't want to mess with it.

Also, last year the littles left it alone for two reasons. They couldn't crawl (well, Noah couldn't, not until Christmas night) let alone walk, and we had the fence up in the living room. We called it the pit. They couldn't get to the tree if they wanted to.

I bought lots of kid friendly ornaments on clearance at the end of last year, and here is the result!

Avery loves it! He moves the ornaments all over the tree, decorating it. Noah likes to hide things in the pot.

So, the toddler proof tree is up and everyone is happy!

Nope, they haven't changed a bit...

Sigh and sniff. As much as I protest it and try to deny it, by calling them my babies (which they are!) I guess these pictures say it all.

They were taken almost exactly a year apart. Who snuck in and replaced my sweet, chubby babies with sweet, funny boys?