Levi and holiday events

Last weekend, Danielle and Travis (and their adorable son, Levi) were in town to visit family and friends which was awesome since they haven't been in town since they had Levi. Here are some pics of me and my dad with the cutie. Hopefully they come back soon and visit!!

We decided that we should start incorporating some fun Holiday traditions since Noah is getting older. It has been so much fun involving him this year. He helped decorate our Christmas tree (with some assistance). He also loved helping place where our Christmas decorations went. We also, for the first time ever, bought a gingerbread house to decorate. I briefly thought about making my own and then realized I was crazy and bought one to assemble instead. Here's our finished product:

Noah did a good job decorating but it was so very tempting to just eat the candy rather than put it on this house. But it is now displayed beautifully on our serving buffet in the kitchen and Noah admires he every chance he gets (I'm sure he's thinking "How can I climb up there and eat the candy off of it without Mommy and Daddy noticing?")

Noah received a gift from a secret santa from one of my online forums. He loves race cars.

Another new tradition was going to see Christmas lights. This year, we chose the Santa's Magical Kingdom in Eureka. We decided to reserve a seat on the wagon rather than view from our car since it didn't dawn on me that we could take Noah out of his carseat and I figured he'd have a hard time seeing the lights from his carseat. Regardless, I think it was a good decision. It was a little chilly that night, but Noah didn't seem to mind one bit! He LOVED all the lights, particularly the ones that went over his head or had pictures of dogs or other animals.

Before we went out on the lights, we paid Santa a visit. Of course, a story accompanies this. We waited in line and when it was our turn, Noah jumped on his lap, no fear. We got him to look at the camera and smile and then moved on to get our pictures. I was even thinking, yeah he smiled. So we look at our 2 pictures she snapped. One was Santa closing his eyes and the other Noah was looking in the other direction. Seriously, the photographer couldn't even snap the picture while he was smiling????? So David asked if we could go again really quick. The lady was really hesistant but she let us. So we get him back on there and now he won't smile. Finally, David peeks his head around the corner to see how it was going and Noah gives me the biggest smile EVER. And thank goodness, the photographer actually took the picture. So we got a great picture and I was so excited to see the result on paper.

So then we get the picture and there is a line in the picture. David complains and they refunded his money, which means we got free Santa pictures, but still. David was able to take them home and photoshop the line. This is a picture before the photoshop and you can see the line is barely visible (it's on the right side, over Santa's left shoulder). Really I think it turned out fine, but we will probably seek out a new Santa next year.