Christmas with Kortus'

We had Christmas with my parents and brother at our house again this year, except we were missing Madi.  She had to work at the car wash.  Staci came over to visit and have dinner with us too.

Connor is such a sweet and caring kid.  He puts a lot of thought into what he gets everyone.  This year he bought Grandpa a rubix cube, because he likes challenging puzzles, another puzzle game, sudoku games, and a new watch.  Grandma got a new salad tong and chip clips, which she needed both.  We bought Ryan the entire Dragon Master's book series.  Connor loves these books and we heard Ryan is now hooked too.  Alivia and Madi both got gift cards, which they requested.  After dinner and presents we played the game Laura introduced us to last year... you play with 3-4 decks of cards.  You flip a card over on the deck and if you have that card in your hand then you get to either pick a prize from the table or steal someone else's prize from their lap... but you have to remember and keep track of what each person is holding in their lap under the table.  We have a blast playing this game and hope to make it a yearly tradition now.

holiday fun

Chippy came back to play hide-n-seek with us again this year.  The boys (including Jason) love to wake up and hunt for Chippy's hiding spot. The holidays are always a creative, fun time of year.  The boys and I made some decorations for the tree.

Mr. Bossy pants telling me not to take his picture

Jason and I refused to get video game systems because we see too many kids obsessed with sitting in front of the TV playing mindless games, but Connor learned about games from his friends at school and begs us to play games on Jason's old cell phone or the ipad.  Occasionally we let him play.  His favorite is a ninja game where you jump obstacles.

Kaiden has this obsession with lining his cars/trucks up in a row.  He's a very organized kid.  He likes things to go back to their correct spot.

Connor's 2nd grade music program

OK Corral

Connor is next to his best friend, TeJon

Davenport tree's

The Davenport hotel decorates a bunch of trees with all kinds of fun stuff for a raffle every year.  You buy tickets and drop your ticket in the box for the tree that you hope to win.  It's not so much to win the tree itself (although they are decorated really pretty) it's more to win the "stuff" that goes along with the tree... like vacation trips, money, furniture, etc.  We have yet to win anything, but we still enjoy going to check out the trees with friends every year.  This year we went with Greg and Johanna Wallweber.  Jason first met Greg when they worked together at Monaco.  Then we both met his wonderful wife Johanna at the Flying Irish.  They are the sweetest, funnest couple we have met.  We love hanging out with them and the boys just adore them.  They don't have any kids, but they love our boys and their so great with them.

Greg giving Kaiden's bunny a piggy back ride.  Kaiden has 2 of these bunnies, thanks to his big brother giving him his bunny too.  Kaiden has been attached to these bunnies since birth.  He takes them everywhere!  After we saw the trees at the Davenport we walked to the downtown mall, which had a few more of their trees on display to raffle.  Santa was sitting in the lobby with no kids around.  No line at all.  This is our favorite santa to see each year and get pictures with.  We hadn't really planned on getting pictures today with Santa, but we couldn't pass up the opportunity to see him when there wasn't a 45 minute wait in line.

We followed that up with lunch.  Kaiden is still closing his eyes when he knows the flash is about to go off.  As you can see above Jason is not fond of my camera flash either.
The following day we had Greg and Johanna over for dinner.  Jason, Greg and Kaiden stayed at our house to visit, while Johanna, Connor and I went to see the new Moana movie at the theater.  Afterwards Johanna and I painted a decorative dots picture, Connor painted some characters from his game (he likes to play games on Jason's old phone) and Kaiden painted his own picture...