Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas to all of our friends and family! This year has been a really special celebration with Kellen joining our family and Noelle sort of understanding Christmas. We've been reading The Christmas Story most nights so Ellie knows that Christmas is Jesus's birthday and that the wise men brought him gifts. She also knows all about Santa Claus and although sitting on his lap was a no go (too bad we didn't realize that until Bryan stood outside in the cold for 75 minutes waiting with her) she did agree to let him come in the house to leave presents. She even left him a cookie, milk, and note!

We started Christmas Eve with some family photos before mass. It was hard to get everyone looking and Noelle's hair (which she refused to have put up!) not in her face, but we tried!





Then, we headed to mass. We got there super early to make sure we got seats. And we sure did get seats, but Noelle was not on her best behavior. We'll keep working on that each week! But our church did look beautiful decorated for Christmas!



After Christmas Eve dinner, we put the kids to bed, and got the house ready for the morning.





Then we went to bed, and waited for the excitement of the morning. Several wake-ups and feedings later, we got up, and Bryan headed downstairs to let Maddie out and get ready for Noelle's reaction to Santa's visit!



We checked to see if Santa drank his milk and ate his cookie - just one big bite!



Then we opened presents, checked out the stockings, and started playing with all the toys!


A Soccer Ball!


Kellen is super impressed with his loot!


Dora was a big hit!


Make A Wish!


Maddie joins in on the fun


Noelle and Bryan play with Kellen's new toy


Checking out the stockings. Who knew Santa would put stuff in these too?

We spent the rest of the morning and early afternoon talking to our family on Skype and the phone, playing, napping, and getting ready for dinner with friends. We were sad Lindsay wasn't feeling well, but enjoyed dinner with Sean, Nicole, and Annabelle. And we got one last picture of the kids. Hug or tackle? You decide!



Nicole took some family photos with her camera so we'll post those once we get them. All in all it was a great Christmas, and we look forward to continuing the celebration later this week when my parents and brother arrive for a visit! Merry Christmas!

Christmas Photo Shoot

A few weeks ago, our friend Nicole exhibited great patience as she tried to take some Christmas photos of our little ones. Noelle did great, despite the feedings and outfit changes that occurred throughout. Kellen was pretty happy, but I guess I forgot how hard it is to get good shots of a little one who can't totally hold their head up or sit on their own yet! He was 7 weeks in these photos. Here are some of my favorites!

Ready for Law School!

All I Want for Christmas

Is a few more hours sleep! It would be awesome if Kellen was sleeping then too. Despite starting things off right with putting him down awake and without the pacifier, and the return of the swaddle, at 9 weeks Kellen's longest stretch to date was about 5.5 hours. And usually it is in the 3.5-4 hour range. The bigger problem is that after his long stretch, he has a really hard time staying asleep, so when subsequent stretches are 2-3 hours I'm excited. Often they are more like 45 minutes. I still believe Kellen will sleep through the night at a reasonable age, but I think until cold season is over, we are doomed to be tired. Maybe Santa will take pity on us and adjust things before I go back to work!

Oh wait, that won't work because Santa has to skip our house! Apparently, "he's not nice, he's scary!" Wish we'd known that before Bryan waited in the cold for 75 minutes with Ellie on Saturday! They got some nice bonding time in though. Noelle doesn't even want Santa to bring presents if that means he'll be in our house in the middle of the night. I guess we'll be meeting him on the front porch this year to claim the Saxton gifts!

Merry Monkeys!

This year I have been working with my mom's group again to make 30 sock monkeys for children in a local shelter. It's nice to give back since we have so many blessings! Here are some of the monkeys getting ready to go in to gift bags to be taken to the kids! Since I'm not a real sewer, my contributions were stuffing the monkeys and hand sewing some of the body parts together.



I really hope to make two after the holidays for Kellen and Noelle. Hopefully I can convince Mandy, my sewing machine whiz friend, to have an event for the moms!

By Land or By Sea

Last Friday morning we met some friends in the morning at Marley Station Mall in Glen Burnie to see a huge train garden, to play in the play area, and have lunch. I hadn't been to a train garden in years and Noelle and I both thought it was really cool. Kellen was less impressed! Noelle also liked the creepy looking dancing Santa in the train garden!






After having a busy morning, we completed my favorite family activity, a family nap, and headed down to Baltimore to meet Bryan.

For the second straight year, we headed down to to the aquarium for their Fridays after 5 discounted admission. In December, it tends not to be very crowded because everyone has so much else going on, so we can see the whole aquarium minus the dolphin show in about 90 minutes. Noelle absolutely loved the "fishies and the sharks." And the little frogs in the Amazon exhibit. We got very few good pictures there but it was a fun family adventure.







This weekend we are excited to see Santa, but otherwise are going to have a pretty relaxing weekend. We need it!

Before the Darkness, There Was Light

Lots of light! Tacky Baltimore crabs for Christmas and pink flamingo hon light! Of course I speak of the 34th Street light extravaganza down in Baltimore. This display was recently named one of the ten best in the country and as it got dark Saturday night we made the drive down to Baltimore to see the display. There is a little debate between Bryan and I as to whether we've seen it before, but we both were in agreement that Noelle hadn't and would think it was cool. So we checked it out on foot with the stroller, the Hollywood's, and my friend from work who lives nearby. And it didn't disappoint! My favorites? The hub cap and Old Bay Christmas trees. Noelle liked the Santa handing out candy!

Darkness Descends

Ok so the title of this post might be a bit dramatic but yesterday the inevitable happened. For the first time, both Noelle and Kellen had bad days. And it was the hardest day in recent memory. As expected, Kellen got one of the colds the rest of us have been circulating around. He actually has been sick a few days, and Friday night shrieked most of the night until I finally got him settled down in the bouncy seat in our bathroom. The additions of the bathroom fan, swaddling, and me rocking him to sleep finally put him down for a few hours at 1:30 or so. Yesterday he was still feeling yucky and shrieked when you didn't hold him upright. And screamed most of the day in that position as well. I feel so bad for babies with colds. They suck when you are older so I can only imagine how gross you feel when you can't take medicine or prop yourself up on pillows. How horrible to have your only relief be someone using saline and a bulb to squeeze boggers out of your nose! So Kellen wasn't having a great day.

And then there was Noelle. She had the worst day ever. She has been sick with a cough and cold for weeks and has been pretty darn happy. And she has generally been good lately, loving her brother, asking to use the potty occasionally, being snugly. But yesterday she gave us a true taste of how bad the terrible twos can be. She wouldn't sit still or stay quiet at church, cried at every little thing, talked back, and was just generally not on good behavior. She spent probably an hour in total in time out. I am sure her brother getting tons of attention in combination of her also not feeling well were the culprits but it was a tough day. Thankfully, as of now things are a bit better. Noelle was pleasant this morning before going to daycare and Kellen stopped screaming around 10:30 this morning so I have hopes that he is on the road to recovery. That, and more than 4 straight hours of sleep would be great!

Yesterday did make me thankful that my kids are normally quite sweet and adorable!

All Smiles!

My little guy is all smiles almost all the time these days! What a gift!

Dollar Days

Last weekend was the annual Baltimore Dollar Days event. During this weekend, local attractions, some of which are usually upwards of $20, open their doors for $1 admission. Since Noelle loved the Natural History Museum in DC over Thanksgiving, I decided to take advantage of the deal and nice weather and took her down to the Maryland Science Center on Saturday morning. I actually wanted to take her to the aquarium but assumed that would have a crazy line. Apparently I was right as we saw it wrapped around the building and heard it was blocks long! So instead, we picked up our friends Lisa and Emme and walked right in to the science center!

We explored for about 2 hours which was a perfect amount of time for the girls. The big hits? Dinosaurs (not shocking with Noelle's obsession with T-Rex!) and the kid area. The enclosed kid area was awesome. It had a huge water table where the kids could explore different spraying things and currents. There were building areas (including an earthquake exploration), submarine, container chute for messages like you see at a bank drive thru, and other little explorations with balls, forces, and paths. It was really cool because the kids were learning principles of science without knowing!











We ended the day in the human body and space sections of the museum. Noelle liked the dial a germ phone and the astronaut outfits!





Pretty awesome that with Bryan's free parking in his work garage this whole event cost me $1 and a little gas money! We'll definitely be back next year!

Noelleisms

The past few months, Noelle has been really cracking us up with some of the things she says. Some of my recent favorite Noelleisms:

Talking about Christmas celebrating Jesus
"Mommy, where does Jesus live?"
"In heaven. And in our hearts."
"I think he is going to come live with my brother!"

"Mommy, I am going to have two babies. A boy and a girl."
"Where are your babies?"
"In my belly."
"When are your babies coming?"
"When I get a husband."
I guess she has listened to my talks about how babies are born!

"I got married."
"Who did you marry?"
"My mommy! Now I can have one of your rings!"
Hmm. Awesome logic. How about you just keep wearing ponytail holders on your fingers.

"Mommy, you're my favorite."
"What about daddy?"
"Daddy, you're my favorite in the whole wide world."
Nice. I guess I'm just her favorite mom...