Happy (GMT) New Year!!!

Our annual New Year's Party took on a decidedly toddler-oriented slant this year.  We set our clocks forward five hours and rung in 2012 with all of the folks celebrating at midnight Greenwich Mean Time across the pond (or 7pm for our kids).  We celebrated Wales, Scotland, England, or anywhere GMT.  (Though even this wasn't early enough for Hayes.)


A couple shots of our decor show some of our GMT treats (in addition to Nana's Welsh cakes), our Welsh flag, and London phone booth:

And of course, we couldn't celebrate the UK without a castle (and look, proof that Hayes was at the party!):

 

We also had playdough:

 And cornhole, popular with fathers and toddlers:

 And cup stacking:

 And upstairs featured Toy Story 3 and fire station play (Grant was in charge of upstairs activities):

And we all gathered up to celebrate at "midnight" by watching commercials on our news channels since apparently our cable provider didn't think we'd want to watch the London countdown, but that didn't slow us down!

Big Boy Seat

Hayes got a new ride for Christmas.  I think this means he's officially a big boy now.

Migi and the Boys

More Fun with Nana

We had half a dozen adorable pictures from this moment, but have selected one to make your heart melt.

Welsh Cakes with Nana

Nana made Welsh cakes to add some authenticity to our GMT New Years Party. Both of the boys enjoyed "helping" her, and she demonstrated how your really need to "get your hands in there" when making the Welsh cakes.

Full House

We packed the house for a couple nights over the holidays, and it was great to have so much family around!

Little Cousins

We had Second Christmas at Lauren's new house on Monday.  I didn't take a whole lot of pictures, but did manage to snag one of the three little cousins:

Merry Christmas!

This was Grant's first Christmas where he had a pretty good idea of what was going on, so it was exciting for all of us.

Hayes enjoyed his first Christmas, but he was very curious about Grant's new viking helmet:

Grant received a phone call from Santa during which he heard Santa tell him that Santa was bringing Grant cupcakes...luckily, Santa followed through on his promise:

Hayes was getting in on the unwrapping action (mostly so that he could snag some wrapping paper to eat):

This Christmas will hereafter be referred to as the Toy Story Christmas:

Grant was attempting to patiently wait for Buzz to be freed from his box.  Hayes was less patient.

Hayes is looking forward to reading his new book:

Our Christmas dinner:

Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night!

Santa Claus Came to Town!

Cold Cowboy Basketball?

Snowman Pancakes

Our Christmas Eve breakfast featured Pinterest-inspired snowman pancakes:

Grant, bacon-lover that he is, insisted on his snowman having arms:

An Early Boxing Day

We're not sure how he did it, but Hayes got himself into this box on his own.  Check out his third tooth coming in on his upper left!

Crawling Brothers

Ten Months for Hayes

This month Hayes has started crawling like a big boy:

His crawling has made an already hard photo shoot even harder, as exhibited below:

But once we gave him a few props, we got some keepers:

Both of the boys are big candy cane fans (fortunately Hayes still enjoys it while the plastic wrap is on):

Crawling with candy:

And in case you don't think these photo shoots are hard work for Hayes, here's what he looks like chugging a bottle after all that cute:

So hooray for ten months (and hooray for all the other babies born on the 16th, one day after their due date!!  That's right, happy birthday baby Bryant!!)!