Cody had a bunch of vacation days to burn before the end of the year, so we decided to go to Bass Pro with the boys to get a picture with Santa. Unfortunately, we waited until the Monday before Christmas to do it. We figured Monday morning wouldn't be too busy. We were wrong. VERY wrong.
When we got there, we got a ticket with a time to come back later to get in the line. We arrived at 11 am, and got our time for 1:30 pm. Those of you that know my boys know that 1:30 is quite possibly the most awful time to try to do this with them (there are a lot of food and sleep requirements at 1:30), but we weren't thinking that clearly. We decided to stick it through, and burned the time until we were supposed to line up, at 1, in the store. That part alone was awful.
The boys don't like shopping. If they can't destroy, they don't care. They were briefly okay when we looked at the indoor fish tank and some of the stuffed animals in fight scenes. We hobbled them along until it was time to line up at 1, and then realized it was going to be a true disaster. We hadn't had lunch yet. We were going to try to eat lunch in the store, but for some reason they had a really long wait before you were seated, even though it was empty. Whatever. We hadn't eaten. The boys don't do lines. Again, can't destroy anything. We hung out in the line for about 15 minutes trying to decide what to do. We had invested A LOT of time to just leave without a picture. In that time, the line hardly moved. There was a really cute pair of identical twins that were 5 or so in the 1:00 line next to us. They were dressed identically. I hate when parents do that. Anyway, we bailed.
We were already way up in Omaha, so we went to the zoo instead. Remember, I spent like $400 on the fancy pants membership to the zoo. Cody likes to remind every time he thinks I should go to the zoo, but I don't go. Anyway, we had a great time!
Alex red, Ben green.
Strolling around.
It was a little cold, but not bad. It had been raining off and on, but not heavily. The zoo was fairly empty, but there were more people than I expected. A lot of the animals were not out, but there were plenty of indoor exhibits.
We Love Omaha's Henry Doorly Zoo. We got to stop and look at things that were impossible during the summer. Like the underground nocturnal area. They trick all the animals in to thinking night is day and day is night. That way you get to see creatures that normally only move around at night. It was dark and kind of spooky, but it was interesting. We spent the most time in the aquarium. The boys had a lot of fun. Funny(ish) story: This boy, maybe 5ish, ran up behind me and spanked me. I turned around and said something like, "No, Don't do that" with my best mom face. The poor boy almost melted. He kept apologizing. Apparently, he thought I was his mom. I told him to be careful, and that was that.
It does not look like they are having a lot of fun in this pic, but I thought it was funny that they are making the same general movement.
This was a big hit. You will see a lot of binkies in these pics. They were pretty traumatized from the Santa pic situation, so we let them have free reign with the binkies.
Here is a video of them. Alex red, Ben green
Ben. They loved this. Last time we went, there were way too many people to get anywhere near this tank.
Wow
Later in the week was Cody's birthday. Since he will only accept home made cakes for birthdays, I made him another ice cream cake creation. I even splurged on the $8 spring form pan that I've been wanting for years, but was too cheap to buy. I had big, grand ideas for this cake. It was going to be a beauty. Because of the nature of making ice cream cakes, make a layer, then freeze for hours, this cake took me days to complete.
Here she is in (most) all of her glory.
(I'll give you 2, 2 year old guesses as to what happened to the poor top of this cake. The boys are tall enough to reach stuff on the counter from the floor even if they can't see what they are grabbing. One of them managed to grab at the side of the cake and mess it up when I wasn't looking. Little monsters. I tried to fix it, and he did it again. I made the design on the top to hide it, but it is what it is. Less glorious, but still glorious.)
Cody was super excited. He was watching me pop open the spring form pan excitedly. (The pan was necessary so you could see all of the perfect layers I made inside the cake.)
You could just see the utter disappointment wash over his face when the cake started melting apart. I left it in the fridge too long before we cut it. First, the peanut butter cups started dropping over the side, then the ice cream started pooling up around the base. So sad.
We rushed around trying to find something to contain the disaster. You can't put it back in the spring form pan because obviously, the pan is holding everything together. Without that pressure, the cake was much larger than the pan. I got it in a pie plate and we stuck it in the deep freeze. Cody was pretty upset about it. He ended up going to the neighbor's house and drinking until 11. Happy Birthday!
When he got home, I pulled the cake out. The layers were all messed up, and it was droopy and weird looking, but it was firm enough!
As you can see, it wasn't as pretty as it could've been, but it was delicious.
Yum. Cody was mostly less disappointed.
Watching tv
Christmas morning!
The boys were not super happy about Christmas morning. They didn't really care for presents, and they were still really tired. It was fun, but not as magical as it will be in the future.
The tree pre- boy destruction. I wrapped stuff on Christmas Eve, because they would not have left anything alone before then. There are almost no ornaments on the tree because Alex got his finger stuck in one, and got a really bad cut on his finger. I used some of the leftover streamers on the tree to dress it up a bit. Also balloons. Nothing says fancy like balloons.
Also, fun fact, this is the tree Cody and I bought our first year in the college apartment together. This poor little tree has seen us through 4 states and 9 Christmases. Thanks, old girl.
That looks like a good number of gifts, but in actuality almost all of that was stuff they already owned that I wrapped up. Yes, my side of the family. I am Matt.
They just got a huge influx of stuff from their birthday, and they have gotten new toys, like the ball chute on our stairs. Just not much to open on Christmas.
This dog is the dog my sister got for the boys on one of her travels. The one I did a blog post about sewing up earlier this year. HA!
They still had fun opening their own stuff. Some of the stuff was things my mom has gotten for them that we never even brought upstairs from the basement. We are pretty overloaded with toys. (Thanks though, Mom. They will love it one day)
Ben stripes. Alex solid grey. Again, they still had binkies from sleeping overnight. I tried to get them away, but they were a little grumpy for a while.
Opening their box of tissues. I figured they would like pulling them out of the box like crazy. They did.
Alex blowing his nose.
Dinosaur
PVC pipe pieces. There are these connectors and some pipe pieces, so they can build their own creations. They loved it once they settled in.
Ben blowing his nose
Alex loved his sponge.
Ben still all over those tissues
A snake and hammer. Those are things that had been in my room for a few months, so they may not have remembered them!
Alex kept biting the head of the snake. They've got some good circus skills.
I put a lot of snacks in their stockings. Breakfast was like 99% candy on Christmas.
Ben
For Christmas dinner, we hosted our friends across the street. We had a really good time.
Our snack and booze section. I finally did the little smokies in bbq and grape jelly. It sounds gross, but it was good. A little too sweet for us, but it was good. Nuts, cookies, etc.
We ate good food, played Cards against Humanity, and all got pretty tipsy. We let the boys watch Yo Gabba Gabba. By the end, we were all singing along. True Parent Fun.
I didn't take a picture while everything was set up, but here. I broke out the REAL cloth tablecloth. Fancy.
We had a good week. Cody goes back to work tomorrow. It has been a fun week. It will be a bummer when he is back to working every day.
Fun tale: The night before we had company, the boys broke the handle off our toilet. Thanks boys! Everything was closed for Christmas, so for the party our toilet was held together by duct tape. Yay duct tape. It worked fine. We bought a new toilet. If you are visiting us in the future, you can look forward to a toilet with the push buttons on top for "I" or "II" depending on water needs. Choose wisely!
