Christmas in Staunton!

Sal left us little pots and "seeds" of Starlight mints, which once planted have begun to grow into candy canes!!!

Graham had a "Polar Express" Day at school, which included hot chocolate, cookies, and watching the movie!  It happened to fall on one of my work days, so I happily joined in in my pjs too :)

Silly Sal hid in one of our favorite spots from last year: hanging from the vent in Mommy and Daddy's bedroom!

Jackson's Gingerbread House creation from school!

We packed up and headed for Staunton for the Smith Family Christmas, but we made a stop at Gramma J's first, and look who showed up after naptime!!!

Pure magic :)

Gramma always has ice cream ready for a treat :)

Jackson and Josh took turns adding different elemtnst to this fun picture!

I always love visiting Larry and Murph, but in the winter is my favorite because of the fire!  

Helping Aunt Murph take the seeds out of a pomegranate

It was messy work!

These two love going to visit Yoki!

Especially, this big guy :)

This warmer weather sure is strange, but we were able to enjoy the morning at Gypsy Hill Park feeding the ducks!

The night before, we drove around enjoying all of the light displays set up through the park, so today, the boys had fun posing with a few!

Getting in a little exercise!

We headed back to Windjammer for a delicious lunch, some present opening, and a little more visiting before heading back to Dumfries to see Mimi and Bampa

Hanukkah and Zoo Lights!

We celebrated our 8th Night of Hanukkah before sundown, because it was the same night we were headed to ZooLights!

I cannot believe Jackson is old enough to light the candles himself, let alone while standing on the ground and not a chair to make him tall enough!

Love the look on Graham's face!

Happy Hanukkah 2015!

Just starting to light up...

What a fun lit-up tree decoration!  Zoo Lights 2015, here we come!

This year, more than I remember in past years, the boys were really excited with the light displays that went along with music!  

Such an easy audience :)

We got some great shots of the lions!  There is one on the upper landing, just to the right of the tree trunk...

...and some on the second landing, just to the left of the tree...

Posing by the cool Star Wars Lego display inside.

The Lego town has grown even bigger by the indoor train exhibit!

There goes Thomas!

Train Enthusiast :)

ZooLights were wonderful, yet again!  The weather continues to be crazy!  I brought fleece jackets, hats and gloves only because it felt SO wrong to head to an outdoor event in December without them!  LOL!  We packed a picnic dinner and ate it quite comfortably outside!

Early Holiday Celebrations with Friends

As we set up our outdoor holiday decorations, we finally had to admit that no amount of patching would be able to rescue some of our favorite, but also oldest, decorations :(

Luckily, we already had our eye on this festive guy, so I sneakily ran to the store and set him up as a surprise!

Some stellar silly faces from this fun bunch of friends!

I love how Graham and Ben are looking at each other!  So cute!

We exchanged gifts with the Yanceys on the early side...

Susie was quite impressive with her robot theme for both boys!  They LOVED everything!  They each got a set of these cool robot blocks to build awesome structures!  Graham got the sweetest book, Boy and Bot, which is now a new family favorite, and Jackson got the Junior versions of Choose Your Own Adventure books--two robot ones!

Sal kept me company while I baked for my Cookie Exchange!

Sal had a bit of a hangover from so much sugar during the Cookie Exchange!  LOL

Snuggly Buggles!

A Geocaching Holiday Party!  To help make the holiday season even more fun, NOVAGO (Northern Virginia Geocaching Organization) set up a series of caches sharing a common theme: How the Grinch Stole Christmas!  There were different types of caches hidden in various parts of Northern Virginia, and after finding all of them, there is a final clue to solve in order to go find the final, final cache!  Josh was part of organizing this, and we were all excited to go to the kick-off event!

Jackson got to help draw numbers for whose turn it was for the White Elephant Game

Graham got to unwrap the present when it was Josh's turn

Josh got to open a Hanukkah present early, because this shirt was too perfect to not wear to this event!  And, yes, it is a t-shirt, because it is hot out!  Unseasonably warm doesn't even begin to cover it...

I love his sense of humor!

HooClass2002 and his little Hoos :)

Graham's First Field Trip and Early Holiday Outings

Graham had his first field trip to Forest Park High School to see the show the band produces, "Tiny Tots!"  This was the same field trip Jackson took during his first year of preschool, so the tradition continues :)  Of course, the school bus ride was a hit!

We were SO excited to see Jackie before the show!  She worked it out to show our school to our seats!

Later the same day, I took the boys to visit Santa!  The helper Santa had stationed at our mall left a little to be desired, so we spent more time taking pictures with the cool scenery around Santa's area ;)

Jackson's elementary school hosts a holiday bazaar, which includes some musical performances by the students.  Mrs. F-H, the music teacher, greeted us as we walked in the door and convinced Graham to join her on stage for a little impromptu dance!

He did an awesome job and we so cute!