Colorado Christmas and Baby Belly Laughs

With 9 days to go before Christmas and only 5 days to go before we undertake yet another 20+ hour roadtrip, we've been busily taking advantage of all the Christmas-y events going on around town as well as whatever other fun stuff we find to do.

First off, we had fun in the snow!



We also attended a muzic class and spent a morning at the Hammonds Candies Candy Cane Festival with our friends. And, no, I don't actually believe that my daughter is getting anything out of a music class at her age, haha, though I did attach a little rattle to her wrist in case she felt like getting her groove on. ;)



The weather that day was so nice and predicted to get so bad the next day that we went straight from the Candy Cane Festival to the Colorado Railroad Museum to ride the Santa Express.

This is not the Santa Express. This is the Little Spike at the Candy Cane Festival. I have pictures from the Railroad Museum, of course, but since Pumpkin didn't want to visit with Santa, and since the trains haven't changed in the past couple of months, I won't post pictures from that outing this time. ;)

Instead, I'll move ahead to our playgroup's Family Christmas Party!! It was bitterly cold out the day of our party, and the heater at the community center was not working, but we still had a lot of fun. In between eating re-frozen food and warming up by the fireplace, we enjoyed the company of our friends, good food, and a visit from Santa and Mrs. Claus, who stopped by to bring books for all the playgroup kiddies. Here's Giggles enjoying a laugh with Santa.
















Here's Pumpkin chatting with Santa. Pumpkin has not wanted to talk to Santa at all this year though we've bumped into the Big Guy several times here and there. The funny thing is that he believes in Santa; he just apparently doesn't feel Santa is all that relevant. LOL. Pumpkin claims he doesn't have to ask Santa for gifts because he will be getting gifts from his Grandma(s) and his parents! Well, as we all know, resistance is futile. Not when Santa is standing right in front of you AND reportedly has a present for you inside his big red bag! So, Pumpkin finally deigned to talk to Santa...but he refused to tell Santa that his favorite things are trains and instead told Santa that he likes blocks or cars or something like that. Ohhh-kay then.

Here's a picture of the kids waiting for Santa to distribute their gifts, and there's Pumpkin happily showing off his. When he unwrapped his gift and discovered that Santa had brought him his very own copy of Skippy Jon Jones and the Big Bones, he turned to me with a big grin and said "this is what I always wanted!" Awwww! {melt}

I'd been feeling a bit bad about constantly pushing Santa in Pumpkin's face, but that somehow seemed to make it better. Anyway, here's QT reading Pumpkin's new book to a tiny little rapt audience of tiny little people.

And, below is a picture of some of the moms in our group. Y'all have "heard" me talk about them before, I'm sure. These wonderful ladies have been my lifeline while I'm so far away from all my family and old friends. Knowing them has been great fun, and it's also truly been something to watch Pumpkin and his little friends basically "grow up" together.

Anyway, the next day, we took cupcakes to Pumpkin's school to celebrate his birthday since school will be out when his birthday actually rolls around. One of our playgroup mommies custom made these cupcakes for Pumpkin per his specifications. He ordered red and blue cupcakes with sprinkles and 1 pink cupcake for his teacher, Miss Shelly, who was going to be celebrating her birthday that same day.

Oh, and before I forget, Giggles had her first big belly laugh yesterday while we were visiting some friends. She was watching Pumpkin and his friend "O" goofing off and laughing like lunatics, and she suddenly joined in! It was the cutest thing, but I was so startled that I completely forgot to take out my camera. Here's a picture I took of her this morning. Getting ready for the baptism and working on those invitations. (BTW, that's one of Pumpkin's baby outfits she's wearing ;) And finally, one last picture of Pumpkin all tuckered out on the RTD Light Rail...coming back from a jaunt downtown to visit his daddy.